The 1899 Cleveland Spiders Finished 20-134 and 84 Games out of First.
It’s hard to imagine that the ten worst clubs in big league baseball history fails to include even a single representative of the old St. Louis Browns, but failure is relative too when it comes to making it into the record book on the “biggest losers” list. This first list is also a little on the subjective side too. Pure losing percentages and “GB” from first place finishes would qualify as another list altogether. That being said the 1939 Browns deserve honorable mention for their 43-111 record and a last place finish that left the Amrican League Mound Citians some 64.5 games back of the first place World Champion New York Yankees.
The first “worst ten” list is the work of George Robinson and Charles Salzberg and it was published in 1991 by Dell as “Baseball’s Worst Teams: On A Clear Day They Could See Seventh Place.” Here’s their list in descending order from bad to worst. It’s hard for me to judge at least three of these clubs as worse than the 1939 St. Louis Browns:
Robinson-Salzberg Worst Big League Clubs List, 1899-1990:
(10) 1988 Baltimore Orioles, 54-107, 34.5 GB.
(9) 1979 Toronto Blue Jays, 53-109, 50.5 GB.
(8) 1962 New York Mets, 40-120, 60.5 GB.
(7) 1952 Pittsburgh Pirates, 42-112, 54.5 GB.
(6) 1942 Philadelphia Phillies, 42-109, 62.5 GB.
(5) 1935 Boston Braves, 38-115, 61.5 GB.
(4) 1928 Philadelphia Phillies, 43-109, 51 GB
(3) 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, 36-117, 54.5 GB
(2) 1904 Washington Senators, 38-113, 55.5 GB,
(1) 1899 Cleveland Senators. 20-134, 84 GB.
My own Ten Worst Clubs in Big League History is based upon a more objective standard of how many games behind the league leader each club finished for that competitive year. If failure truly is relative to worse comparable time and space failures and similar greater successes, then I’m going with “GB” (Games Behind the League Leader for that Particular Season) as the barometer I shall use. In the event of GB ties, the club with the worst winning percentage takes the higher negative position on my biggest loser list. (The issue of GB ties did not arise with my top ten worst clubs.)
My Biggest Loser Big League Club List, 1899-2009:
(10) 1927 Boston Red Sox, 51-103, 59 GB.
(9) 1954 Philadelphia Athletics, 51-103, 60 GB.
(8) 1962 New York Mets, 40-120, 60.5 GB.
(7) 1935 Boston Braves, 38-115, 61.5 GB.
(6) 1942 Philadelphia Phillies, 42-109, 62.5 GB.
(5) 1932 Boston Red Sox, 43-111, 64 GB.
(4) 1939 St. Louis Browns, 43-111, 64.5 GB.
(3) 1909 Boston Rustlers, 45-108, 65.5
(2) 1906 Boston Beaneaters, 49-102, 66.5 GB.
(1) 1899 Cleveland Spiders, 20-134, 84 GB.
Most of you know why the 1899 Cleveland Spiders pretty well locked up the worst club title forever by anyone’s measure. Their owner, Frank Robison, also owned the St. Louis Perfectos. Because of poor attendance in Cleveland for Spiders games, Robison moved all his best players to St. Louis and simply furnished the Spiders club with warm bodies. The results were a Cleveland team that barely won twenty games while finishing eighty-four games out of first place and a subsequent rule change to prohibit the syndicated or dual ownership of two big league clubs by a single person or group.
In my list, some of the lowest winners are missing, such as the 1904 Washington senators (38-113), but that club finished a mere 55.5 games behind the league leader, too shallow a grave for this GB-based listing of the most unfortunates.
If you can get inside their heads and hear that little voice that starts going off from about the third inning forward in some of the players, you will be able to pick your own list of biggest losers. They will be the clubs that have the most players whose little voices starting asking, “I wonder what we’re going to do to lose today?”
The Pecan Park Eagle 
March 18, 2010 at 3:59 pm |
You may be right but I never suffered through a season like i did with the ’63 colt .45s. No one on that team could hit. Only decent pitching made them look good compared to the mets.
March 18, 2010 at 4:18 pm |
Wow, I bet there were some fist fights and cross words
on those Ball Clubs.
Not to jinx them, but it’s hard to believe that the Colts/Astos
has never lost 100 games in a season.
