@@LiveFromThePorcelainPalace Tigers went 101-61 and still finished eight games behind the Yankees with their "M" brothers (Mantle and Maris). Great seasons by Norm cash and Al Kaline were wasted. The Baltimore Orioles, with Jim Gentile clubbing 46 HRs, then a club record, even over their St. Louis Browns tenure, won 97 games and finished THIRD. The '93 Giants were my special frustration, as they, having almost relocated over the prior off-season to Tampa Bay (what a disaster that would have been!), with Barry Bonds leading a club that had two 20-game winners (John Burkett and Bill Swift) and career seasons from so many players, led most of the way, until the Braves, having recently and LITERALLY caught fire (a press box in Atlanta Fulton County Stadium had burned just before the McGriff trade), beat them in two crucial series in August of that year, and caught and passed the Giants, who went into an eight-game funk, then won 14 of their 16 games to tie the Braves going into that fateful final day. Dusty Baker, in one of his more notorious "Brain Farts", started rookie Salamon Torres, who was shelled, instead of the more reliable Dave Burba. The Giants had taken the first three games of a four-game series in Dodger Stadium, but what would have been their first four-game sweep of the Ducking Fodgers was not to be. The Colorado Rockies, themselves an expansion club in 1993, did what the baseball moguls obviously intended and laid down for the Bravos, losing their last game of their debut season to them, finishing 0-19 for their season series...what I'd call...SUSPICIOUS. So the 1993 Giants were the team with the most wins (103) and the best winning percentage (.636) to not see the post-season. Had the NL been on the same format as in 1994, but assuming the same records, both teams would have run away with their respective divisions, and as the Wild Card then went into effect, there'd not have been what ended up being the LAST great pennant race. Even the battle of the "best" in the NL West in 2021 between the Giants (107-55, their best regular season ever) and the Dodgers (106-56) still had the "loser" hosting the Wild Card game. Aside from pride, of course, the main motivator was that then, it was "one and done" (the Giants have won their WC games in 2014 and 2016 under that format), and the St. Louis Cardinals, unable to catch a very good Milwaukee Brewers, had still come out of the doldrums and were actually the hottest team in MLB at the moment, with a good chance to knock off either the Dodgers or the Giants. That 2021 WC game was still a great one, but the 'Bums eked it out, dammit. As for the UMPIRING in that 2021 NLDS, that's for another thread...
@@JerseyGuy1995 That's right. And with a 154 game schedule, a better win percentage than the '93 Giants. Imagine actually improving over the prior season where you won it all, only to spend the last week or so of the following season ELIMINATED. That's baseball.
NARROWLY. The 2005 Giants, w/o the services of Barry Bonds for almost all the year, weren't eliminated until eight games to go, still finishing a pathetic 75-87. The Friars did finish 31-26 over the last two months of that season, after an awful 8-18 July that nearly scuttled them. FWIW, they'd gone 22-6 in May, which, if not for their own "June Swoon" and "No Fly in July" (18-35 combined for those months), they'd have run away with the NL West. Their post season was BRIEF, as the Cardinals in effect said, "enough of that FARCE", and swept them in three games that weren't even close.
I recorded a video on the 1994 Rangers today and HAD NO CLUE this was going to be covered by WalkOffStudios... THAT video will probably be released February 12th
Maybe Dubya forsaw what his Division was going to be like in 1994 and thought giving a second team from it a chance to make it as a Wild Card as a bad idea
meanwhile in the NFL, several teams have gone to the playoffs with losing records, including TWO that "won" their divisions: 2020 Washington Football Team (the first year they dropped the old name, went 7-9 and took an awful NFC East title) and 2014 Carolina Panthers (7-8-1, hooray we even got a tie in there!) every Tony Gwynn stat I read or hear just seems more implausible than the last, that guy was easily the best pure hitter I ever got to watch
Sad that Gwynn passed away young. Mr. "5.5 hole". I've heard that at the old Jack Murphy (later Qualcomm) Stadium, the Padres did some "special" treatment (poured slurry in?) to make that side of the infield harder, making grounders off Gwynn's bat skip in a less predictable manner and not lose as much velocity. Sort of like how the Giants had, in the 1960s, made "Lake Candlestick" to hamper the speedster Maury Wills from going from first to second.
