The Bottom 40

40. San Diego Padres, 1971 NL: 61-100, .379: -1.9014
39. Toronto Blue Jays, 1979 AL: 53-109, .327: -1.9094
38. Milwaukee Brewers, 2002 NL: 56-106, .346: -1.9098
37. Washington Senators, 1893 NL: 40-89, .310: -1.9123
36. Kansas City Royals, 2005 AL: 56-106, .346: -1.9127
35. Detroit Tigers, 1975 AL: 57-102, .358: -1.9259
34. Cleveland Indians, 1987 AL: 61-101, .377: -1.9272
33. Louisville Colonels, 1889 AA: 27-111, .196: -1.9362
32. Boston Red Sox, 1925 AL: 47-105, .309: -1.9363
31. Pittsburgh Pirates, 1952 NL: 42-112, .273: -1.9399
30. Washington Senators, 1904 NL: 38-113, .252: -1.9526
29. Philadelphia Athletics, 1919 AL: 36-104, .257: -1.9565
28. Pittsburgh Alleghenys, 1890 NL: 23-113, .169: -1.9639
27. Philadelphia Athletics, 1943 AL: 49-105, .318: -1.9654
26. Toronto Blue Jays, 1981 AL: 37-69, .349: -1.9955
25. Philadelphia Phillies, 1961 NL: 47-107, .305: -1.9956
24. Brooklyn Gladiators, 1890 AA: 26-73, .263: -2.0003
23. Cincinnati Reds, 1982 NL: 61-101, .377: -2.0017
22. New York Mets, 1962 NL: 40-120, .250: -2.014

You might say the original Mets should rank lower, and you might be right. The expansion year means that the winning percentages are more scattered than usual (a very high standard deviation of .1241) and so the Mets aren't that many standard deviations below the mean. Still, even underrated, it's the 22nd worst ever...and the 63-65 editions rank worse here.

21. Boston Red Sox, 1926 AL: 46-107, .301: -2.0215
20. Buffalo Bisons, 1890 PL: 36-96, .273: -2.0331
19. San Diego Padres, 1973 NL: 60-102, .370: -2.0379
18. St. Louis Browns, 1897 NL: 29-102, .221: -2.0403
17. Philadelphia Athletics, 1945 AL: 52-98, .347: -2.0879
16. Detroit Tigers, 1989 AL: 59-103, .364: -2.0884
15. New York Mets, 1965 NL: 50-112, .309: -2.1110
14. New York Mets, 1964 NL: 53-109, .327: -2.1322
13. Arizona Diamondbacks, 2004 NL: 51-111, .315: -2.1419
12. New York Mets, 1963 NL: 51-111, .315: -2.1441
11. Atlanta Braves, 1988 NL: 54-106, .338: -2.1484

10. Philadelphia Phillies, 1938 NL: 45-105, .300: -2.1601
Games out of first: 43
Games out of next-to-last: 24.5
Best Hitter: The immortal Phil Weintraub
Best Pitcher: Good old Hugh "Losing Pitcher" Mulcahy, who pitched 267.3 innings and received his eponymous box score line 20 times.
Other: No Phillie scored more than 58 runs...and they played in the Baker Bowl.

9. Baltimore Orioles, 1988 AL: 54-107, .335: -2.1693
Games out of first: 35 (49.5 including the whole league)
Games out of next-to-last: 23.5 (14 including the whole league)
Best Hitter (s): Cal Ripken and Eddie Murray
Best Pitcher: Pass? Jeff Ballard (8-12, 4.40), Mike Boddicker (6-12, 3.86), Tom Niedenfuer (3-4, 3.51, 18 saves)...
Other: Famous for starting the season 0-21.

8. Texas Rangers, 1972 AL: 54-100, .351: -2.2000
Games out of first: 38.5
Games out of next-to-last: 20.5 (10 including the whole league)
Best Hitter: Frank Howard or Ted Ford, neither of whom slugged above .382
Best Pitcher: Mike Paul, who pitched in 49 games, started 20 of them, and went 8-9 with a 2.17 ERA
Other: These Rangers were ridiculously young...the only players on the ENTIRE TEAM over age 30 were Frank Howard and Don Mincher, who combined for 478 at bats. Clearly, the super-young Rangers weren't great, but at least they had potential for 1973.

7. Or not. Texas Rangers, 1973 AL: 57-105, .352, :-2.2077
Games out of first: 37 (40 including the whole league)
Games out of next-to-last: 20 (15 including the whole league)
Best Hitter: Jeff Burroughs, who hit 30 home runs as a 22-year-old (and would win the MVP the next season)
Best Pitcher: Jim Bibby (9-10, 3.24), as Mike Paul's ERA leapt to 4.95 and not even adding a pitcher over age 30 (Sonny Seibert) couldn't help the Rangers from losing in new ways.
Other: The '73 Rangers scored 158 runs more than they had in 1972...but they allowed 216 more. This was also the team of 18-year-old phenom David Clyde, who would go on to be synonymous with the risky practice of drafting high school pitchers very very early.

