The Worst Team Ever?

At the end of 2003 season, national attention was focused on the Detroit Tigers as they attempted to avoid the ignominious label of becoming baseball’s worst team ever.

As the season closed, the Tigers were threatening to surpass the all-time games lost mark of 120 held by the famous 1962 “Amazin” Mets. Fortunately for Tiger fans, an end of the season winning spurt against the Minnesota Twins, who were resting many of their starters for the upcoming playoffs, avoided this destiny.

Throughout a good portion of the season, the Tigers record at multiple points in time was compared to that of the ‘62 Mets with the same equivalent games played. The Mets, managed by Casey Stengel, were in most cases held up as the standard for the all-time worst team. These ‘62 Mets are fondly remembered for their miscues by players such as “Marvelous” Marv Throneberry. Of his team, Casey Stengel was quoted as saying, “I have been in this game a hundred years, but I see new ways to lose I never knew existed before.”1

In all of this, the major focus was on the number of games lost. However, as I watched the Tigers both in person and on television, I kept asking myself if I was really looking at the worst team to ever play the game in modern baseball history. In many of the games the Tigers seemed to be in the game with a chance to win until the end. All of the media focus was on the number of games lost. Were the Tigers really that bad? Were the 1962 Mets modern baseball’s worst team ever? Are there other ways to compare teams besides games lost?

One obvious alternative is winning percentage. As the Mets vs. Tigers comparisons continued, little was made of the fact that the 1962 Mets played only 160 games with a .250 wining percentage. Were there teams with a lower winning percent- age than the Mets? The answer is yes. Two teams actually had lower winning percentages than the Mets, the 1916 Athletics at .235 and the 1935 Braves at .248. Indeed there were five teams with lower percentages than the Tigers of this past season.

 

Figure 1. Ten Lowest All-Time Winning Percentages

1. 1916 Athletics .235

2. 1935 Braves .248

3. 1962 Mets .250

4. 1904 Senators .252

5. 1919 Athletics .257

6. 2003 Tigers .265

7. 1952 Pirates .272

8. 1942 Phillies .275

9. 1909 Senators .276

T-10. 1941 Phillies .279

T-10. 1932 Red Sox .279

T-10. 1939 Browns .279

 

Beyond games won and winning percentages, others have focused on the differential between runs scored and runs allowed as a measure of success or failure. G. Scott Thomas in his excellent book on adjusting baseball statistics, Leveling The Field, uses a historically adjusted differential of runs scored minus runs allowed.2 This statistic is a key factor in his determination of the best and worst teams in baseball history. Likewise, David Surdam uses this runs differential to build a case that the 1966 Yankees were the best last-place team ever.3

A more precise determinant of how bad a team performs is this same runs scored versus runs allowed differential, but only for games lost. Beyond the sheer number of losses, the margin of those losses indicates how bad a team plays. My casual observation of the 2003 Tigers is that they were not by in large losing by big scores. A loss differential can be calculated by adding the losing margins for all the losses by a team in a season and then dividing that by the total number of losses. The 2003 Tigers lost 119 games with total losing margins in all those games equaling 448 runs. Thus, their loss differential is 448 divided by 119 or 3.76 runs per game.

However, before comparing loss differentials, some consideration needs to be given to the fact that various eras in baseball had significantly different numbers of runs scored. For example, in the National League in 1916 the average runs per game were 3.45 compared to 5.00 in 2000. It seems logical to adjust runs scored according to an index similar to what is done for the value of a dollar via the Consumer Price Index. In computing the loss differential for the eight teams with the lowest winning percentages from above, the American League in 2003 was used as the benchmark. For each team an adjustment factor is calculated by dividing the 2003 American League average of runs scored per game (4.86) by average runs scored per game for the year in the league that the team played. For the ’62 Mets, the National League average runs per game in that season was 4.48. By dividing the 2003 AL average by this 1962 NL average an adjustment factor of 1.08 is created. Multiplying this adjustment factor times the 3.65 average loss differential of the ’62 Mets produces an adjusted loss differential of 3.96.

 

Figure 2. Comparative Adjusted Loss Differentials

	Loss Diff.	League Runs per Game	Adj. Factor	Adj. Loss Diff.
1916 Athletics	3.68	3.64	1.34	4.91
1935 Braves	3.63	4.71	1.03	3.75
1962 Mets	3.65	4.48	1.08	3.96
1904 Senators	3.66	3.54	1.37	5.03
1919 Athletics	3.58	4.09	1.19	4.25
2003 Tigers	3.76	4.86	1.00	3.76
1952 Pirates	3.59	4.17	1.17	4.18
1942 Phillies	3.66	3.90	1.25	4.56

 

In looking at these adjusted numbers, the 1904 Senators had the largest margin of loss at slightly over five runs per game. The 1916 Athletics were not far behind with an average losing margin of 4.91 runs per game. The 2003 Tigers ranked seventh out of the eight teams, only slightly above the 1935 Braves.