March 18, 2010 at 4:35 pm |
I think George really fumbled the ball to mix my metaphors. Bill Borst, the BB Prof
March 18, 2010 at 7:17 pm |
As always Bill, another fine writeup. However, whenever the topic of truly lousy teams comes up, I have to mention the 1963 expansion Washington Senators.
The expansion Senators joined the AL in 1961 along with the Los Angeles Angels and lost 100 games or more each of their first four seasons. The most horrific year had to have been 1963 when the Senators went 56-106, finishing 48.5 games behind (Who else?) the New York Yankees. They finished the season 9-9 versus the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels and had a losing record against every other team. The 9th place LA Angels finished 70-91, 34 games behind.
Having reached the ripe old age of 10 during the season it was a hard pill to swallow watching my boyhood heroes (Who never seemed to stay very long.) going down to defeat day after day.
March 19, 2010 at 11:57 am |
It is ironic that the two Bills have taken us to task for omitting the Browns from “Clear Day,” which is back in print this month after a long absence. It was my love of the Brownies that led us to write the book in the first place, that and a fascination with the ’99 Spiders.
Our methodology in selecting the ten teams was quite straightforward and objective. As we explained in the introduction, we chose one team per decade, the team with the worst W-L record in that ten-year period. Were the ’39 Browns worse than some of the other teams in the book? Yes. But we were concerned that no one would buy a book in which almost all of the chapters were set in the first half of the 20th Century. So we swallowed hard and omitted the Browns.
At any rate, the book is back in print, as I noted above, this time with the University of Nebraska Press, and I think you’ll find what we have to say about the teams we did include amusing and enlightening.
March 19, 2010 at 1:21 pm |
To: George Robinson
George:
Thanks for checking in. My apologies for not explaining your one-team-per-decade methodology in “Clear Day.” I just prefer the methodology used here. Be danged with what the buying public thinks or wants. The truth is the truth. The worst teams played in 1899 and in the first half of the 20th century because those were the days of least parity in player talent distribution.
My personal hunch is that the 1942 Phillies might have even instilled a murmer of hope in the breasts of the 1899 Spiders, had direct competition been possible between them over some time-machine travel course. I don’t think the Spiders would have won, but they might have been able to take an early inning lead.
Regards,
Bill McCurdy
March 19, 2010 at 3:14 pm |
This exchange is going to lead us a little off topic for a moment, but I will come back to baseball momentarily.
While I agree with the basic slogan, “Publish and be damned,” I am a full-time writer. My writing — and the speaking engagements that I receive as a result of it — is my sole source of income. So I cannot completely ignore the whims of the book-buying public. More important, with the book publishing industry essentially run by the geniuses in marketing, I cannot completely ignore their assessment of a project’s saleability (if there is such a word).
Here endeth the sermon.
Now, getting back to baseball, I’m not sure why having the most losses in a season isn’t an accurate measure of a team’s lousiness. Over a single season, there will undoubtedly be fluke losses (and fluke wins), so one might argue that in a single-season comparison, a team may not be as bad as their won-lost record suggests. But taken in a comparison of teams over a longer period of time — a decade in our book, all of baseball history in other discussions of the topic — I would think that a team that can breach the 110-loss mark — and that has only happened 14 times since 1901 and the advent of the current major leagues — would be fairly certain of being numbered among the very worst. “Games behind” is a number that, like RBIs for a hitter, is based on context; in a season in which more than one team is dreadful, the worst team might finish marginally closer to the pennant race than in a season when they are the only true stinker in the lot and every other team in the league feasts on them. Losses, on the other hand, are losses, so I think total losses and/or winning percentage are every bit as good a measurement of futility, if not better.
I note, by the way, that you neglected to mention the 2003 Detroit Tigers, whose 119 losses are the second most in a season in the modern era, the most in the American League. Surely a team whose winning percentage is the eighth-lowest in modern baseball history belongs among the worst teams ever.
Which brings me to a point that both you and I have made on this subject, the paucity of really, really terrible teams in the past 40 years. I suspect that all serious baseball pundits and fans have believed that expansion would guarantee a continuous supply of ’62 Mets-quality dogs. (Remember, only 14 modern-era teams had 110+ losses? Well, three of those teams were the ’62, ’63 and ’65 Mets.)
