The Good Phight · Jan 9, 2017
One Final Oddity in Howard’s Phillies Odyssey
The 1961 Phillies were an awful team. They scored the fewest runs in MLB, and allowed the second most. They would win just 47 games, and lose 107, 10.5 games worse than any other MLB team that year, and 17 games behind the second worst NL team. They compiled a .305 winning percentage, and in the 55 years since then only two teams have had a worse one: the 1962 Mets, and 2003 Tigers. The ‘61 Phils were very young — the closest thing to a grizzled veteran among the position players was 29 year old utility infielder Bobby Malkmus. Johnny Callison (22) and Tony Gonzalez (24) showed promise, but were still developing.