Gene Brabender baseball card
Gene Brabender with the 1969 Seattle Pilots
There was palpable frustration during the late innings at American Family Field on Sunday afternoon as what remained of the day’s 31,363 fans began to realize they were about to see some unwanted history.
The Brewers rallied in the ninth to bring the go-ahead run to the plate but still lost 8-6 to the lowly Athletics. The A’s had entered the weekend at 14-50 on the season but took all three games in Milwaukee. They came into the series with a 6.57 earned run average as a team but held the Brewers to just nine runs across three games.
Even after Sunday’s win, Oakland’s fifth in a row, the A’s still have a .254 winning percentage on the season. That’s on pace to be the American League’s worst since 1916, when the then-Philadelphia Athletics went 36-117 and finished 54 1/2 games back of the pennant-winning Red Sox. Due to their low payroll and ongoing effort to move to Las Vegas this A’s team is more often compared to the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, one of the more dubious franchises in MLB history.
The Brewers never played the 1899 Spiders or the 1916 A’s, of course, but across 50-plus years of franchise history they have had a few stretches where they struggled against some pretty bad teams. Before the A’s came to town over the weekend, these were the two worst teams ever to complete a sweep against the Crew:
The 1970 White Sox
The Brewers had a rough season in their first year in Milwaukee but they could take some comfort in knowing that one of their competitors was significantly worse: The Brewers finished tied for fourth in the AL West that season at 65-97, and the White Sox were nine games behind them at 56-106. They lost more games than any other team in that franchise’s 123-year history.
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They also, however, beat the Brewers a few times that season. On August 5 and 6 of that year they welcomed the Crew to Chicago for a quick midweek set and made quick work of them, winning the two games by a 9-3 and 7-3 score in a combined four hours and 42 minutes. The Brewers never led in either contest and pitcher Gene Brabender appeared in both of them: He was knocked out of a start early in the Wednesday game, then returned to mop up the final two innings on Thursday.
The second win actually temporarily moved Chicago ahead of the Brewers in the standings, as they were 41-71 as compared to Milwaukee’s 40-71. The games between these two non-contenders were not a big draw, however, attracting just over 9,000 fans combined.
The 1972 Rangers
The Brewers’ struggles continued into their third season in Milwaukee as they went 65-91 and finished in last in the American League East in 1972, but once again they were not their league’s worst team: That dubious distinction fell to the new Texas Rangers, recently relocated from Washington. Texas’ first-ever American League team only played 154 games that season but lost 100 of them, becoming the first AL team to play in fewer than 160 games but still lose 100 since 1956.
For one week in June, however, one of baseball’s worst teams easily handled the Brewers. The Rangers welcomed the Brewers into town for a Monday-Wednesday series and won all three by a combined score of 18-2. The Brewers led just one time across the three games: In the Wednesday night series finale they scored a single run in the top of the fourth to take a 1-0 lead, then gave up six in the bottom half. Milwaukee collected just ten hits across the three games.
The 2020 Pirates
While we’ll never know for sure exactly how the 2020 Pirates would have finished if they’d played a full 162-game schedule, that year’s 60-game sample paints a pretty bleak picture of what might have been. They went 4-17 in their first 21 games on their way to a 19-41 finish, coming up 15 games short in the NL Central despite a season that lasted just a little more than two months.
After that 4-17 start, however, they hosted the Brewers and won all three games. Milwaukee held a lead in two of the three contests, taking a 1-0 advantage in the second inning of the first game and a 4-2 lead in the sixth inning of the third one, but Brewers relievers gave up 14 runs in 7 2/3 innings in the series and sealed the team’s fate. That Pirates team went 5-5 against the Brewers and 14-36 against everyone else.
