Monday, July 06, 2009
Cincy Shellacking
Posted by Chris JaffeThe Reds lost 22-1 to the Phillies earlier tonight. That's the worst loss in franchise history. The only other times they lost by 19 or more runs:
July 26, 1892: Phillies 26, Reds 6 (I guess the Phillies like pounding the Reds!)
April 27, 1912: Pitsburgh 23, Reds 4 (maybe it's a Pennsylvania thing)
June 19, 1887: Cards 23, Reds 4 (actually, St Louis was called the Browns back then, but no matter)
September 19, 1896 Spiders 21, Reds 2 (the Spiders played in Clevleand. The winning pitcher was Cy Young).
Sepember 23, 1901 Dodgers 25, Reds 6
Since WWII, they lost two games by 18 runs (prior to tonight) - one in 1952 and the other in 1968.
And I'm sure no one cares, but Cincy's previous worst-ever loss on July 6 was a 13-1 drubbing at the hands of the Cards back in 1950.
As for the Phillies, it was their third-bigget margin of victory ever, behind a pair of Gilded Age games. On August 17, 1895, they drubbed Louisville, 29-4. On June 28, 1887, they smashed Indianoplis 24-0.
They had a trio of 20-run victories, all of which also occurred prior to William Jennings Bryan's rise to national prominence (the games were in 1884, 1892, and 1894 - the middle one was the previously mentioned whipping of Cincy).
Since 1900, Philly's biggest win had been (note tense) a June 11, 1985 clobbering of the Mets, 26-7.
Their biggest-ever July 6 win occurred in 1935 when they smacked around the Boston Braves, 15-2. Random trivia: that Braves team lost 115 games.
History instructor by day, statnerd by night, Chris Jaffe leads one of the most exciting double lives imaginable; with the exception of every other double life possible to imagine. Despite his lack of comic-book-hero-worthiness, Chris enjoys farting around with this stuff. His new book, Evaluating Baseball's Managers is available for order. Chris welcomes responses to his articles via e-mail.