By Roger Weber

 

In baseball, a good portion of outcomes are more or less random. According to statistical rules or randomness and probability, an average team playing a 162-game season might win as few as 68 or as many as 94 games just because of chance. It's most likely, of course, that they'll win somewhere in the vicinity of 81 games, but nevertheless chance can heavily affect a team's season outcome, especially in a sport where so few games separate good teams from bad teams. After all, the difference between the best and worst teams is usually only around 20 percentage points.

 

It would be an historic and arguably wasteful use of time to look in depth at all teams ever to play Major League Baseball, even though that might be necessary to examine the actual talent of every team ever to play. But to determine the best and worst teams there are easier ways to ensure luck doesn't skew the results too much and show a good team as bad or a bad team as good.

 

The goal is to figure out which teams were especially good and which were especially bad. So it makes sense that we want to include teams that without question fall outside the range that a simply average team could attain. The way this is achieved is to go several standard deviations away from the mean, essentially including only totals that we know are good teams, ones that finish outside of a confidence interval centered at an impressive record. The probability that an average team will fall outside of this range (55-107 wins in a 162-game season) is .00006.

 

Excluding Teams due to unusual Circumstances

• 1) Teams from 1943-45. World War II rocked baseball. Many players went into combat and all were affected in a major way. The easiest and most fair way of dealing with this era is to eliminate it.
• 2) Teams pre-1900. Although there were certainly great teams, it is not reasonable to compare them to modern teams.
• 3) Teams pre-1920. These teams actually are included in the study, although a separate category is made excluding them. Like the pre-1900 teams they are difficult to compare to modern teams.

Grappling with time

 

I have experimented with era adjustments a good deal. I have pondered long and hard as to whether to adjust for competition levels or not and have decided against it. It is not a fair judgment to penalize certain teams for playing in an era we cannot actually honestly compare to another – there are statistical ways of attempting but none has ever truly satisfied me. To say that one field of competition was better than another is to state a valid point. Modern baseball probably employs a higher level of talent than in the distant past. Still, that doesn't do us too much good in this study. Regardless of the actual talent of the players, a team that finishes well above its competition is a great team. It is not fair to penalize a team for not having players that were not available at the time.

 

In fact it is true that several major league teams today might beat the great teams of the early 1900s, but the fact that they have more talent is only a function of the time in which they play. To me, a team's greatness is defined more by how it dominates its competition and plays in the situation it is in than by how it might play in another era. John McGraw, if he managed the 1905 Giants today, certainly would not have played with all the players on his team at the time. He would have at his disposal players of all races. It is not fair to punish his team in 1905 for not including players that were not allowed to play.

 

The comparison

 

In many ways this comparison is like the comparison between the best teams. Most obviously it is important to recognize that to be a truly terrible team losses are the most important ingredient. A bad team must lose many, many games. The 2003 Detroit Tigers, for example, were terrible. But they were good enough to win a few games at the end of the season to avoid setting the all time losses record. Wins and losses are indisputably the number one measure of a team's futility.

 

Second, we expect a truly terrible team to have lost by tremendous margins. It can be argued that the worst team might win below its ratio of runs scored and runs allowed by losing even winnable games. But then we must think what we are measuring in the study. I would think that it makes more sense to measure which team actually "was" the worst team in the sense of being the worst allotment of players with the least ability to even play the game instead of measuring which team "played" the worst regardless of ability. So in that case, it is more important for a team to have lost games by a tremendous number of runs. But it does not matter whether that team is offense-powered or defense-powered. It should ideally have bad hitting, bad pitching and bad fielding. So not only should it lose by a great many runs, but its ratio of runs scored to runs allowed should be horribly low.

 

We also want to measure complete and total futility. To be a truly terrible team it must express uniform and absolute terribleness. It should prove to fans that it was far below even its lowest competition. Like a best team, it should separate itself from the pack and be undisputedly in the cellar of the standings. Therefore any opponent against which it has a winning record is in some way, or at least performed, worse than this team. Therefore a component of the measurement should be the uniformity of its futility. 

 

The math

 

The math used in this study is not terribly complex. Measurements like z-scores are used to measure a team's performance in each of four categories. The z-scores are not actual z-scores but mathematically computed standard intervals that are likely slightly smaller than actual standard deviations but serve the same purpose.

 

Component                             Percent

Winning percentage: 40%

Average margin of loss: 20%

Runs scored / Runs allowed: 20%

Futility against all competition: 20%

 

The percentages are fairly arbitrary but seemed to make sense given that this study is meant to give a general overview of the worst teams and could never actually give a perfect mathematical determination. The fourth component is measured by how a team performed versus how all other teams performed against a certain opponent. Any winning record against an opponent over the course of the season is counted against the team.

 

Using these data I computed an overall z-score for each team and then translated that z-score into an easier-to-understand predicted win total in a 162-game average season. This way we can see how a team might have performed versus another in a modern season. This was not tremendously difficult to compute because to figure out z-scores for winning percentages, I had to first compute the data for averages and standard deviations of winning and losing.