Beyond the number of runs a team loses by, how well a team plays the game is another measure of its skill or ineptitude. This includes the basics of hitting, pitching and fielding. I selected nine indicators of these basics. These include four for hitting, four for pitching, and one for fielding. The hitting basics are Batting Average, Total Runs Scored, On-Base Percentage, and Strikeouts. For pitching they are ERA, walks, strikeouts, and hits allowed. Finally, for Fielding the total number of errors for a season was selected. Next, in order to quantify a team’s performance in each of these categories, numerical ratings were assigned based on a team’s performance relative to the rest of the teams in the league. For each of these nine skills, the team’s total results for the season were compared to those of the rest of the teams in their league for that same season. If a team had the poorest performance in the league in a particular category for that year, it is assigned a value of 1. If it was the next poorest performer, it was given a 2, and so on. Figure 3 compares the results for our same eight historical teams. Scores for all the skills are totaled and in this case, the lowest score indicates the poorest performer.

 

Figure 3. Team Batting, Pitching & Fielding Rankings

Team	BA	R	OBP	SO	ERA	BB	SO	H	E	Total
1916 Athletics	1	1	1	1	2	1	1	1	1	10
1935 Braves	1	1	1	8	1	5	1	2	3	23
1962 Mets	1	1	1	2	1	4	1	1	1	13
1904 Senators	1	1	1	1	1	3	1	1	1	11
1919 Athletics	1	1	1	1	1	1	3	1	1	11
2003 Tigers	1	1	1	1	2	4	1	2	1	14
1952 Pirates	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	9
1942 Phillies	2	1	1	7	1	1	3	3	1	20

 

At the first glance, the chart reveals that all of our teams by in large did not do very well in most categories. All eight teams have several scores of 1 for many categories. Not surprisingly teams that lose a lot of games have the poorest hitters, pitchers, and fielders in their league. Four of the teams are tightly clustered with total scores ranging from 9-11. However, the range of scores is from a low of 9 to a high of 23. The highest score comes from the 1935 Boston Braves who had the lowest scores in only five of the nine categories. The Braves batters were the least likely to strike out in the entire National League that year. The 1952 Pirates emerge in this comparison as the worst team with the lowest score. They are the only team to score a perfect one in all nine skills. Again the 1916 Athletics are near the bottom with the next lowest score of 10. The 2003 Tigers have a score of 14, which was bolstered by a pitching staff that finished last in only one of four pitching categories. Their anemic offense is evident with last places or scores of 1 in all four of the hitting categories.

So what is the worst team ever? In looking at all three of these comparisons, a strong case can be made that it is the 1916 Athletics, who were managed by Connie Mack. They are the only team to be at or next to the bottom in each of the categories. They lost 117 games out of 153 games played. This was three fewer losses than the most widely publicized worst team, the 1962 Mets. However, they have the all time lowest wining percentage, .235, and they narrowly missed having the largest loss differential and the lowest skills rating.

The 1916 Athletics were the result of Connie Mack dismantling a team that had won four pennants and three World Series between 1910 and 1914. Mack chose not to match the offers made to his players by the newly formed rival Federal League. Before the start of the 1915 season stars Eddie Plank, Chief Bender, and Jack Coombs were placed on waivers. Second baseman Eddie Collins was sold to the White Sox. This was only beginning of the release of a litany of other players including Herb Pennock, “Home Run” Baker, and Bob Shawkey. By 1916, the Athletics were playing a shortstop recruited from a Vermont seminary, who made 78 errors for a team on its way to a season total of 312 errors. The team had two pitchers with a combined won and lost record of 2 and 37. One of these pitchers, Jack Nabors, lost 19 straight games. The Athletics finished 40 games behind the seventh-place Washington Senators.

As for the Tigers, Detroit fans can take some consolation that in each of the three methods of comparisons; there were at least five teams with lower performance than this past season’s Tigers. Nevertheless, for most that is little consolation and winning more games is what everyone would like to see happen.

 

Sources

 

Notes

1. Creamer, Robert. Stengel: His Life and Times (New York, 1984), p. 302.

2. Thomas, G. Scott. Leveling The Field (New York, 2002), pp. 28-29.

3. Surdam, David. “The Best Last-Place Team Ever?,” The Baseball Research Journal 31 (2003), pp. 80-82.