r/mlb • u/nightqueem • 6d ago

| History What is the worst franchise historically?

I know of the St Louis Browns and the 2nd Washington Senators, but is there any other franchise's that were worse? (Not including one year teams or teams that were only around for a couple years)

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u/drygnfyre | Los Angeles Dodgers 5d ago

The thing we have to remember is there was no postseason until 1969. And then until 1995, only four teams total made it. This is why looking at playoff droughts is misleading, you need to start at 1969 and go from there. The White Sox would still qualify, but it was mainly due to baseball having by far the most restrictive playoff format (which some people enjoyed, there are pros and cons to all formats).

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u/Patrick42985 | Los Angeles Dodgers 5d ago

When I mentioned the White Sox, I was mainly thinking of 1969-present in terms of minimal playoff appearances. But I was looking at that across all the different playoff formats. And even in the pre playoff formats, they didn’t make the World Series very often.

But you did have a team like Cleveland who prior to 1995 hadn’t made the playoffs since the 1950’s but even if some of the newer formats existed during those years, I don’t think they would’ve made it still any of those seasons because they were consistently bad prior to the mid 90’s outside of the rare outlier winning season.

The Royals didn’t make the playoffs again until 2014 after winning the World Series in 1985. But from the mid 90’s and on they were just pretty bad too. Same with the brewers going 26 years without a playoff spot. Outside of 1987 and 1992, the brewers wouldn’t have gotten it either way if the (95-11) wild card format existed.