But, as you rightly note, the move towards parity in other aspects of the game — luxury tax, amateur draft, draft picks as compensation for free-agents lost, the Rule V draft — has evened the playing field some. More than that, I suspect that at least some of the GMs learned form the mistakes of past expansion franchises, so we can no longer count on expansion teams as a short-term source of a baseball equivalent of essence of skunk.
In the original edition of our book, we predicted that the day of the truly godawful team might be behind us. Needless to say, the 2003 Tigers have put a dent in that theory.
God, I love this game.
March 19, 2010 at 3:27 pm |
George:
As someone who has written widely on St. Louis Browns’ history, I can unequivocally say that the Browns were the worst franchise in baseball history. To argue that I need only cite one bit of evidence…a substantial bit of evidence.
Of the original eight AL teams, the Philadelphia A’s had a losing record against everyone else except the Washington Senators and the Browns.
The Senators had a losing record against every other team except the St. Louis Browns.
Though the Browns beat the Tigers a lot, they still had a losing record against everybody.
Knowing this, I think it would be more than an arguable oversight to leave them off any list of historical “worst teams.” It would be a travesty! BB
March 19, 2010 at 3:53 pm |
From George Robinson: “I note, by the way, that you neglected to mention the 2003 Detroit Tigers, whose 119 losses are the second most in a season in the modern era, the most in the American League. Surely a team whose winning percentage is the eighth-lowest in modern baseball history belongs among the worst teams ever.”
George –
I have to live and die by my standards of study too. The 2003 Detroit Tigers (43-119) were not forgotten here. They simply failed to make the cut on my worst teams based on their relatively high for my list finish of only 47 games back. That’s parity for you.
God, I love this game too!
– Bill
March 19, 2010 at 4:35 pm |
That’s a great photo of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. Any chance that you can give us the identification of the players in it, Bill?
March 19, 2010 at 11:30 pm |
Thanks again,
Very interesting,
Anna
March 20, 2010 at 6:15 am |
I’m amused and delighted to be clobbered by Bill Borst. Bill probably doesn’t remember, but it was hanging out with him and the Browns Fan Club at several SABR Conventions that inspired me to propose “Clear Day” to my co-author, Charles Salzberg. So if the book is inadequate, Bill the blame is actually yours. (Just kidding. Hi, Bill!!!)
There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the worst franchise in baseball history is the St. Louis Browns. They are the platonic ideal for lousy baseball over an extended period of time. And my original suggestion for the new edition of the book was for Charles to do the two Tigers teams that were the tail-enders of the ’90s and ’00s, while I would contribute an encomium to the Brownies. Unfortunately, our publisher didn’t want to add many more pages to the original, so I will have to look elsewhere for an opportunity to enshrine the giants of Sportsman’s Park.
I would point out, though, that the Kansas City Athletics never had a winning season in their 13 years of existence and, if I were asked to name a worst franchise in NL history, it would have to be the Phillies. I offer in their, uh, defense the following statistic: Between 1918 and 1948 the Phils reeled off (or reeled through) 30 losing seasons. In that period they played over .500 ball once, in 1932 when they finished fourth and were 78-76. But the amazing thing is that during that gruesome stretch, they played under .400 ball only 20 times. Betweeen 1919 and 1945 the Phils finished either last or seventh 23 times out of 27. They were the first team in NL history to finish last five consecutive seasons and lost over one hundred games five years in a row.
I love the Phils almost as much as I do the Brownies. If only they’d stop this stupid new habit of winning pennants.
(By the way, I’ve written more in this blog in the past 24 hours than I do in my own blog in a week. Thanks for letting me sound off, Bill.)
April 17, 2010 at 4:25 pm |
Where are the 1897 and 1898 St. Louis Browns? They both finished 63.5 games out of first.
April 17, 2010 at 5:07 pm |
Cliff:
Please note that I began my list from the date of history’s biggest all-time games behnd loser, the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. I even noted it as a list that ranged from 1899 to 2009. That’s why you don’t see the 1897-1898 St. Louis Browns on the list. They were arbitrarily eliminated by the decision to start with the 1899 Spiders, but you are very correct about those particular Browns clubs. On any all time list, regardless of the year or century, they definitely belong on the top ten list of big league games-behind worst losers in history. Thanks for bringing this fact to attention.
Bill