6. Baltimore Terrapins, 1915 FL: 47-107, .305: -2.2254
Games out of first: 40
Games out of next-to-last: 24
Best Hitter: Steve Evans or Jimmy Walsh. Oh yeah, those guys.
Best Pitcher: The ageless Jack Quinn, who was only 31 at the time and went 9-22, but with a 3.45 ERA. 31-year-old Chief Bender lost 16 for the Turtles.
Other: Every other team in the Federal League's swan song won between 70 and 87 games. Ouch.

5. Philadelphia Athletics, 1916 AL: 36-117, .235: -2.3452

People know this team. After his dynastic White Elephants lost the World Series to the Miracle Braves in 1914, Connie Mack decimated his team and set off a string of seven straight last-place finishes, this being the worst. The A's almost kept everybody else at or above .500 (The Senators finished 76-77), and featured lots of kids, the 41-year-old Napoleon Lajoie, and that star of the 1915 Baltimore Terrapins, Jimmy Walsh.

Games out of first: 54.5
Games out of next-to-last: 40 (!)
Best Hitter: Amos Strunk, with a genuinely outstanding offensive season (150 OPS+)
Best Pitcher: Joe Bush, who went 15-24 with a 2.57 ERA, 11 points better than league. Jack Nabors went 1-20. Ow.
Other: Philly's offense looks awful, scoring fewer than 3 runs a game. But what was really bad was their defense, as they allowed 5.04 runs per game and the next worst team allowed 3.84 per. They also made 312 errors. Interestingly, they were actually second in the circuit in home runs (with 19).

4. Detroit Tigers, 2003 AL: 43-119, .265: -2.4054

They were really that bad, scoring more than 100 runs fewer than the next worst team. And three years later, they were in the World Series. Of course, the team before them came two years after a World Series team...and the team that comes in third worst would go to the World Series 4 years later with the fourth highest ranking by this method.

Games out of first: 47 (58 including the whole league)
Games out of next-to-last: 25 (20 including the whole league)
Best Hitter: Dmitri Young, by far. Of the sixteen players with 100 at bats for the Tigers, 9 had sub-.300 OBPs. And everybody with between 12 and 100 at bats had a sub-.300 OBP.
Best Pitcher: I guess Nate Cornejo. 6-17, 4.67. Mike Maroth lost 21 games.
Other: Remarkably, the Tigers were 19-18 in one-run games...which would make them 24-101 in non-one run games.

3. Cleveland Indians, 1991 AL: 57-105, .352: -2.4417

Possibly a fluke of standard deviation. The 1991 AL was exceptionally competitive; only 3 teams had losing records, and only two won more than 90 games, leaving nine teams with between 81 and 87 wins. That said, the Indians were certainly very bad, giving up 200 more runs than they scored.

Games out of first: 34 (38 including the whole league)
Games out of next-to-last: 10
Best Hitter: 24-year-old Albert Belle
Best Pitcher: Greg Swindell (9-16, 3.48 ERA)
Other: Shared two major contributors (Belle and Carlos Baerga) with the 100-44 1995 outfit

2. Detroit Tigers, 1996 AL: 53-109, .327: -2.4897

Second worst ever? Well, probably not...this is another super-competitive league, with nine teams between 74 and 85 wins. Then again, the Tigers did allow 1103 runs, so it was more their fault than anybody else's.

Games out of first: 39 (46.5 including the whole league)
Games out of next-to-last: 21 (17.5 including the whole league)
Best Hitter: Bobby Higginson
Best Pitcher: Omar Olivares (7-11, 4.89)
Other: The Tigers' wins leader had 7 wins. Their saves leader had 8 saves. Only three pitchers pitched more than 100 innings. They gave up 241 home runs. They gave up 160 runs more than the California Angels (13th in runs allowed) and a scandalous 334 more than league leaders Cleveland.

So, the worst team since 1885 and probably ever? The dregs of the crop? It's no surprise, folks, it's everybody's favorite...

