Doubly Bad Seasons

At the end of this season, the Washington Nationals finished as the worst team in baseball, with a record of 59-103 (0.364). To add insult to injury, the Baltimore Orioles finished as the worst team in the American League, 64-98 (0.395). So if you had the misfortune to watch all the Orioles and Nationals games on MASN, you saw a combined record of 123-201 (0.380).

This set me to wondering how bad this really is. In most two-team markets, when one team is up, the other one is down, right? Well, not always. I went looking through the season standings in Retrosheet, searching for two teams in the same market that finished at the bottom of the division.

For our purposes, I defined a market as two teams close enough together so that TV viewers could watch both teams over the air, even if TV didn't exist in the year in question. Thus we include Baltimore/Washington, Los Angeles/Anaheim, and San Francisco/Oakland, not to mention Chicago/Chicago, and, historically, St. Louis/St. Louis, Boston/Boston, and New York/New York/Brooklyn.

The table below shows all the years I found two teams in the same market being at the bottom. You'd think divisional play would have increased the chances for this sort of thing, but in 40 years it has only happened three times, and neither Baltimore 2008 nor San Francisco/Oakland 1995 were at the bottom of their respective leagues, only their divisions.

Looking at this list, I begin to understand why Philadelphia fans have a reputation for being so mean.

Year	Worst Team	W	L	Pct.	Other Team	W	L	Pct.	Tot. W	Tot. L	Pct.
1919	Phil. AL	36	104	.257	Phil. NL	47	90	.343	83	194	.300
1942	Phil. NL	42	109	.278	Phil. AL	55	99	.357	97	208	.318
1906	Bos. AL	49	105	.318	Bos. NL	49	102	.325	98	207	.321
1945	Phil. NL	46	108	.299	Phil. AL	52	98	.347	98	206	.322
1938	Phil. NL	45	105	.300	Phil. AL	53	99	.349	98	204	.325
1921	Phil. NL	51	103	.331	Phil. AL	51	103	.331	102	206	.331
1940	Phil. NL	50	103	.327	Phil. AL	54	100	.351	104	203	.339
1941	Phil. NL	43	111	.279	Phil. AL	64	90	.416	107	201	.347
1936	Phil. AL	53	100	.346	Phil. NL	54	100	.351	107	200	.349
1913	StL NL	51	99	.340	StL AL	57	96	.373	108	195	.356
1920	Phil. AL	48	106	.312	Phil. NL	62	91	.405	110	197	.358
1929	Bos. NL	56	98	.364	Bos. AL	58	96	.377	114	194	.370
1922	Bos. NL	53	100	.346	Bos. AL	61	93	.396	114	193	.371
1948	Chi AL	51	101	.336	Chi NL	64	90	.416	115	191	.376
2009	Wash. NL	59	103	.364	Balt. AL	64	98	.395	123	201	.380
2008	Wash. NL	59	102	.366	Balt. AL	68	93	.422	127	195	.394
1995	SF NL	67	77	.465	Oak. AL	67	77	.465	134	154	.465