The Tabbies Mike Maroth pitched six solid innings yesterday against Ted Lilly and the A's. He entered the sixth having given up just four hits and one walk against two strikeouts. His one walk scored on a triple by Eric Byrnes in the third, but Shane Halter got that run back with a home run in the bottom of the inning. Aside from that Maroth did not have more than one baserunner an inning through the first six.

Then came the seventh. He left with one out in a 1-1 tie ballgame. Unfortunately, he also left the bases loaded and when Miguel Tejada doubled off of reliever Steve Sparks, he lost his eighth straight game against not even one victory. Meanwhile his Tigers fell to 8-28 for a .222 won-loss percentage. They are 14.5 games out of first in the AL Central.

The Tigers have been historically bad yet far. Their .222 winning percentage is the worst since the infamous 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who had been gutting by an oligarchy National League, ended the season as a traveling team, and were one of the teams excised when the NL "contracted" from twelve to the sacrosanct eight clubs.

Here are the all-time major-league teams with a winning percentage worse than the 2003 Tigers, worst to "best":

You'll notice that only three of those teams still exist: the 1897 St. Louis Browns are now the Cardinals, The 1890 Pittsburgh Alleghenys are now the Pirates (in their first year), the 1883 Philadelphia Quakers are now the Phillies (in their first year). Note also that the 1882 Worcester franchise was rescinded and given to the Phils in an attempt to shore up NL power after the formation of the rival American Association. Also, the 1876 Cincinnati Reds have no relation to today's version (though the media claims they are the oldest franchise); the Reds came from the selfsame AA, jumping to the NL in 1890, two years before the leagues merged.

In the "modern" era, i.e., since 1900, the worst record in the majors is held by the 1916 Philadelphia A's, two years removed from the World Series, 36-117, .235. Since expansion, the 1962 inaugural-year Mets hold the distinction of worst record 40-120, .250.

So, yeah, the Tigers are bad and odds are they will end up being considered one of the worst teams of all time, though they will undoubtedly improve their record as the season unfolds. But Mike Maroth has a chance at all-time badness. His 0-8 record projects to 0-36. Though I doubt he can keep it up for a whole season, he would be the first to lose that many against no victories.

No one has lost thirty games since The Spiders' Jim Hughey in 1899. The last to lose 36 in a season were Wild Bill Hutchison and George Cobb in 1892. Hutchison was actually 36-36 in 75 games and 70 starts.

Here is the all-time list of 30-game losers:

Note that none of the thirty-game losers had zero in the victory column. The worst percentage is Hughey's at .118. Here are the worst all-time losers with no wins:

Maroth is not pitching that badly-his 5.27 ERA belies a 1.13 WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched). It seems unlikely that he will go the entire season without a win. However, he could definitely break the twenty-game mark in the loss column.

The last man to lose twenty was Brian Kingman then of the Billy Ball A's, who now wears the title as a mark of distinction. It seemed for years that team's would go out of their way to ensure that none of their pitchers collected a score of losses.

What's odd about that is that Hall-of-Famer Phil Niekro fell just two losses short of 20 for 1980 (15-19 with a 3.63 ERA). Niekro had lost 20 games and won 21 in 1979 and finished sixth in the Cy Young vote. He had lost 20 in 1977 (16-20) and 18 in '78 (19-18, also 6th in the Cy Young). Over that span Niekro started between 38 and 44 games a year, a bit more than today.

In the Seventies, pitchers collected 20 losses a total of 14 times and most of those pitchers were stars if not successful starters:

As a matter of fact 20-game losers seemed to evaporate overnight. As rotations grew very quickly to four men in the early 1900s, the number shrank quickly. But between the Twenties and Seventies their number held relatively steady:

Twenty-game losers were usually on poor clubs, but note that in the Seventies their teams' average record was better than it had been since the 1890s when 20-game losers were plentiful.

So when and how did losing 20 become such an embarrassment?

To be continued...