 

The teams

 

1920-present teams

 

				Win %	Margin	% of
				x 1000	of	total		Total	Equivalent
					loss	runs		"Z"	Wins
1920	Athletics			312	-1.77	0.401		-1.74	49.74
1921	Phillies			331	-1.96	0.402		-1.7	50.32
1923	Braves			325	-1.05	0.443		-1.3	57.66
1923	Phillies			325	-1.67	0.426		-1.59	52.39
1925	Red Sox			309	-1.87	0.409		-1.74	49.65
1926	Red Sox			301	-1.77	0.402		-1.77	49.13
1927	Phillies			331	-1.46	0.428		-1.52	53.65
1927	Red Sox			331	-1.68	0.411		-1.5	53.92
1928	Braves			327	-1.62	0.418		-1.48	54.27
1928	Phillies			283	-1.96	0.408		-1.85	47.61
1930	Phillies			338	-1.64	0.44		-1.49	54.14
1930	Red Sox			338	-1.32	0.429		-1.35	56.68
1932	White Sox			325	-1.51	0.427		-1.56	52.99
1932	Red Sox			279	-2.26	0.383		-1.9	46.87
1935	Braves			248	-1.81	0.403		-1.96	45.64
1937	Browns			299	-1.98	0.411		-1.79	48.75
1938	Phillies			300	-1.92	0.396		-1.83	48.13
1939	Phillies			298	-1.99	0.393		-1.86	47.58
1939	Browns			279	-1.93	0.415		-1.84	47.86
1940	Phillies			327	-1.67	0.397		-1.68	50.85
1941	Phillies			279	-1.89	0.387		-1.92	46.4
1942	Phillies*			278	-2.07	0.358		-2.05	44.03
1949	Senators			325	-1.85	0.402		-1.59	52.4
1950	Athletics			338	-1.58	0.423		-1.42	55.42
1951	Browns			338	-1.76	0.409		-1.62	51.92
1954	Athletics			331	-2.14	0.382		-1.69	50.6
1956	Athletics			338	-1.38	0.427		-1.37	56.35
1961	Phillies			305	-1.37	0.423		-1.61	52.01
1962	Mets			250	-2.06	0.394		-2.04	44.35
1963	Mets			315	-1.69	0.393		-1.74	49.74
1964	Mets			327	-1.27	0.423		-1.51	53.77
1969	Expos			321	-1.29	0.424		-1.46	54.67
1976	Expos			340	-1.25	0.42		-1.47	54.5
1977	Blue Jays			335	-1.35	0.424		-1.5	54.04
1979	Athletics			333	-1.77	0.4		-1.6	52.13
1979	Blue Jays			327	-1.54	0.415		-1.53	53.47
1988	Braves			338	-1.16	0.428		-1.43	55.18
1996	Tigers			327	-1.98	0.415		-1.68	50.75
2003	Tigers			265	-2.08	0.389		-2	44.95
2004	Diamondbacks			315	-1.75	0.406		-1.65	51.28

 

*partial war year

 

1900-1919 teams

 

				Win %	Margin	% of
				x 1000	of	total		Total	Equivalent
					loss	runs		"Z"	Wins
1903	Cardinals			314	-2.09	0.388		-1.83	47.99
1903	Senators			314	-1.82	0.387		-1.67	50.95
1904	Senators			252	-1.95	0.37		-2.08	43.5
1905	BeanEaters			316	-1.7	0.39		-1.74	49.6
1906	BeanEaters			325	-1.59	0.386		-1.59	52.39
1906	Americans			318	-1.56	0.397		-1.69	50.63
1907	Senators			325	-1.2	0.423		-1.39	55.94
1907	Cardinals			340	-1.22	0.408		-1.39	55.96
1908	Cardinals			318	-1.65	0.372		-1.78	48.92
1908	Highlanders			331	-1.64	0.392		-1.67	50.88
1909	Doves			294	-1.6	0.389		-1.8	48.53
1909	Senators			276	-1.77	0.367		-1.97	45.49
1910	Browns			305	-1.85	0.377		-1.85	47.66
1911	Browns			296	-1.61	0.411		-1.73	49.89
1911	Rustlers			291	-2.06	0.407		-1.74	49.74
1912	Braves			340	-1.08	0.446		-1.35	56.61
1912	Highlanders			329	-1.38	0.428		-1.4	55.86
1913	Cardinals			340	-1.48	0.412		-1.43	55.25
1914	Naps			333	-1.09	0.431		-1.43	55.29
1915	Athletics			283	-2.23	0.38		-2	45.05
1916	Athletics			235	-2.14	0.365		-2.2	41.45
1917	Pirates			331	-0.83	0.439		-1.36	56.5
1919	Athletics			257	-2.04	0.381		-2.05	44.11

 

Pre-1900 teams

 

Obviously with this grouping of teams, the equivalent wins measure is somewhat pointless, but nevertheless humorous because the numbers used to attain it are based on more modern statistics. So please disregard that category other than to get a general overview of the teams versus each other.

 

				Win %	Margin	% of
				x 1000	of	total		Total	Equivalent
					loss	runs		"Z"	Wins
1871	Forest Cities			160	-2.24	0.446		-1.82	48.16
1872	Eckfords			103	-9	0.269		-4.34	2.798
1872	Nationals			0	-10	0.296		-4.42	1.406
1873	Resolutes			87	-8.74	0.247		-4.42	1.437
1873	Marylands			0	-21	0.146		-7.5	-54
1874	Canaries			191	-5.91	0.31		-3.28	21.9
1875	Nationals			179	-8.25	0.24		-4.02	8.694
1875	Elm Cities			149	-4.83	0.3		-3.25	22.52
1875	Centennials			143	-4.86	0.336		-3.16	24.14
1875	Westerns			77	-3.31	0.338		-3.08	25.61
1875	Atlantics			45	-6.95	0.232		-4.26	4.332
1876	Reds			138	-5.25	0.291		-3.4	19.81
1883	Quakers			173	-4.55	0.33		-3.01	26.78
1884	Nationals			190	-3.69	0.341		-2.75	31.58
1884	Quicksteps			111	-4.39	0.235		-3.5	17.92
1889	Colonels			196	-3.28	0.367		-2.56	34.94
1890	Alleghenys			169	-4.62	0.326		-3.05	26.06
1899	Spiders			130	-4.69	0.297		-3.3	21.67