20-Game Losers in the Minor Leagues

This article appears in SABR’s “20-Game Losers” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Emmet R. Nowlin.

Were there more or them or fewer of them? There are many more minor-league teams than there are major-league teams, and the pitchers at the minor-league level are there for a reason – though perhaps developing on their way to the big leagues. On the other hand, minor-league seasons tend to be shorter. A minor-league pitcher might be lucky to get 25 starts in a season, as opposed to maybe 33 for a pitcher in the major leagues. There would thus be fewer opportunities to lose 20.

Just as in the big leagues, though, for a pitcher to be kept on the team long enough to lose 20 games, that would likely have to be a pretty good pitcher. Otherwise, he might get cut, or sent to a lower level – unless the team was truly in a bind and simply had to keep someone on for lack of another pitcher as a replacement.

Right now, I unfortunately can’t recall who first drew Tim Smith to my attention. He was a member of the New Britain Red Sox in 1992, and finished the season with a record of 3-20. That’s quite a record, a .130 winning percentage.

But there are twentieth-century major-league pitchers who won a smaller percentage of their games. You’ll find some of them in this book. Jack Nabors of the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics was 1-20 (.048), Joe Harris of the 1906 Boston Americans was 2-21 (.087), Kaiser Wilhelm of the 1905 Boston Beaneaters was 3-23 (.115), and Don Larsen of the 1954 Baltimore Orioles was 3-21 (.125).

Going back into the nineteenth century, one must acknowledge Jim Hughey of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who was 4-30 (.118) and John Cassidy, who was 1-21 (.045) with the 1875 Brooklyn Atlantics – despite having a 3.03 earned-run average.

It turns out that in recent years there have not been many 20-game losers either in the majors or the minors. Tim Smith was the last minor leaguer to lose 20, and that was 25 years ago, in 1992. The last major-leaguer to lose 20 was the Detroit Tigers’ Mike Maroth (9-21 in 2003).

The last major leaguer prior to Maroth was Brian Kingman of the 1980 Oakland A’s – 23 years earlier. And the last minor leaguer prior to Tim Smith was George Angel with the 1964 York White Roses of the Double-A Eastern League, some 28 years earlier. Between Angel and Smith, there were 22 major-league pitchers who lost 20 or more games, leading to a sense that it might indeed be more frequent that pitchers lose 20 in the majors than in the minors.

Let’s look by decade, though, and see if there are differences over time. We do indeed see that from 1961 through 1980 there were 30 major-league pitchers who lost 20 or more games in a single season as compared with only 3 minor leaguers. Before that, however, the trend was clearly the other way around. Many more minor leaguers were left in despite mounting loss totals during the course of a given season.

Number of 20-Game Losers, 1901-2016

*Includes all levels of minor-league play, as well as some independent or leagues which were not affiliated. The Pacific Coast League, for instance, was sometimes designated as Open classification. The year 1904 stands out as a banner year for 20-game losers. There were 55 pitchers that year who lost 20 or more games in the course of the one season. Thirteen of them were major leaguers and 42 were minor leaguers. These totals derive from data compiled by Sean Lahman. Emmet Nowlin helped with fact-checking.

Now, back to Tim Smith, the only minor league in the past half-century (52 years, to be precise, since George Angel in 1964). Tim was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, on August 9, 1968. A right-hander, he was drafted by the Boston Red Sox in 1990, and signed by Red Sox scout Bill Enos, but it wasn’t that he was predestined for a professional baseball career.

“I hadn’t really pitched much in high school,” he said in an interview on March 30, 2017. “I pitched my senior year. I had a no-hitter in high school, so there was something there. I liked baseball. I liked hitting. I’m 6-4 so I had a pitcher’s body. I had a good sinker.” He attended Boston College and played baseball but he walked onto the team. “I tried out for the Cape League and made the team for Brewster in my sophomore and junior year.”

And then he was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers at the end of his junior year. BC’s baseball coach was Bill Travers. He had pitched in the big leagues for the Brewers from 1974 through 1980. There’s a good chance that Travers had something to do with Smith being drafted in the 31st round of the June 1989 amateur draft. Smith declined the opportunity to sign, intent on completing his education and graduating with his class at BC.

The very next year, the Red Sox drafted him, this time in the 24th round.

“And even then I was surprised,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting that. I would have good outings and bad outings. Well, I wouldn’t say bad outings. I had a good sinker. I had some success. I think I had more success as a reliever. I was like .500 as a starter. I had a lot of success in the Cape League as a reliever. I would come in and throw strikes. Which is good and bad.”

After graduation, he was assigned to the Elmira Pioneers in the Class-A New York-Penn League to pitch for the remainder of the season. He appeared in 23 games, two as a starter, and had a decent record (4-6, 3.68) but pitched a bit better than the stats show. “I had a good year at Elmira,” he says, “but I had one bad outing where I gave up eight or nine runs, and I think I got like one out. He left me out there to dry.”

