Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
— "Charlie 'Victory'" Faustus referring to the specter of Helen of LaTroy in Christopher Marlowe's "The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus"

Where are our castles now, where are our towers?
— Sir Thomas "Don't Call Me Jo-Jo" More on the death of Queen Elizabeth.

Great towers take time to construct.
—"Billy" Herman Melville

The way Josh Towers has started this season couldn't be more different from how he ended the 2005 season.

On September 30, he threw a complete-game, 10-1 victory over the Royals scattering nine hits and striking out six while walking none. This capped off his second straight month with a 3-2 record and an ERA under 2.50.

Things went so well that the Jays gave Towers a two-year, $5.2 M contract as part of their "We're ready to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox" campaign this past winter.

Towers came out of spring training as the number two pitcher in the rotation. Everything sounds good, right?

His first outing, he was given a four-run lead over the Twins, but he gave up a four-run fourth, which included a ball off his foot, and then a leadoff homer to Shannon Stewart to fall behind 5-4. The Blue Jays eventually lost 13-4. He owned a 7.71 ERA, which now looks good.

Towers is now a perfect 0-7 in seven starts with a 10.09 ERA and has pitched as much as six innings just once. He has twice failed to get through the third inning. Opponents are batting .380 against him. Let me repeat, Three-eighty! His WHIP is 2.18. He projects to 0-35 with 273 hits allowed in 152 innings.

And yet the Blue Jays are 17-15 and just three games behind the Sox in the AL East. They were 80-82 last year, so one could argue that their push last winter, Towers contact notwithstanding, has been a success. Remove Towers' 0-7 record and the Jays are 17-8, a half-game ahead of the Sox.

This made me wonder what was the worst record recorded on a winning team. Here are the pitchers with at least twenty losses and a losing record for a winning team:

But Towers current pace blows away Brian Kingman's 8-20 twenty-six years ago. As a matter of fact, I find it difficult to put it in any sort of historical perspective.

Here are all the pitchers who finished winless with at least seven losses with their career totals. You'll note that many of them are relievers:

Again 0-35 would destroy Terry Felton's 0-13 1982 season. Maybe looking at the most losses in a season all time would be more illustrative of how bad Towers is doing:

So no one has hit 35 losses since 1897 when baseball was still experimenting with three-man rotations. Here are the most losses since 1900:

Of course, the one problem in this analysis is that the Blue Jays will never let Towers get close to 35 losses. One would have to expect that if he continues to under-perform, he will be removed from the rotation before the All-Star break. Felton's 0-13 record, however, is in reach given the money the Jays are paying him and will be paying him through next season. That's an awful lot of money to pay to guy especially when he was coming off a career year. Consider as well that Towers owned a 7-8 record 4.60 ERA at the end of July 2005, which was about his career average. His career year was based on his performance in his last 12 starts (6-4, 2.47 ERA).

So maybe Towers won't make history, but maybe the Jays should have reconsidered before giving him a two-year contract based solely on a two-month performance.