So far here are the Blue Jays team leaders in Wins Above Replacement (using Baseball Reference:)
Justin Smoak - 2.3
Kevin Pillar - 1.6
Seunghwan Oh - 1.5 (No longer with team)
Russell Martin - 1.5
I wonder how often a team these days has no one reach 3 WAR? Even terrible teams usually have one good player. The 2003 Tigers, who went 43-119, got 3.4 WAR out of Dmitri Young. The 2013 Astros lost 111 games but got 4.1 out of Jason Castro.
Boston @ Atlanta. Fun game.
Boston down 7-1 in the eighth. Tie it!
Then in the ninth, the 37 year old new kid, Brandon Phillips, hits the home run to put the Red Sox in the lead. Sox win 9-8.
The Sox are either very lucky or very good. Or more likely a bit of both.
Manny Machado is at 2.8, according to Baseball Reference, so he probably would have gotten to 3.0 with the Orioles if he had stayed.
Apart from that, it’s:
Kevin Gausman: 2.4
Richard Bleier: 1.6 (he’s pitched 32 innings)
Andrew Cashner: 1.4
And it looks like Ohtani will need Tommy John surgery.
http://mlb.com/r/article?ymd=20180905&content_id=293472352&vkey=news_ana&c_id=ana
They are definitely very, very good.
When you’re that good, you make your own luck!
The 2012 Astros just barely got there, Lucas Harrell with 3.1 in what turned out to be his career year.
OK, I had to look up the '62 Mets, who are the worst team in my lifetime (40-120). They had just 4 players above 2: Roger Craig and Frank Thomas were 2.5, Al Jackson was 2.2, and Richie Ashburn, a future Hall of Famer, was 2.1.
As of today, Orioles are 55 (!) games behind the Red Sox.
Is this a record? If not, what team managed to be furthest out of first at any time during a season?
This Wikipedia Page lists the records of the worst teams of all times, including the number of games they finished out of first. In the Modern Era (1900-present), the 1909 Boston Doves have the honor of finishing the farthest out of first place, as they were 65 1/2 games behind the league leader at the end of the season. The 1939 St. Louis Browns finished 64 1/2 games out of first.
Of course, this lists only the end-of-season stats. One of these teams (or a couple of other really bad teams) could have been farther out of first at some point in a season, which is the question that was asked.
The 1899 Cleveland Spiders in the National League ended the season 84 games out of first with a record of 20 -134. They were 35 games out of second-to-last place. And 42 games behind the Giants in 3rd to last place who were 42 games out of first.
As they lost their last 16 games, I assume this is as far behind as they ever got.
Continuing. Their highest rated WAR player was Ossee Schrecongost at 1.0. He was a catcher (one of four they had) who only played 43 games for them and hit .313. He like many of their other good players was given, excuse me traded to the St. Louis Browns who happened to have the same owners.
Here’sa wiki page on that season. The Spiders drew so few home fans that other teams refused to come to Cleveland, so they had to play most of their games on the road. They finished with a road record of 11-101.
That brought me to tears.
Maybe the ticket prices were too high? Bad concessions? Warm beer?
The Amazin’s finished 60.5 games out. As bad as the 1899 Spiders were, I am not sure that exactly counts as a major league team.
For sustained horror, though, you would have trouble finding anyone worse than the dark years of the pre-war Phillies, who for four straight years were at least fifty games out:
1939: 50.5 games behind Cincinnati
1940: 50 games behind Cincinnati
1941: 57 games behind Brooklyn
1942: 62.5 games behind St. Louis
One can make a pretty good case that the 1942 Phillies may well have been the most miserable team to watch of all time. They only scored 2.61 runs per game. I think that’s a record in the live ball era. Only 230,000 people bothered to go see them, a number a lot of today’s teams will easily beat in one homestand.
My favorite player on that team is Crazy Schmit, a pitcher who finished with a 2-17 record and arguably was not the worst performer on the staff.
Not sure if playing for the Spiders drove him over the edge or he was a bit off before he joined them.
His head shot looks like the mug shot of a man who was arrested for a series of ax murders.
Why on Earth were they even letting him pitch when they knew something was wrong with his arm? How was that in the long term interest of him and the team like Soscia said?
Evidently the damage to the UCL doesn’t affect his hitting. Ohtani went 4 for 4 with 2 homers and 3 RBIs last night against the Rangers.
When was the last time anyone thought of the Detroit Tigers? It appears their broadcast team really doesn’t like each other. When I first heard the story, I figured it was some BS over a woman or cheating at pool after a few drinks.
This seems to be an actual assault, not just liquid courage
NBC Sports - HardballTalk: Tigers analyst Rod Allen allegedly assaulted and choked broadcast partner Mario Impembahttps://mlb.nbcsports.com/2018/09/06/tigers-broadcasters-mario-impemba-and-rod-allen-got-into-a-physical-fight/