The Philadelphia Phillies lost on July 29, 1961. They lost again the next day, and again and again and again after that. They would not win until August 20, when a 7-4 victory in Milwaukee snapped a 23-game losing streak.
The Phillies had a pitiful 31-87 record at that point. They were 56 games below .500 and 42 games out of first place.
It hardly seemed a time to celebrate, yet 200 fans welcomed the club at the Philadelphia airport that night, showering the players with confetti. “If we ever win 23 out of 24,” Phillies manager Gene Mauch said happily, “they’ll have to build a bigger airport.”
There was no need for any construction. Mauch’s club soon returned to its losing ways, stumbling through a 10-15 finish in September and October. Philadelphia’s final record was abysmal — only 47 wins against 107 losses.
Baseball writers agreed that the 1961 Phillies were the worst major-league team they had witnessed in several years, probably dating back to the horrendous Pittsburgh clubs of the early 1950s.
But there was worse to come. Much worse.
The National League expanded the following year. The 1961 Phillies would quickly be forgotten as fans made the acquaintance of the kings of ineptitude, the New York Mets.
I devoted the past 13 Mondays to a review of the best teams of baseball’s Modern Era, which dates from 1961 to the present. My breakdowns proceeded at five-year intervals, beginning with 1961-1965, a span that was dominated by the 1961 New York Yankees.
Now for the flip side. I intend to conduct a similar half-decade examination of the worst teams of the Modern Era, and the Mets are prominent — you might say dominant — in this first installment.
The 1963 version of the Mets was the worst club to take the field between 1961 and 1965, according to my calculations of team scores (TS), which are plotted on an equalized 100-point scale. (Click here to learn about the formula.)
The 1963 Mets posted a miserable TS of 8.162 points, putting them ahead of just 0.2 percent of all 1,656 teams that played between 1961 and 2022. Gene Mauch’s 1961 Phillies were only slightly better at 8.887 points, giving them a Modern Era percentile of 0.3 percent. Three other editions of the Mets round out the list of 1961-1965’s five worst teams.
Look below for a rundown of 1961-1965’s bottom 10. Each club is listed with its win-loss record and the share of Modern Era squads that it outperformed. Team scores and additional information are provided for the five clubs that were the very worst.
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1. New York Mets (1963)
Record: 51-111
Team score: 8.162 points
Modern Era percentile: 0.2%
Manager: Casey Stengel
Stars: Pitcher Al Jackson accounted for slightly more than a quarter of the Mets’ victories with his 13-17 record. Fellow starter Carl Willey posted a 3.10 ERA. Second baseman Ron Hunt batted .272 and finished second (to Pete Rose) in balloting for the National League’s Rookie of the Year Award.
Bottom line: The Mets flirted with a .500 mark in mid-May, but that proved to be the highlight of their second season. A 15-game losing streak dropped them to a 29-60 record by July 14, and they finished 48 games out of first. New York suffered 30 shutouts in 1963, but blanked its opponents only five times.
2. Philadelphia Phillies (1961)
Record: 47-107
Team score: 8.887 points
Modern Era percentile: 0.3%
Manager: Gene Mauch
Stars: Art Mahaffey easily topped the pitching staff with 11 victories. None of his colleagues finished with more than six wins. Outfielder Don Demeter led the Phillies in home runs (20), runs batted in (68), and slugging percentage (.482).
Bottom line: The Phillies never had a chance in 1961. They dropped into last place on May 30 with an 11-26 record, and they remained in the basement the rest of the year. Their season of infamy, of course, was capped by that 23-game losing streak.
3. New York Mets (1965)
Record: 50-112
Team score: 9.282 points
Modern Era percentile: 0.4%
Manager: Casey Stengel and Wes Westrum
Stars: Jack Fisher pitched 253.2 innings and managed to keep his ERA below 4.00 at 3.94. Yet he was still saddled with an ungainly 8-24 record. Ed Kranepool, a 20-year-old first baseman, led the Mets with a .253 batting average.
Bottom line: The summer of ’65 proved to be a disaster for the Mets. They went 26-61 in June, July, and August, paving the way for their fourth consecutive last-place finish. New York lost 32 games by five runs or more in 1965, but notched only four wins by a similarly large margin.
4. New York Mets (1962)
Record: 40-120
Team score: 10.038 points
Modern Era percentile: 0.5%
Manager: Casey Stengel
Stars: Center fielder Richie Ashburn batted a solid .306 in the final season of his Hall of Fame career. Roger Craig pitched 13 complete games and secured 10 wins. The only problem is that he also suffered 24 losses.
Bottom line: The Mets’ 120 defeats were the most for any team in 63 years, dating back to the hapless Cleveland Spiders’ 134 losses in 1899. So why doesn’t this New York squad rank as 1961-1965’s worst team? Because, believe it or not, it was slightly more skillful than the ’63 and ’65 versions. The Mets, for example, were shut out only six times in 1962, compared to 30 in 1963 and 22 in 1965.
5. New York Mets (1964)
Record: 53-109
Team score: 10.277 points
Modern Era percentile: 0.7%
Manager: Casey Stengel
Stars: Ron Hunt batted .303 and qualified for his first All-Star team. Right fielder Joe Christopher hit an even .300 and led the team with 76 runs batted in. Starting pitcher Galen Cisco fashioned a decent 3.62 ERA, yet he still lost 19 games.
Bottom line: A miserable stretch drive (9-23 in September and October) buried the Mets in 10th (and last) place, 40 games behind the National League champion St. Louis Cardinals and 13 games short of the ninth-place Houston Colt .45s.
Next five
6. Washington Senators (1963), 56-106, 1.8%
7. Kansas City Athletics (1964), 57-105, 2.4%
8. Kansas City Athletics (1965), 59-103, 5.0%
9. Washington Senators (1962), 60-101, 5.1%
10. Kansas City Athletics (1961), 61-100, 7.1%