Late Bloomers: Two Braves Hurlers

It’s difficult to describe exactly how bad the 1935 Boston Braves were, but a good place to start would be to note that they changed their name after the season, as if they needed to go into the witness protection program. The owner, Emil Fuchs, sold his interests in the club in the middle of the year, and the new owners decided to run a contest to re-name the team* before the 1936 season started. That’s pretty drastic, but they felt it was necessary in order to distance themselves from the debacle that the 1935 season had been.

(*Note: They settled on Bees, a name they would go by for just five years before switching back to Braves. For the purposes of this story we’re going to pretend the change never happened.)

To give you a sense of exactly how bad the Braves were in 1935, I’ll compare them to the team whose record of 120 losses in a season was just broken last year by the White Sox, and that’s the 1962 New York Mets.

• In the first season in franchise history, the Mets finished 40-120-1. That’s a winning percentage of exactly .250. The 1935 Braves’ winning percentage was .247.

• The Mets finished 60.5 games out of first place in 1962. The Braves were 61.5 games out of first place in 1935.

• The Mets were 18 games behind the next-worst team in the league that year. The Braves were 26 games behind the next-worst team in 1935.

• The ‘62 Mets scored 3.8 runs per game, which was second to last in the league, 0.7 runs below the league average of 4.5. The ‘35 Braves also scored 3.8 runs per game, which was dead last in the league, 0.9 runs below the league average of 4.7.

• Roger Craig of the ‘62 Mets led the league with 24 losses. Ben Cantwell of the ‘35 Braves led the league with 25 losses.

• The Mets’ team ERA+ in 1962 was 82, which was 18% worse than league average. The Braves’ team ERA+ in 1935 was 77, which was 24% worse than league average.

You get the idea, I hope. There have only been three teams since 1900 that played at least 100 team games and had a winning percentage of .250 or worse. The ‘62 Mets and ‘35 Braves were two of them. The third was the 1916 Philadelphia A’s, who finished 36-117 for a .235 winning percentage, and even they didn’t finish as far out of first place as the ‘35 Braves did.