1. Cleveland Spiders, 1899 NL: 20-134, .130: -2.8731
Games out of first: 84
Games out of next-to-last: 35
Best Hitter: Tommy Dowd was the best in regular playing time, with a torrid .278/.333/.336
Best Pitcher: Obviously, that would be staff ace Jim Hughey, who racked up a 4-30 record with an ERA of 5.41. Third starter Frank Bates had a strikeout to walk ratio of over eight, which would be very impressive except...that's actually a walk to strikeout ratio of over eight (105 BB to 13 K in 153 innings)
Other: The Spiders scored 529 runs and gave up 1252. They lost 101 games...on the road. They averaged 145 fans per home game. They scored 214 fewer runs than the next worst team and allowed 269 more (389 more than third worst, 482 more than fourth worst). They were just awful.

So there they are, the bottom 40 seeds. Next post will be the top 40, followed by a bunch of play-in rounds.

An Ambitious Project

Perusing the incredible Sim-Matchup feature on whatifsports.com, with which one can, among other things, have any two baseball teams since 1885 play each other in any park, I got the fairly absurd but exciting idea to have the tournament to end all tournaments; a single-elimination, best-of-seven series tournament of every single team since 1885. 2408 teams in all.

2,408 teams.

Seeding the teams was easy, if time-consuming. Though there are admittedly flaws to the method, especially that the greater competitive balance of more recent years skews the list and makes for some surprises (the 2006 Mets rank above the 1927 Yankees, for example), I've come up with a reasonably effective measure of a team's success within its league that works for creating the bracket. My next couple posts will be installments of this list, in which the teams are ranked by Z-score with respect to league winning percentage; I calculated the standard deviation of winning percentage in each league, and then measured how many standard deviations each team in that league was above or below the mean.

Tournament Format:

1. The tournament will begin with 360 play-in series (best-of-5). The winners will advance to the round of 2048.

2. Each team receives a seed between 1 and 38 (there are 64 of each seed except 38, of which there are 40...24 #27 seeds will not need to have a play-in game).

3. The round of 2048 will be broken up into 64 groups of 32, which will play until a final round of 64 is achieved. The championship best-of-seven series will be played with games 1-2 in one team's stadium, games 3-4 in the other's, and however many of games 5, 6, and 7 are necessary in stadiums voted on by anybody who follows the tournament.

4. The tournament will be considered to start on Sunday, June 1, 1980.

5. Best-of-5 series will play games 1-2 at the higher-seeded team's stadium, 3-4 at the lower, and 5 (if necessary) at the higher.

6. Best-of-7 series will play games 1-2 at the higher-seeded team's stadium, 3-4-5 at the lower, and 6-7 (if necessary) at the higher.

7. There will be a day off for travel between game 2 and game 3, and between game 4 and game 5, in a best-of-5 series, between game 2 and game 3 in a best-of-7 series, between game 5 and game 6 in a best-of-7 series, and after the last game 7 in the previous round before a new round begins. For example:

Boston plays at New York and Chicago plays at Milwaukee on Sunday and Monday in games 1 and 2 of a best-of-7 series. Tuesday is a day off, then New York plays at Boston and Milwaukee plays at Chicago in games 3, 4, and 5, on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Chicago eliminates Milwaukee in game 5. Saturday is a day off, then Boston returns to New York on Sunday and Monday for games 6 and 7. New York wins the series on Monday in seven games. If New York is playing Chicago in the next round, their series will begin at the stadium of the higher-seeded team on Wednesday, giving a day for travel. Chicago will have had four days to rest its pitchers.

8. Teams with four or more starting pitchers on the roster may have their pitchers pitch on three days' rest, but no fewer. 19th century teams with fewer than four pitchers on the roster may pitch their aces (and second starters, if need be) on two days of rest. In the event that a team has only two pitchers on the roster, they may pitch on one day of rest. In no circumstances may a pitcher start on no days of rest.

9. Pitcher rest may be impacted by pitch counts:

If a pitcher throws 130 pitches or more, he must wait to start on four days of rest for his next outing.
If a pitcher throws 120 pitches two outings in a row or 240+ pitches over two outings, he must wait to start on four days of rest for his third.
If a pitcher throws 110 pitches three outings in a row or 330+ pitches over three outings, he must wait to start on four days of rest for his fourth.
If a pitcher throws 100 pitches five outings in a row, he must wait to start on four days of rest for his sixth.
If a pitcher throws <119 pitches on four days' rest, it does not count in this table and he may return to three days rest. If he throws 120 or more, it does and he must continue to start on four days of rest if possible.
If a pitcher throws <129 pitches on his second start in a row on four days' rest, he may return to three days rest. If he throws 130 or more, he must continue to start on four days of rest.

10. Catchers cannot play more than 11 games over the course of two consecutive series.

11. Since the use of relief pitchers is controlled by the sim matchup, nothing can be done about closers pitching too much or too frequently.

Some discussion of the ranking system used will be posted later this evening; the play-in matches will begin either late tonight or tomorrow.

-Gavin (kamikazepig)