Jordan Lyles is literally one of the worst pitchers of all time

Watching Jordan Lyles mow down the Rockies with a pair of scoreless innings tonight led me down a deep dive into his baseball-reference page. As longtime readers of Frazier's Wig (of which there are zero) know, we are fascinated by metrics that really show certain players' persistent futility. This motivated the creation of the Bondie (for the pitcher with the highest ERA among qualifiers each year) and Culby (for the batter with the lowest average among qualifiers each year) awards.

Seeing a negative career WAR at the top of baseball-reference pages always catches my attention. The namesake of the aforementioned Culby award, Charlie Culberson, is among them with his -0.9 WAR, which very possibly earns him the distinction of being the worst player to ever hit a home run in the World Series.

So naturally, Jordan Lyles' career -3.5 came flying out of the page when I saw it. I paid for a one day, $2 subscription for BR's Play Index just to figure out how historically bad that is, and boy was I not disappointed.

• 143 pitchers have thrown 650+ innings since 2010.

• Three of those players have a negative career WAR: Jeff Locke at -0.5, Kevin Correia at -1.0, and Lyles at -3.5.

• Remember, a completely average, serviceable, replaceable major leaguer would amass 1.0 WAR per year. Lyles has been in the majors for 7 years, and over that span has been over 10 wins worse than any random, above average AAA player.

• Since 1900, there are only 3 total pitchers with more career innings and a lower career WAR than Jordan Lyles: Randy Lerch, Mike Kekich, and Kevin Jarvis.

• Since 1900, there are only 15 total PLAYERS with a WAR worse than Lyles' career WAR.

Of course, WAR is a cumulative stat, so there have surely been more than 15 players throughout Major League history who have been worse than Jordan Lyles. But most players that bad don't get nearly the necessary amount of innings or at bats to acquire that much negative WAR - they'd be out of the league long before then. So let's admire Jordan Lyles for his incredible ability to be extremely shitty, but just barely not shitty enough to leave the league, for the entirety of his career.