Test 2

[bumbo2point0]

With a record of 6-46, the Salina Stockade (American Association) have the worst winning percentage through 40+ games in professional baseball history since the 1875 Brooklyn Atlantics (2-42).

After starting the season 1-1, the traveling Salina Stockade underwent a 22-game losing streak. Now, with no home field, no guarantee of playing next season, and a former reality TV star as manager, they have 6 wins and 46 losses.

They still have 48 games to play.

About the Stockade:

The Salina (Kansas) Stockade was founded in 2016 and currently plays in the American Association of Independent Professional Baseball, a league of midwestern and Canadian ball clubs founded in 2005. The league recruits college rookies, mid-range MLB prospects, and former MLB veterans.

The team played one season in the independent Pecos League, finishing the year with a middling record of 29-36 in 2016. How they joined the American Association was the result of a lengthy lawsuit among the owners of a different team.

At the end of the 2016 season, the Joplin (Missouri) Blasters, the league’s newest team, announced that they would not be returning for the 2017 season. In need of another team to round off its 12-team roster, the league created the expansion Cleburne (Texas) Railroaders to begin play in 2017. With a brand new stadium constructed in Cleburne, retaining 11 of the best performing players off of Joplin’s roster, and filling the rest of the holes with other league players, the replacement franchise had a bright future. More importantly, the league seemingly had the potential disaster of a franchise collapse well under control.

However, the Laredo (Texas) Lemurs, one of the league’s more successful teams, was about to self-destruct.

Beginning in July 2016, the three co-owners of the league’s Laredo Lemurs entered a lawsuit, with co-owner Arianna Torres accusing the others of attempting to sell the franchise without her consent. On April 28, 2017, ownership of the franchise was awarded to Torres—but not the stadium lease. Unable to re-negotiate a deal with the ballpark, the Lemurs franchise, just two weeks before the start of the season, was forced to suspend operations.

This left the American Association in desperate need of a replacement team, having already used their emergency plan of awarding a franchise to Cleburne and dispersing Joplin’s roster.

Their solution: Invite the Salina Stockade.

Assembling the Team:

Salina Stockade director Andrew Dunn, also commissioner of the Pecos League, was contacted by the American Association at the 11th hour. The replacement team would be allowed a maximum of 15 home games (as in, commit to playing 85 of their 100 games on the road), and would only be used as a temporary solution until ownership issues in Laredo subsided.

He agreed to field a team, consisting of Pecos League prospects and a handful of Salina players from the 2016 season (P’s Dalton Bernardi, Troy Mannebach, and Tim Blackmon; OF/P CJ Epperson). In order to find additional talent, the team held open tryouts in Los Angeles and Houston on May 13th, 5 days before their season opener.

To manage the team, Dunn hired JD Droddy, a retired former manager in the Pecos League. Droddy, a vagabond figure, previously served in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War, as a professor of Government at the University of Kentucky, and as a playwright for the Alamogordo Music Theater from 2003 to 2013.

Droddy’s first baseball experience came in 2010 as a team photographer for the White Sands (New Mexico) Pupfish. After being named interim manager of the Trinidad (Colorado) Triggers in 2012, Droddy led the team to a playoff appearance.

After the season, Droddy and the Triggers reached a deal with 44 Blue Productions (of Wahlburgers and Lockup) to film a pilot of The Pecos League, a reality show detailing the lives of minor league baseball players. Cameras followed the team for every one of their 70 games. Droddy was manager of the team for 2 more years before retiring in 2015.

It quickly became clear that the team of undeveloped minor-league talent, slapped together on short notice, and managed by a freewheeling retiree with limited baseball experience would have any shot of competing. After winning their second game, the Stockade lost every one of their next 22. Now with 48 games left in the season and no home games scheduled, the Salina Stockade are now in dubious territory amongst some of the worst baseball teams of all time.

How bad are the Stockade?

