Hey...could be worse.

Discuss all things Cardinals Baseball
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TheoSqua
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Re: Hey...could be worse.

Post by TheoSqua »

It's amazing that we have the OPS+ stats for a team from 110 years ago right on our fingertips.

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The Third Man
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Re: Hey...could be worse.

Post by The Third Man »

TheoSqua wrote:It's amazing that we have the OPS+ stats for a team from 110 years ago right on our fingertips.
Baseball has spoiled me as far as statistics go. I can't even find game logs of NFL player seasons from the late 1980s (I wanted to see what Eric Dickerson's 2,100 yard season looked like). Lots of basketball statistics from the 60s and 70s weren't kept very thoroughly, etc.

MrSaigon

Re: Hey...could be worse.

Post by MrSaigon »

I think the Cleveland Spiders season went to hell when Scruffy McAdoo, Spanky McGillicutty and Slappy Tarkington all got consumption.

danh35
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Re: Hey...could be worse.

Post by danh35 »

Am I reading this correctly? They had 42 home games and 112 away games?

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Jmodene
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Re: Hey...could be worse.

Post by Jmodene »

Correct - the team got so bad that they had to give up playing home games. IIRC, their last 50 or so games were on the road.

You may be aware, of course, that the reason they were so bad is that the guys who owned them also owned the Cardinals - and transferred all the good Cleveland players to St. Louis - guys like Jesse Burkett, Bobby Wallace, and some pitcher named Cy Young.

The feeling was that a good team in St. Louis would draw more than a good team in Cleveland.

The Cards won 80-something games and finished 3rd or 4th, IIRC - but Cleveland totally tanked; in fact, they still had one or two guys who started off with decent seasons and they were promptly sent to St. Louis.

After the 1899 season, the Indians were phased out of the NL, along with Louisville, Washington, and Baltimore, making the Cardinals the only surviving team from the AA/NL merger of 1892 to survive the 1900 contraction by the NL.

Of course, the AL promptly put teams in Baltimore and Washington, and then a couple of years later moved the Baltimore team to New York, where they became the Highlanders - later known as the Yankees. They also had a team in Milwaukee in 1900 - the original Milwaukee Brewers - and they were moved to St. Louis in 1901 to become the "new" St. Louis Browns (the original Browns, of course, having evolved into the Cardinals).

At that point, the AL was raiding players away from NL teams, and the Cards lost Cy Young to the Red Sox, and Wallace to the Browns. John McGraw, who had been our third baseman in 1900, went to Baltimore but didn't get along with AL president Ban Johnson, so he went to New York in 1902 and took over the Yankees.

The AL raid affected the Cards so badly that they promptly became a perennial second-division team, achieving some success when Miller Huggins managed them in the early 1910's (they finished third in 1914, I think) but falling back down when Huggins left the Cards to join the Yankees, said move having to do with a friend of his in Cincinnati being shut out of an attempt to buy the team.

The Cards stayed in the second division until 1926, when they finally won their first pennant.

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Cole Burns
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Re: Hey...could be worse.

Post by Cole Burns »

Jmodene wrote:Correct - the team got so bad that they had to give up playing home games. IIRC, their last 50 or so games were on the road.

You may be aware, of course, that the reason they were so bad is that the guys who owned them also owned the Cardinals - and transferred all the good Cleveland players to St. Louis - guys like Jesse Burkett, Bobby Wallace, and some pitcher named Cy Young.

The feeling was that a good team in St. Louis would draw more than a good team in Cleveland.

The Cards won 80-something games and finished 3rd or 4th, IIRC - but Cleveland totally tanked; in fact, they still had one or two guys who started off with decent seasons and they were promptly sent to St. Louis.

After the 1899 season, the Indians were phased out of the NL, along with Louisville, Washington, and Baltimore, making the Cardinals the only surviving team from the AA/NL merger of 1892 to survive the 1900 contraction by the NL.

Of course, the AL promptly put teams in Baltimore and Washington, and then a couple of years later moved the Baltimore team to New York, where they became the Highlanders - later known as the Yankees. They also had a team in Milwaukee in 1900 - the original Milwaukee Brewers - and they were moved to St. Louis in 1901 to become the "new" St. Louis Browns (the original Browns, of course, having evolved into the Cardinals).

At that point, the AL was raiding players away from NL teams, and the Cards lost Cy Young to the Red Sox, and Wallace to the Browns. John McGraw, who had been our third baseman in 1900, went to Baltimore but didn't get along with AL president Ban Johnson, so he went to New York in 1902 and took over the Yankees.

The AL raid affected the Cards so badly that they promptly became a perennial second-division team, achieving some success when Miller Huggins managed them in the early 1910's (they finished third in 1914, I think) but falling back down when Huggins left the Cards to join the Yankees, said move having to do with a friend of his in Cincinnati being shut out of an attempt to buy the team.

The Cards stayed in the second division until 1926, when they finally won their first pennant.
...or so you've heard...

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TheoSqua
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Re: Hey...could be worse.

Post by TheoSqua »

Cole Burns wrote: ...or so you've heard...
He could be an epic time traveler of awesomeness.

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cardsfansince82
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Re: Hey...could be worse.

Post by cardsfansince82 »

What kind of fan doesn't know what happened in the 1800's?

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Jmodene
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Re: Hey...could be worse.

Post by Jmodene »

It's what I do...

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