A's on Pace for History
The Oakland A's are 29-53, and on pace for a third straight 100+ loss season. There was a tweet going around A's Twitter that claimed this would just the second time in franchise history that this has happened, and that's technically accurate, but they've been pretty bad numerous times.
Just how bad has this stretch been? Well the A's hadn't held a winning percentage below .400 in any season since 1980, up until the first of these three years. In 1979 they finished at 54-108. In fact, that was the last year in a stretch of bad baseball that saw the A's finish with winning percentages of .391, .426, and .333. They started the decade by winning three consecutive World Series titles, and ended the it ravaged by the implementation of free agency.
While the results have been grim, this hasn't been the worst run in franchise history, despite the run of 100+ loss seasons. From 1964-67, the four years before the team moved from Kansas City to Oakland, they finished with 57 wins, then 59, followed by a nice bump up to 74, then back down to 62. Sure seems as though history is rhyming just a bit with that run and the current on the team is on.
From 1950, when they were still in Philadelphia, to 1967, their last in Kansas City, the A's had a winning percentage below .400 ten times, bottoming out at .331 in their last year in Philly (1954), and maxing out at .513 (79-75) in 1952.
This was also the period of time when the A's were considered the feeder system for the New York Yankees. One instance of this is Roger Maris, who was with the A's in 1958 and '59, then traded to New York only to go on to win the AL AVP award in 1960 and set the home run record with 61 home runs in '61. He won the MVP that year too.
While the three straight 100-loss seasons factoid is eye-popping, it doesn't tell the whole story. Is it good that the team is on this run? Not at all. Is it good that the team is leaving Oakland? Also no. Yet, this isn't the worst run that the team has ever had.
Teams used to play just 154 games, so to lose 100 in those days would mean that a team had to be exceptionally bad in eight fewer games. They had to lose 65% of the time in order to reach the century mark. Now they have to lose just 62% of their games which is a pretty big difference.
From 1915 to 1921, the Philadelphia A's were atrocious, and this stretch is when they officially logged their only three consecutive 100-loss seasons in franchise history from 1919-21.
In 1915 they went 43-109, which landed them a .290 winning percentage. Over a 162-game season, that's a 116-loss team. The following season they lost 117 (.235), which, adjusted for inflation (of the baseball schedule) is a 124-loss campaign. In 1917 their official record was 55-98, but if you adjust the number of games to a 162-game season, then they would have finished 58-104. That would give them two three-year stretches of 100+ losses in a seven-year span.
The A's were so bad during this stretch that they cracked a .400 winning percentage just once (.406) in 1918 during a 52-76 season. That was the good year, and it was shortened by the U.S. joining World War I.
Look, nobody is happy with A's owner John Fisher deciding to move the team. It's a travesty for baseball and the Oakland community. This team right now is on pace to do something that the A's haven't done in over a century, and it's all by design so that one guy can make a few bucks.
Sadly, this kind of ineptitude is rewarded in the game on occasion. The Houston Astros lost 100+ from 2011-13 while they built out their analytics department, and now they're both jeered (for the cheating) and celebrated as a franchise for how much winning they've done the past decade. The Astros followed their terrible run with a streak of ALCS appearances, however.
The difference with the A's is that the light at the end of the tunnel still seems a little far away.
JASON BURKE
Jason is the host of the Locked on A's podcast, and the managing editor of Inside the A's. He's a new father and can't wait to take his son to his first baseball game at the Coliseum.