@@theunwelcome 2010 Seahawks also, the year of the Marshawn Lynch “Beastquake” run when they upset the defending champion Saints in the playoffs. They were 7-9 in the regular season.
I think you’d also have to consider how the other teams were playing (record wise) in the last month (or since July 1 of ‘94). Rangers were around or just above .500 up till July 1. Then they struggled since till the strike. Mariners were 7-18 in July but went 9-1 in Aug. Angels were 33-36 entering July, went 14-22 rest of the way. Athletics were 15-36 entering June but next 2 months went 32-20 but cooled off in August to 4-7. If the strike didn’t happen this would have been a 3 team race for the AL West of A’s, Rangers, M’s as all 3 teams were pretty streaky good & bad all season. The winner probably would have been just above .500
While the divisions were realigned for 1994, it was too late to reconfigure the schedule that year and the number of games played still reflected the old 2-division format. The remaining AL West teams just happened to be the bottom four, the White Sox, Twins and Royals would have top three spots, still playing the same high number of games between them that year. In the same vein in the NL the Expos and Braves would have led the ‘old’ East and West respectively.
a couple of years later they figured it out...kind of. Won the division in 96, 98 and 99. The pitching was still pretty bad but holy shit the fucking offense. IT was so fun to watch
They would have had to have gone 29-19 the rest of the season just to finish at .500. Far better than they had played all season. Nobody else in that division was making a run as the Mariners and Angels were also underachieving with very talented rosters.
TECHNICALLY SPEAKING... The 2005 Padres were the worst division winners ever. MLB did not declare any division winners for 1994. Granted, had there been no strike, then yes, the AL West that year more than likely produces the worst official winner ever. However, what is lost in all of this, obviously because this was such a significant anomaly, is that the NL West was also at risk of having a sub-.500 division winner. At the time of the strike, the Dodgers were the only NL West team above .500... at 58-56... Can you imagine TWO division winners below .500 in the same year? One of the few good things about the strike is that this embarrassment didn't happen.
The AL WORST (West). A downside of the three-division format. It would have indeed been the first post-season appearance for the Rangers, who endured eleven fairly miserable seasons in the Nation's Capital as the second incarnation of the Washington Senators, replacing the team that escaped "fair and square" to greener, if colder pasture in the Twin Cities, MN. To be fair, the MLB overlords nixed in the 1961 and 1962 expansions of the AL and then NL, respectively, splitting them into two five-team East and West divisions, so the expansion Senators never really had a chance to be competitive. The other AL team, the LA Angels, who played their first season in LA's Wrigley Field, where their PCL namesakes had played for years, and then were tenants of the NL co-residents Dodgers (the place was called "Chavez Ravine" during Angels games, per the lease agreement) from 1962 to 1965, before they finally moved to their new stadium in Anaheim which was almost a COPY of their leased home. Anyway, the second Senators were bought before the 1969 season by Bob Short, who had the intent to build a winner, but even though that was their only winning season, it was still one of hopelessness, as something happened just 45 miles away...the BALTIMORE ORIOLES. Specifically, the 'Birds led from wire-to-wire, winning 109 games that year, with the Senators finishing 23 games out of first in the A(L)East, despite some stellar years from much of the Washington crew, especially Frank Howard with his 48 Home Runs, one shy of AL MPV and HR king Harmon Killebrew's 49, as the upper deck at RFK, where a seat got painted every time "Hondo" blasted one up there, got that "peppered" look! Mike Epstein, aka "SuperJew", blasted 30 dingers himself. Alas, although Short did spend some money and made trades intended to build a winner, not only did the Orioles remain way out of reach for the Senators and everyone else unfortunate enough to be in that division (108-54 in 1970 and a WS crown, 101-57 in '71, a veritable "slump" for the 'Birds), the DC crew returned to their losing ways, and the fans stayed away. Bob Short had enough. Disenchanted also that DC Stadium, by then renamed RFK, not only had to be shared with the NFL