Thursday, August 18, 2005

KC hits skid row

Kansas City is on the verge of breaking the modern-day Major League record for most consecutive losses. The Royals have dropped 18 in a row. The American League record is 21, set by Baltimore at the start of the 1988 season. The 1961 Phillies lost 23 in a row to set the Major League mark.

This is the kind of ineptitude normally associated with the government, but the government has tools that most Major League organizations don't employ, like committees and task forces.

Next up for KC: Three at wild-card leader Oakland, followed by three at home against East leader Boston.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

even a team as brutal as the royals has a 1 in 1008 chance of losing 18 straight games. this is based on the assumption that they are a .319 winning percentage team. That is how improbable an 18-game losing streak is, even for a team like the 2005 Royals.

fwiw, the 2003 Tigers, who lost 119 games, had one 11-game, one 10-game, two 9-game, and two 8-game losing streaks.

david glass may be a great wal-mart owner, but unfortunately, he is applying the same philosophy of driving down labor costs to his MLB team. that simply doesn't work in MLB, in which the labor IS the product. in MLB, an owner has to invest in his product to get good results, rather than focus on being on the frontline of the labor industry battles. unless he changes his philosophy or a new owner replaces him, the royals will be stuck to the baseball netherworld.

Anonymous said...

it's very possible that the royals won't win a single game in the ENTIRE month of August. their remaining schedule - oakland, boston, nyy, minnesota.

the record is 23, set by the 1961 Phillies. the 1988 Orioles had a 21-game losing streak to open the season.

odds of losing 19 straight for a .317 winning team - 1386:1, yet the royals did it. a "congrats" for this "feat."

Anonymous said...

THE STREAK IS OVER AT 19! ROYALS 2-A'S !! YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ROYALS WIN ROYALS WIN ROYALS WIN!