The Worst Teams in Baseball History

After the World Series ended and the Nationals emerged victorious, I wrote about how the Astros had put together one of the greatest regular seasons of all time and joined the (perhaps ignominious) list of great teams without a title. In doing so, I created the below graph, which shows team winning percentage and WAR, highlighting some of the greatest teams of all time:

At the time, I didn’t mention the teams at the very bottom-left of the graph. If the teams at the top-right are the greatest, then the teams in the bottom-left are the worst. In trying to find a single number to determine just how good or bad a team was, I created an IQ-like score for both winning percentage and team WAR, where 100 is average and every standard deviation away from the mean was worth 15 points. Then I took the average of the two scores for one final number. For reference, this year’s Astros team ended up at 136.5; more than 90% of all teams from 1903 through this season were between 75 and 125.

Because one big list going back to 1903 might end up with too many teams that some readers might have little interest in, or at least no memory of, let’s start with the worst teams of the last decade:

The Astros have the honor of putting together both the best and worst regular-season team of the last decade. As we might expect, there’s a decent dose of Orioles, Tigers, and Marlins as well. If we go back a little bit further — to the strike — the list looks like this:

Looking at this list, you’d never know Detroit appeared in a couple World Series and were generally competitive for close to a decade. They’ve put together three of the five worst teams over the last 25 seasons. That 2003 Tigers team is particularly awful: 14 players on that squad had more than 100 plate appearances and only Carlos Pena and Dmitri Young were better than average offensively, though defensive limitations meant that Young only put up a 1.9 WAR while Pena came in at 0.6 on the year. Young was the only position player to exceed 1 WAR that year while Matt Walbeck and Ramon Santiago put up less than -1 WAR. On the pitching side, Nate Cornejo and Jeremy Bonderman were the only pitchers with at least 1.0 WAR on the season and neither broke two wins. There wasn’t a single above-average player on the entire roster, and they went 43-119 as a result.

As to whether the 2003 Tigers were the worst team of all time, let’s go back to 1947 and see if anybody can take the top (bottom?) spot:

The Mets didn’t get off to a great start when baseball expanded and wanted to replace the two departing New York franchises as the Dodgers and Giants moved out west. In their first four seasons, they averaged a 49-113 record and 49 games out of first place. In the three seasons following the initial four, the team finished in last or second-to-last place every year. Then in 1969, they won the World Series as the “Miracle Mets,” a very appropriate nickname for the group. That inaugural season in 1962 was the worst of the bunch, with the team finishing 40-120, but a strong season from pitcher Al Jackson and decent seasons from Frank Thomas and Richie Ashburn meant the team was a little more talented than that 2003 Detroit Tigers club. What if we go all the way back to 1903, the year of the first World Series?

I don’t take any great joy in telling you that the 2003 Tigers are the worst team of all time. I did think it might be interesting though, so there it is. Because the work was basically already done, here are the worst teams in each franchise’s history using the current iteration of the franchise with the exception of the Devil Rays, which count as the Rays, the Florida and Miami Marlins being the same, and all the Angels team being included together:

The Dodgers, Giants, and Angels have some of the best worst teams. I’d also note that the Cardinals haven’t gone below a score of 90 in a non-strike season since 1978 when they had an 86.7 score. Indeed, they’ve only been below 90 three times in the last 100 seasons. Perhaps even more impressive, the Yankees have only gone below 100 four times in the last 50 seasons, with all four coming in succession from 1989-1992. In the last 100 years, they’ve only been below 100 a total of 10 times, with a run from 1965-1969 accounting for half of those seasons (1925 was the only other year not previously mentioned). I was going to end on a positive note and say that using the same method, the best two regular-season teams of the last decade based on average yearly score have been the Dodgers and Yankees, but I can’t help but also note that neither team has won the World Series in that time.