If you’re looking for undeserving All-Stars, expansion teams in their first year of existence offer a ballpark’s worth of worthy candidates. Remember, by rule every team must have at least one representative at the game. So inevitably an expansion club, which is almost always in last place, sends someone with questionable qualifications. Chris Cannizzaro’s credentials were just unquestionably bad. The San Diego Padres catcher hit a stunning .245 with two home runs in the first half of the season. He followed up that All-Star semester with a monster .170 batting average in the second half. And it’s not like Cannizzaro was a Hall of Famer with his glove. Casey Stengel, who managed Cannizzaro when he played for the hapless New York Mets in the early ’60s, once said of his young backstop, “He’s a remarkable catcher, that Canzoneri. He’s the only defensive catcher in baseball who can’t catch.”
Top 10 Worst MLB All-Stars
Clueless fans are to blame for the All-Star Game selection of some of these B-teamers, while others benefited from baseball's requirement that each club supply a warm body. Here are the players who prove that to make baseball's Midsummer Classic — which this year will be played on July 14 in St. Louis — you don't actually have to be any good
Chris Cannizzaro, San Diego Padres (1969)
Full List
Overrated
- Frankie Zak, Pittsburgh Pirates (1944)
- Vinegar Bend Mizell, St. Louis Cardinals (1959)
- Chris Cannizzaro, San Diego Padres (1969)
- Freddie Patek, Kansas City Royals (1972)
- Willie Mays, New York Mets (1973)
- Matt Keough, Oakland A’s (1978)
- Reggie Jackson, California Angels (1983)
- Alfredo Griffin, Toronto Blue Jays (1984)
- Sandy Alomar Jr., Cleveland Indians (1991)
- Mike Williams, Pittsburgh Pirates (2003)