Redskins, making the field questionable as of late August each year, but that it was perceived as being unsafe for night baseball fans, with their cars being burglarized while at games (the parking situation was awful, and unlike other venues, the Senators received no money from it), Short sold off what was then "high priced talent", including troubled pitcher Denny McLain, who'd been what's still the last 30-game winner with the Tigers only three years prior, and made it clear the lease, expiring after its initial ten-year run after the 1971 season, was not going to be renewed. At first, it looked like they were headed to Buffalo, but efforts to have what became Rich (and later Highmark) Stadium in Orchard Park NY, be a multi-purpose venue didn't come to fruition. Meanwhile, the mayor of Arlington, TX, having built an expandable minor league stadium, then named Turnpike Stadium (it's just off I-30, and I believe that freeway was then nicknamed the DFW "Pike", though it's not a toll road and has never been, thankfully), approached Short to move the Senators, and once the deal was struck, the expansion took place at a rapid pace. Further renovations and additions would happen to Arlington Stadium, though the place was just too damned hot and humid for day baseball during the summer! Most of Rangers baseball was little better than their DC stay, though there were brief periods of good teams, like the early 70s with Jeff Burroughs, though typically, just as in DC WRT the Orioles, the Rangers, in the AL West when they moved to Texas, swapping places with the Milwaukee Brewers, who'd relocated from Seattle after their own inauspicious debut season as the Pilots in 1969 the following year, usually had either the Oakland A's during their "Swinging A's" heyday, or the "Bash Brothers" teams of 1988 to 1992, to chase, along with the KC Royals who typically ruled the West when the A's didn't. They simply couldn't catch a break, let alone pop flies! Yes, the 1994 season, with the AL "Worst" being a fluke, was a missed opportunity, but the Rangers would win that division with 90 wins in 1996, and their appearances in the post-season got to be more frequent thereafter. It did take 63 years for this club to finally cash in on a WS crown, some 21 years after the other 1961 AL expansion, the Angels (whether LA, California, Anaheim, LA Angels of Anaheim, and, for all I know, coming up, LA Angels of Cucamonga...) did with their "Rally Monkey" in 2002! Other AL expansion clubs, like the aforementioned Pilots/Brewers, have likewise known frustration aplenty, as that team has but one AL Pennant, that in 1982 ("Harvey's Wallbangers"), losing the WS to the St. Louis Cardinals, and although quite a few post-season appearances, no NL crown since they moved to that league in 1998. The KC Royals did much better, as did the Toronto Blue Jays, but both now, being "small market" clubs, struggle to compete with the likes of the Yankees and Red Sox. The Seattle Mariners, though they've fared much better than the Pilots since 1977 (even the "Kingdome" couldn't doom that club), have never even won an AL Pennant, despite setting a then AL-record with 116 wins in 2001!
Those "Mutts" prevailed over the "Big Red Machine" in the NLCS that year, but bowed to the "Swinging A's" in the WS. The '87 Twinks got hot when it counted, eking out their division and upset the favored Detroit Tigers.
@@selfdo The Mets were also in last place at the end of August and got red hot.. took the A's to Game 7 And if you ask me, if Yogi Berra pitched George Stone in Game 6 instead of Seaver on short rest, The Mets would likely have won the Series.
@@LiveFromThePorcelainPalace Typically, a team rising out of the basement, assuming the whole damn thing wasn't "Fixed", is "helped" by the leader and/or the runner-up also going into a tailspin. Cubs again? Pirates?
@@LiveFromThePorcelainPalace To be fair, not only the "Big Red Machine", but in the West (plane schedules?), the Dodgers were perpetually good, and even the Giants had made a comeback at the then-astroturfed Candlestick. The balance of NL power had gone decidedly west, but the Mets still won the NLCS and nearly the WS, another "Miracle" Mutts.
Although the Cleveland INDIANS were 1 game back of the Chicago White Sox when the strike began, I have no doubt that the Cleveland INDIANS would have won their division and possibly the World Series.
Video topic idea: the team who finished the most games above .500 that did not win their division
1993 Giants.. 1961 Tigers..
@@LiveFromThePorcelainPalace 2021 Dodgers won more games than either of them.