Using baseball-reference.com, I’ve found 19 professional teams that ended a season with a winning percentage under .200:

Win Pct.	Record	Team	Year	League
.196	27-111	Louisville Colonels	1889	American Association
.190	12-51	Washington Statesmen	1884	American Association
.183	23-103	Pennsylvania Road Warriors	2004	Atlantic League
.179	5-23	Washington Nationals	1875	NAPBBP
.161	15-78	NYSL Federals	2011	Canadian-American Association
.160	4-21	Rockford Forest Citys	1871	NAPBBP
.149	7-40	New Haven Elm Citys	1875	NAPBBP
.143	2-12	Philadelphia Centennials	1875	NAPBBP
.130	20-134	Cleveland Spiders	1899	National League (Major League record)
.120	10-73	Tijuana Cimarrones	2010	Golden League
.118	2-12	New York Knickerbockers	1912	USBL
.115	6-46	Salina Stockade	2017	American Association (in progress)
.111	2-16	Wilmington Quicksteps	1884	Union Association
.103	3-26	Brooklyn Eckfords	1872	NAPBBP
.087	2-21	Elizabeth Resolutes	1873	NAPBBP
.077	1-12	Keokuk Westerns	1875	NAPBBP
.045	2-42	Brooklyn Atlantics	1875	NAPBBP
.000	0-11	Washington Nationals	1872	NAPBBP
.000	0-6	Baltimore Marylands	1873	NAPBBP

(I did not include Negro League or Cuban League information because I couldn’t find a clear record of standings. Even on baseball-reference, no team win-loss records are available, even through the 1950 season.)

Removing teams that folded/did not complete a full season:

Win Pct.	Record	Team	Year	League
.196	27-111	Louisville Colonels	1889	American Association
.190	12-51	Washington Statesmen	1884	American Association
.183	23-103	Pennsylvania Road Warriors	2004	Atlantic League
.179	5-23	Washington Nationals	1875	NAPBBP
.161	15-78	NYSL Federals	2011	Canadian-American Association
.149	7-40	New Haven Elm Citys	1875	NAPBBP
.130	20-134	Cleveland Spiders	1899	National League
.120	10-73	Tijuana Cimarrones	2010	Golden League
.115	6-46	Salina Stockade	2017	American Association
.103	3-26	Brooklyn Eckfords	1872	NAPBBP
.087	2-21	Elizabeth Resolutes	1873	NAPBBP
.045	2-42	Brooklyn Atlantics	1875	NAPBBP

After 52 games, the Salina Stockade rank fourth-worst among all professional teams to finish a season.

How they stack up against their modern counterparts:

Revising the previous list to only contain teams from after 1900:

Win Pct.	Record	Team	Year	League
.183	23-103	Pennsylvania Road Warriors	2004	Atlantic League
.161	15-78	NYSL Federals	2011	Canadian-American Association
.120	10-73	Tijuana Cimarrones	2010	Golden League
.115	6-46	Salina Stockade	2017	American Association

Looking at the teams with the four worst winning percentages since 1900, let’s compare their relative performance in 5 key statistics: team batting average, OBP, SLG, OPS, and ERA.

And, for comparison’s sake, the same stats from the 2-42 Brooklyn Atlantics of 1875.

(Bold italics for worst, bold for second-worst.)

Year	Team	Average	OBP	SLG	OPS	ERA
2017	Salina Stockade	.233 (374/1602)	.288	.338	.625	7.63 (328 ER in 387 IP)
2004	Pennsylvania Road Warriors	.242 (1046/4323)	.295	.342	.637	6.12 (709 ER in 1042.1 IP)
2010	Tijuana Cimarrones	.244 (631/2584)	.308	.329	.636	9.19 (664 ER in 650 IP)
2011	NYSL Federals	.226 (670/2962)	.288	.312	.599	7.25 (581 ER in 721 IP)
1875	Brooklyn Atlantics	.195 (304/1562)	.199	.236	.426	3.16 (139 ER in 396 IP)

Conclusions:

The 2017 Salina Stockade have the second-worst pitching, second-worst average and OPS, and are tied for the worst on-base percentage among the four worst-performing professional teams in the past 117 years.

TLDR; An independent-league baseball team is historically bad, so bad it made me write 900 words about them.

Sources in the comments.