Futilitywatch 09: The End Is Nigh

Futilitywatch '09 is a our semi-regular update on the Pittsburgh Pirates and their march toward their record 17th consecutive losing season.

Since they finished making moves a day before the trade deadline, the Pirates' have gone into free fall. After winning their first two games in the post-Jack Wilson/Freddy Sanchez era against the Washington Nationals, they dropped two to the Nats and were swept by the Giants and Cardinals, then dropped two of three more to the Rockies. That's ten losses in 11 games and if you throw in the five game losing streak that happened before Wilson and Sanchez were traded, that's 15 losses in 18 games. Futility! Thy name is Pittsburgh.

Since Our Last Update

Believe it or not, the whole "15 losses in 18 games" thing doesn't even aptly describe how bad the Pirates have been of late. They've been shut out five times in the last 18 games and in their more recent skid of 10 losses in 11 games, they've scored more than four runs just twice. Their bullpen post-John Grabow has been atrocious. At one point, the pen took the loss in four of five games, blowing leads of one, three, one, and failing to hold a tie game.

It's not actually all bad news for the Pirates; the prospects the team has been stockpiling in the past few years are doing quite well. Pedro Alvarez is on fire in Altoona, following up a .352/.406/.571 line in July with an even more ridiculous .432/.545/.682 line in August. Jose Tabata and Jeff Clement are both hitting the ball well in Triple-A, some of the pitchers acquired in the July deals have made very good minor league debuts for the Pirates, and the team has now signed all of their draft picks through the first 11 rounds, despite taking several high school pitchers that were thought to be "tough signs" due to college commitments.

Of course, as bullish as I might be on the future of the Pirates, this column is called "Futilitywatch" for a reason. With their recent span of awful play, the Pirates stand just fourteen losses away from an unprecedented 17th consecutive losing season.

A Little Bit of History

I thought I'd have more time to delve into the history of futility here, but with the Pirates' terrible play I realize I've got maybe one or two more weeks left. This week, let's look at the Pirates' futility compared with great losing team losing streaks in other sports. Since the Pirates' streak began in 1993, the team has gone 1150-1487. That's a winning percentage of 0.436. We've already talked about the team who's record the Pirates are going to be break, the terrible Philies teams of the 30s and 40s, but how does it compare to other sports?

The most consecutive losing seasons by an NFL team is 14; a dubious record set by the pre-Tony Dungy Tampa Bay Buccaneers. (Another word for pirate! Symmetry!) Between 1983 and 1996, the Bucs were a putrid 64-159; a 0.287 winning percentage. It's really, really hard to put that many losing seasons together in a league that plays so few games. Put it this way; if the MLB season were as long as the NFL season, the Pirates would've finished 9-7 this year and they would've made the playoffs and maybe even earned a bye with their 11-5 record in 2002, and they would've finished .500 on six other occasions.

The futility record in both the NBA and NHL is 15 seasons. The Kings' franchise (starting in Kansas City) holds the NBA record by going 455-775 between 1983 and 1998 (.370 winning percentage) while the Vancouver Canucks went 438-637-61 between 1976 and 1991. That's a points percentage of 0.439, but they only won about 41% of the games they bothered to find a winner in. If the MLB season were the same length as the current NBA or NHL seasons (82 games), the Pirates' losing streak would've been halted in its tracks in 1999, when they were 41-41. They also had spurts of above .500 play over similar lengths in 1997 (they were 47-45) and in 2003 when they closed the season out by splitting their last 100 games right down the middle with 50 wins and 50 losses.

If it's comforting to Pirate fans, immediately after ending their 14-season streak, the Buccaneers went on to make the playoffs five times in six years and that run culminated in a Super Bowl win. The Canucks actually made the playoffs nine times during their 15-season losing streak and they made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Final in 1982, but after ending their losing streak they made the playoffs four straight years, winning at least one playoff round three times, and coming within a Mark Messier of a Stanley Cup in 1994. And the Kings made the playoffs in eight straight years following their losing streak and if not for a suspiciously officiated Game 7 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals, they might have a banner of their own to hang up in Sacramento. Even the Phillies, the team who's record they're on the verge of breaking, made a World Series in 1950, just one year after their own 16-season losing streak ended

It's really the unique nature of baseball that's contributed to the Pirates' streak, though. Despite having a higher winning percentage during their losing streak than any of their counterparts in futility, the long baseball season makes it much more difficult for a team to achieve a "fluke" winning season. On top of that, the streaks by the Canucks and Kings are lessened by the fact that they made the playoffs during their losing streaks. Because baseball only lets eight teams into the playoffs each year, it's nearly impossible for a team with a losing record to back into the playoffs. I'm not making excuses for the Pirates here, but it's only logical that a baseball team would hold this sort of record.

The Numbers

Pirates' record: 46-68 (please note how little the first number has budged since I last ran an update two weeks ago)
Record required to finish .500: 35-13 (yikes)
1949 Phillies through 114 games: 57-57