@@LiveFromThePorcelainPalace Tigers went 101-61 and still finished eight games behind the Yankees with their "M" brothers (Mantle and Maris). Great seasons by Norm cash and Al Kaline were wasted. The Baltimore Orioles, with Jim Gentile clubbing 46 HRs, then a club record, even over their St. Louis Browns tenure, won 97 games and finished THIRD. The '93 Giants were my special frustration, as they, having almost relocated over the prior off-season to Tampa Bay (what a disaster that would have been!), with Barry Bonds leading a club that had two 20-game winners (John Burkett and Bill Swift) and career seasons from so many players, led most of the way, until the Braves, having recently and LITERALLY caught fire (a press box in Atlanta Fulton County Stadium had burned just before the McGriff trade), beat them in two crucial series in August of that year, and caught and passed the Giants, who went into an eight-game funk, then won 14 of their 16 games to tie the Braves going into that fateful final day. Dusty Baker, in one of his more notorious "Brain Farts", started rookie Salamon Torres, who was shelled, instead of the more reliable Dave Burba. The Giants had taken the first three games of a four-game series in Dodger Stadium, but what would have been their first four-game sweep of the Ducking Fodgers was not to be. The Colorado Rockies, themselves an expansion club in 1993, did what the baseball moguls obviously intended and laid down for the Bravos, losing their last game of their debut season to them, finishing 0-19 for their season series...what I'd call...SUSPICIOUS. So the 1993 Giants were the team with the most wins (103) and the best winning percentage (.636) to not see the post-season. Had the NL been on the same format as in 1994, but assuming the same records, both teams would have run away with their respective divisions, and as the Wild Card then went into effect, there'd not have been what ended up being the LAST great pennant race. Even the battle of the "best" in the NL West in 2021 between the Giants (107-55, their best regular season ever) and the Dodgers (106-56) still had the "loser" hosting the Wild Card game. Aside from pride, of course, the main motivator was that then, it was "one and done" (the Giants have won their WC games in 2014 and 2016 under that format), and the St. Louis Cardinals, unable to catch a very good Milwaukee Brewers, had still come out of the doldrums and were actually the hottest team in MLB at the moment, with a good chance to knock off either the Dodgers or the Giants. That 2021 WC game was still a great one, but the 'Bums eked it out, dammit. As for the UMPIRING in that 2021 NLDS, that's for another thread...
1954 Yankees won 103 and finished 8 games out of first. Crazy thing is that the team that beat them out (Cleveland) got swept in the World Series.
@@JerseyGuy1995 That's right. And with a 154 game schedule, a better win percentage than the '93 Giants. Imagine actually improving over the prior season where you won it all, only to spend the last week or so of the following season ELIMINATED. That's baseball.
Even the 2005 Padres at least avoided finishing below .500
NARROWLY. The 2005 Giants, w/o the services of Barry Bonds for almost all the year, weren't eliminated until eight games to go, still finishing a pathetic 75-87. The Friars did finish 31-26 over the last two months of that season, after an awful 8-18 July that nearly scuttled them. FWIW, they'd gone 22-6 in May, which, if not for their own "June Swoon" and "No Fly in July" (18-35 combined for those months), they'd have run away with the NL West. Their post season was BRIEF, as the Cardinals in effect said, "enough of that FARCE", and swept them in three games that weren't even close.
I recorded a video on the 1994 Rangers today and HAD NO CLUE this was going to be covered by WalkOffStudios... THAT video will probably be released February 12th
Bush’s argument was based in not wanting to alter the traditions in baseball
Maybe Dubya forsaw what his Division was going to be like in 1994 and thought giving a second team from it a chance to make it as a Wild Card as a bad idea
I think Dubya knew the Angels attacked them and decided to bomb the Mariners 😂
meanwhile in the NFL, several teams have gone to the playoffs with losing records, including TWO that "won" their divisions: 2020 Washington Football Team (the first year they dropped the old name, went 7-9 and took an awful NFC East title) and 2014 Carolina Panthers (7-8-1, hooray we even got a tie in there!)
every Tony Gwynn stat I read or hear just seems more implausible than the last, that guy was easily the best pure hitter I ever got to watch
Sad that Gwynn passed away young. Mr. "5.5 hole". I've heard that at the old Jack Murphy (later Qualcomm) Stadium, the Padres did some "special" treatment (poured slurry in?) to make that side of the infield harder, making grounders off Gwynn's bat skip in a less predictable manner and not lose as much velocity. Sort of like how the Giants had, in the 1960s, made "Lake Candlestick" to hamper the speedster Maury Wills from going from first to second.
