By now, many of you have probably already seen the NY Times piece about the hapless Phils. It is a rehashing of a story everyone has heard 1,000 times about how bad the organization is and has been. But the “first pro sports team to 10,000” mark, while fun to celebrate, is completely meaningless. Baseball plays 10 times as many games in a season as football, and twice as many as the NHL and NBA. Not to mention that the NBA, NFL, and NHL were all started at least 40 years after Major League baseball kicked off. So the only teams you can compare them to are the teams that came into the league around the same time as they did (1883). The Braves (1876) are second in losses with 9,668. But they have 17 pennants, compared to our five. The hapless Cubs came in the league seven years earlier than us and still have a lot less losses, with 9,416. Fighting for 4th losingest of all time are the Pirates (1882) with 9,328 losses and the Reds (1882) with 9,325. Pretty fascinating that two teams that came into the league in the same year have essentially the same number of losses. Strangely, the Reds have 43 more wins. (All time records courtesy of baseball-reference.com)
And least we have a World Series win. That’s something that fans of the Rockies, Astros, Padres, Mariners, Devils Rays, Rangers, and Expos/Nationals can’t say. And there are other teams who, by a more fair measure, are less succesfull. The Rangers (.467), the Rockies (.466), the Padres (.462), and the Devil Rays (.400) all have lower winning percentages than us.
RELATED: Fascinating facts about Phillie futility.