Power Pros Forum

The 1899 Cleveland Spiders own the worst single-season record of all time and for all eras (with one exception) finishing at 20-134 (.130 percentage) in the final year of the National League's 12-team era in the 1890s. The only team to do worse, the 1884 Wilmington Quicksteps of the Union Association, played only 18 games, compiling a 2-16 record and a .111 winning percentage.

With shorter schedules during much of the 19th century, there was less of an "evening out" effect that accrues over a season of 154 or 162 games, so 19th century baseball features both the best and the worst percentages of all time. It was much more common for teams to finish with sub-.300 winning percentages. Those teams are not listed because they played shorter schedules. For example, the 1876 Cincinnati Reds (not the same franchise as the modern-day Reds) went 9-56 for a .138 percentage. By 1899 the National League was playing the standard 154 game schedule.

The Cleveland Spiders had had a fair amount of success in the 1890s, with seven straight winning seasons 1892-98 and a Temple Cup victory in 1895. Meanwhile, the once four-time American Association champion St. Louis Browns had fallen to a then-all-time low of 39-111 in 1898. But Spiders ownership (the Robison brothers) bought the Browns in time for the 1899 season, creating an obvious conflict-of-interest situation which was later outlawed. On the eve of the season they traded almost all of Cleveland's good players to St. Louis for very little in return, with respectable results for St. Louis and disastrous results for Cleveland.

The 1899 Spiders set the major league record for most consecutive losses in a season (24, from July 26 to September 16), most losses in a month (27 losses in July), had 6 double digit losing streaks, and lost 40 of their last 41 games. They also finished 84 games behind the 1899 National League champion Brooklyn Dodgers. The 1899 Browns, renamed the "Perfectos" and staffed with all the best players from the 1898 Spiders—six of the Spiders' eight starting position players and four starting pitchers, including the great Cy Young—would improve by a whopping 44½ games, from 39-111 to 84-67. However, all St. Louis did ultimately was to trade places with Cleveland in the standings. The Browns/Perfectos would be renamed the St. Louis Cardinals in 1900, and are unrelated to the American League St. Louis Browns that adopted the discarded nickname and also appear on this list.

Read this and have your jaw drop if you didn't know this. This is worse than the Royals and the (at the time) Devil Rays.

Wow, that's bad.... Lost 40 of their last 41.... Talk about having no fans after that....

geez...
no self respecting team should be named the spiders unless the mascot is a 50 foot black widow or tarantula.

Just think if Cy Young could have pitched for a different team that part in his career.

If he did, by using a modified version of Baseball Porspectous' VORP formula because of limited recorded statistics, they would have gone 17-137. This is most likely wrong, but it's the closest I could get. Hope it helps.

And just think how many more WINS he could've gotten. Especially since he would've gotten to play against the 17 win spiders instead of the Red Sox or Cardinals.

he was on the worst team in history, and he was good enough to get a trophy named after him. I cant even imagine how good he would be on a different team.

Well he didn't play for them his whole career but those years with a better team he could have gotten 600 wins possibly.

Ummm, this isn't about Cy Young, yes he would have been amazing(er)

I believe there once was a team named the brides mates. Guys here keep saying how bad the Royals are. they have been a pretty successful franchise historically (2 world series in 30 years is good and an above average record), they just have been bad recently. Anyway, several experts have mentioned that their is a very good chance that the next breakout team will be the Royals this year, most notable of which was Ozzy Guillen. However, you never know if this is such talk as everyone says this kind of thing every year. There is virtually no chance that they'll be as successful as the Rays or Tigers, break-out years can be much quieter and just go to coming close to competing or just going over 500 and having a respectable season. It just means in a few years, they can probably be a very strong contender.

The dodgers used to be named the Bridegrooms because of all the newlyweds on the team.

Really? I've been wondering who and why a team was called that for years. Finally I know haha. That was a very interesting read Mario, good digging.

I thought it was interesting too.