The Seattle Seahawks also won their division with a losing record (7-9) in 2010
@@theunwelcome 2010 Seahawks also, the year of the Marshawn Lynch “Beastquake” run when they upset the defending champion Saints in the playoffs. They were 7-9 in the regular season.
I think you’d also have to consider how the other teams were playing (record wise) in the last month (or since July 1 of ‘94). Rangers were around or just above .500 up till July 1. Then they struggled since till the strike. Mariners were 7-18 in July but went 9-1 in Aug. Angels were 33-36 entering July, went 14-22 rest of the way. Athletics were 15-36 entering June but next 2 months went 32-20 but cooled off in August to 4-7. If the strike didn’t happen this would have been a 3 team race for the AL West of A’s, Rangers, M’s as all 3 teams were pretty streaky good & bad all season. The winner probably would have been just above .500
The Rangers actually hung a “AL West Champs” banner for this “feat.” Embarrassing. Not only was the team awful, the strike deep-sixed the postseason.
Cause Texas is a long way from Anaheim, Seattle and Oakland. They didn’t want to have to spend half the season flying and playing 9:00 games
While the divisions were realigned for 1994, it was too late to reconfigure the schedule that year and the number of games played still reflected the old 2-division format. The remaining AL West teams just happened to be the bottom four, the White Sox, Twins and Royals would have top three spots, still playing the same high number of games between them that year.
In the same vein in the NL the Expos and Braves would have led the ‘old’ East and West respectively.
a couple of years later they figured it out...kind of. Won the division in 96, 98 and 99. The pitching was still pretty bad but holy shit the fucking offense. IT was so fun to watch
They would have had to have gone 29-19 the rest of the season just to finish at .500. Far better than they had played all season. Nobody else in that division was making a run as the Mariners and Angels were also underachieving with very talented rosters.
TECHNICALLY SPEAKING... The 2005 Padres were the worst division winners ever. MLB did not declare any division winners for 1994. Granted, had there been no strike, then yes, the AL West that year more than likely produces the worst official winner ever. However, what is lost in all of this, obviously because this was such a significant anomaly, is that the NL West was also at risk of having a sub-.500 division winner. At the time of the strike, the Dodgers were the only NL West team above .500... at 58-56...
Can you imagine TWO division winners below .500 in the same year? One of the few good things about the strike is that this embarrassment didn't happen.
The AL WORST (West). A downside of the three-division format. It would have indeed been the first post-season appearance for the Rangers, who endured eleven fairly miserable seasons in the Nation's Capital as the second incarnation of the Washington Senators, replacing the team that escaped "fair and square" to greener, if colder pasture in the Twin Cities, MN. To be fair, the MLB overlords nixed in the 1961 and 1962 expansions of the AL and then NL, respectively, splitting them into two five-team East and West divisions, so the expansion Senators never really had a chance to be competitive. The other AL team, the LA Angels, who played their first season in LA's Wrigley Field, where their PCL namesakes had played for years, and then were tenants of the NL co-residents Dodgers (the place was called "Chavez Ravine" during Angels games, per the lease agreement) from 1962 to 1965, before they finally moved to their new stadium in Anaheim which was almost a COPY of their leased home.
