The 2006 St. Louis Cardinals: Worst World Series Team Ever?
I was just noticing that if the Cardinals win the Series this year, at 83-78 they would have the worst regular season record of any World Series champion in all of baseball history, not counting the drastically strike-shortened 1981 season and the drastically war-shortened 1918 season. And that includes several other years that were not so drastically shortened by strikes, and all of the 154 game seasons.
In fact, the Cardinals also have a worse record than 100 of the 101 World Series losers, with the sole exception of the 82-79 1973 New York Mets.
It would be ironic if this were the year the Cardinals won it, because this is certainly the weakest team of all the seven different Cardinals squads Tony LaRussa has taken into the postseason over the last decade.
What do you guys think? Are the Cardinals the worst team in World Series history? Who would the other candidates be?
**Note: photo of Al Reyes, former Cards reliever, has been replaced with photo of Anthony Reyes.
October 25th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
So you know, the Game 1 starter was Anthony Reyes, a rookie starter. Al Reyes, the guy you show in the picture above, was an excellent veteran set-up man for the Cardinals last year. He had off-season surgery and isn’t currently in the Cardinals organization.
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October 25th, 2006 at 4:08 pm
I was reading a story in Slate this morning about how the Cardinals are the worst World Series team ever. And I was thinking: would people be saying the same thing if my beloved Phillies made the World Series? I am forced to conclude they would.
From that Slate article:
Tony LaRussa no doubt deserves a lot of credit for milking so much success out of the lowly Cardinals. But even more credit has to go to the team’s pitching coach. I mean, seriously. Anthony Reyes? Jeff Suppan? Jeff Weaver!!!?
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October 25th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
Ack, thanks Laura! That’s what I get for blogging so late at night…
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October 30th, 2007 at 4:04 am
I disagree. The worst team to make it to the World Series was the 1973 New York Mets , although I will admit they didn’t play as badly as the Astros in 2005 or the Rockies in 2007.
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October 30th, 2007 at 4:41 am
What are you disagreeing with, Elmo? The very question I was asking? Because if you had actually read my post, you would have noticed that nowhere did I assert that the 2004 Cardinals actually are the worst team ever, and I actually mentioned the 1973 Mets.
I just raised the question.
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April 10th, 2008 at 1:24 am
one thing cardinals are the 2nd greatest team ever, worst record for series or not down right the best, in the out look no one cares about regular season records when you win the world series any way, go cards baby
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