The next year, Smith was made a starter with the Lynchburg (Virginia) Red Sox in the Carolina League, also Class A. He had a very good year, going 12-9 in 25 starts with a 2.16 ERA and eight complete games. But he almost certainly was worked too hard. “I hadn’t pitched a ton [before Lynchburg], but then all of a sudden, I hurt my shoulder when I pitched that season. I was never really the same after that.

“I just did not want to come out of games. If you look, I threw 170-plus innings. Plus spring training. Plus getting ready for it. They do a lot of those pitch counts now, and inning counts. They slowly notch people up. If you put me in the bucket of the example of what not to do … really, my arm was popping out of the socket at the end of the year.”

He went to see Dr. Arthur Pappas of the Boston Red Sox and was put on a physical therapy program. He feels now that he should have taken the next year off – the 1992 season. “I couldn’t pitch the same. I didn’t have the same pitches.”

Smith was assigned to New Britain in the Double-A Eastern League, and that’s the year he lost 20 games.

“That 20 losses pops out at you now, but it was all gravy at the end of the day for me. Just being there. You don’t want to lose that many games. Some of the games I was terrible and some of the games we lost were close games, but it is what it is.

“My velocity was way down. I didn’t have my second pitch, my slurve pitch. During that year, I started to develop a changeup which I then starting using the next year. The next two years I started off like 6-2 and then it just … my arm couldn’t sustain it for the season. It’s a long season.”

The March 30 interview was about 10 days after I first reached out to Tim to request an interview. Thanks to the alumni folks at Boston College athletics for making the connection. In the interim, he had done some looking around at pitchers who had lost 20 games.

“That one year … after you first reached out to me I looked up 20-game losers, and there was a category of people that had good years and then had bad years. It might be that when you have a good year, you pitch a lot.

“I think it’s a lot harder to do [lose 20 games] in the minors, because you don’t get as many starts. You don’t start 33 or 35 games. I pretty much had a decision in every start. I was trying to get better. I was leading the game in my last start when I came out, and still took the loss.”

When he was at 19 losses, no one spoke to him about taking the rest of the season off, neither manager Jim Pankovits nor pitching coach Rick Wise. If they’d asked, he says, “I wouldn’t have done that. When you’re a minor leaguer, you’ve got to do everything you can to be seen. I was just so bullheaded, and that’s part of the reason I wouldn’t come out of games.”

New Britain finished in last place, 58-82. “We were in last place and I contributed to that. You could say we didn’t score as many runs, and there were better teams. And if I had pitched the way I did on another, maybe it would have been different but I definitely contributed to that.

“In some of the games [in 1992] I pitched lousy in the beginning of the game and then got better. And there was one game, I think I lost in 11 innings. Complete game. Sometimes my pitch counts were low, because I was a groundball pitcher, but just getting up and throwing. …

“If you look back and analyze it, the biggest thing for me was that injury. I just never should have pitched that year. The best thing for me would have been to strengthen and rest.

“If I was healthy, I wouldn’t have been in that situation. I just should not have started the season. I should have just rehabbed and not even have gotten ready for spring training. Knowing what we know now about pitch counts and innings. … I pitched 175 innings in Lynchburg and the year before I only had 66.”

Smith was brought back again in 1993 and 1994, pitching both years for New Britain, appearing in 28 games each year, with all but two appearances as a starter. He lowered his ERA to 3.79 in 1993 (but had a 7-13 record on a team that did worse than the year before, 52-88). In 1994, he was 6-14 as New Britain finished last (still under Pankovits) for the third year in a row.

“At the end of that last season, I was ready to quit. Ready to move on with my life. And I got traded to Seattle, out of nowhere, for Lee Tinsley. My girlfriend at the time was like, “Well, what are you going to do?” I went to spring training and they really worked with me. I started throwing a lot harder. They changed my motion. Where I was usually high 80s, now I’m hitting low 90s. But I just mentally was not … I was ready to move on.”

Smith works as a technology recruiter now. He’s raising a family. He looks back on his 20-loss season still pleased with having given baseball a try.

“I played those years. I did my best. It’s all good, the way I look at it. Baseball was all gravy. A little bit of gravy burned a little bit on the side there. A 20-loss season. I didn’t plan on that but I knew I was a lot better than that.”

Minor Leaguers with the Lowest Winning Percentage

*The team moved twice during the course of the season. It finished with a record of 32-96.
**Player moved from one team to another during the season.
***Kroh, a former major leaguer, played for three different teams in the league in 1920.
****These franchises moved from one city to another during the season.
*****Deaver was 0-1 for Nashville, and 4-23 for Birmingham.