Anyway, the second Senators were bought before the 1969 season by Bob Short, who had the intent to build a winner, but even though that was their only winning season, it was still one of hopelessness, as something happened just 45 miles away...the BALTIMORE ORIOLES. Specifically, the 'Birds led from wire-to-wire, winning 109 games that year, with the Senators finishing 23 games out of first in the A(L)East, despite some stellar years from much of the Washington crew, especially Frank Howard with his 48 Home Runs, one shy of AL MPV and HR king Harmon Killebrew's 49, as the upper deck at RFK, where a seat got painted every time "Hondo" blasted one up there, got that "peppered" look! Mike Epstein, aka "SuperJew", blasted 30 dingers himself. Alas, although Short did spend some money and made trades intended to build a winner, not only did the Orioles remain way out of reach for the Senators and everyone else unfortunate enough to be in that division (108-54 in 1970 and a WS crown, 101-57 in '71, a veritable "slump" for the 'Birds), the DC crew returned to their losing ways, and the fans stayed away. Bob Short had enough. Disenchanted also that DC Stadium, by then renamed RFK, not only had to be shared with the NFL Redskins, making the field questionable as of late August each year, but that it was perceived as being unsafe for night baseball fans, with their cars being burglarized while at games (the parking situation was awful, and unlike other venues, the Senators received no money from it), Short sold off what was then "high priced talent", including troubled pitcher Denny McLain, who'd been what's still the last 30-game winner with the Tigers only three years prior, and made it clear the lease, expiring after its initial ten-year run after the 1971 season, was not going to be renewed. At first, it looked like they were headed to Buffalo, but efforts to have what became Rich (and later Highmark) Stadium in Orchard Park NY, be a multi-purpose venue didn't come to fruition. Meanwhile, the mayor of Arlington, TX, having built an expandable minor league stadium, then named Turnpike Stadium (it's just off I-30, and I believe that freeway was then nicknamed the DFW "Pike", though it's not a toll road and has never been, thankfully), approached Short to move the Senators, and once the deal was struck, the expansion took place at a rapid pace. Further renovations and additions would happen to Arlington Stadium, though the place was just too damned hot and humid for day baseball during the summer!
Most of Rangers baseball was little better than their DC stay, though there were brief periods of good teams, like the early 70s with Jeff Burroughs, though typically, just as in DC WRT the Orioles, the Rangers, in the AL West when they moved to Texas, swapping places with the Milwaukee Brewers, who'd relocated from Seattle after their own inauspicious debut season as the Pilots in 1969 the following year, usually had either the Oakland A's during their "Swinging A's" heyday, or the "Bash Brothers" teams of 1988 to 1992, to chase, along with the KC Royals who typically ruled the West when the A's didn't. They simply couldn't catch a break, let alone pop flies! Yes, the 1994 season, with the AL "Worst" being a fluke, was a missed opportunity, but the Rangers would win that division with 90 wins in 1996, and their appearances in the post-season got to be more frequent thereafter. It did take 63 years for this club to finally cash in on a WS crown, some 21 years after the other 1961 AL expansion, the Angels (whether LA, California, Anaheim, LA Angels of Anaheim, and, for all I know, coming up, LA Angels of Cucamonga...) did with their "Rally Monkey" in 2002! Other AL expansion clubs, like the aforementioned Pilots/Brewers, have likewise known frustration aplenty, as that team has but one AL Pennant, that in 1982 ("Harvey's Wallbangers"), losing the WS to the St. Louis Cardinals, and although quite a few post-season appearances, no NL crown since they moved to that league in 1998. The KC Royals did much better, as did the Toronto Blue Jays, but both now, being "small market" clubs, struggle to compete with the likes of the Yankees and Red Sox. The Seattle Mariners, though they've fared much better than the Pilots since 1977 (even the "Kingdome" couldn't doom that club), have never even won an AL Pennant, despite setting a then AL-record with 116 wins in 2001!
At least the 1973 Mets and 1987 Twins were over .500 ... barely but they had winning records!
Those "Mutts" prevailed over the "Big Red Machine" in the NLCS that year, but bowed to the "Swinging A's" in the WS. The '87 Twinks got hot when it counted, eking out their division and upset the favored Detroit Tigers.
@@selfdo The Mets were also in last place at the end of August and got red hot.. took the A's to Game 7
And if you ask me, if Yogi Berra pitched George Stone in Game 6 instead of Seaver on short rest, The Mets would likely have won the Series.
@@LiveFromThePorcelainPalace Typically, a team rising out of the basement, assuming the whole damn thing wasn't "Fixed", is "helped" by the leader and/or the runner-up also going into a tailspin. Cubs again? Pirates?
@@selfdo ih 1973, the entire NL East were trying to lose the division it seems.
@@LiveFromThePorcelainPalace To be fair, not only the "Big Red Machine", but in the West (plane schedules?), the Dodgers were perpetually good, and even the Giants had made a comeback at the then-astroturfed Candlestick. The balance of NL power had gone decidedly west, but the Mets still won the NLCS and nearly the WS, another "Miracle" Mutts.
Although the Cleveland INDIANS were 1 game back of the Chicago White Sox when the strike began, I have no doubt that the Cleveland INDIANS would have won their division and possibly the World Series.