In Baseball, what's the most games a teams been behind..?

Question

Exactly, what's the most games behind has a teem been from their respective league leader to end the season?

10 Points!

Answer 1

If you mean a last place team behind the first place team,i'm not exactly sure,but in 1998 the last place Marlins finished 52 games behind the first place Braves,so i'm sure thats close.

Answer 2

The 1899 Spiders did indeed finish that far back.  But that team had basically had all of its best players traded away on purpose and didn't even play home games for most of the season.  So I think the real search should begin in 1901 when both the National League and the American League existed and the World Series was played.

If we only look at teams during the world series era, the most games back are as follows:

National League

1906 Boston Braves - 66.5 games behind the Chicago Cubs

1909 Boston Braves - 65.5 games behind the Pittsburgh Pirates

1906 St. Louis Cardinals - 63 games behind the Chicago Cubs

1942 Philadelphia Phillies - 62.5 games behind the St. Louis Cardinals

1935 Boston Braves - 61.5 games behind the Chicago Cubs

American League

1939 St. Louis Browns (would later become the Baltimore Orioles) - 64.5 games behind the New York Yankees

1932 Boston RedSox - 64 games behind the Washington Senators

1954 Philadelphia A's - 60 games behind the Cleveland Indians.

As you can see, all of these happened well before divisional play and expansion came to baseball.  Here are the teams that have finished the furthest out of first since the adoption of divisional play in 1969.

American League

1998 Tampa Bay Devil Rays - 51 games behind the New York Yankees

2002 Tampa Bay Devil Rays - 48 games behind the New York Yankees

2003 Detroit Tigers - 47 games behind the Minnesota Twins

1995 Minnesota Twins - 44 games behind the Cleveland Indians (season shortened to 144 games because of the 1994 strike)

National League

1998 Florida Marlins - 52 games behind the Atlanta Braves (a real shame considering the Marlins were the defending World Series champions)

1986 Pittsburgh Pirates - 44 games behind the New York Mets

2004 Arizona Diamondbacks - 42 games behind the LA Dodgers

2002 Milwaukee Brewers - 41 games behind the St. Louis Cardinals

Most of these large deficits were caused because the team that won the divisions was extremely good.  For instance, the 1998 Yankees, 1906 Cubs and 1954 Indians all won over 110 games.

Some teams were just really bad.  1998 Marlins, 1932 RedSox, 1942 Phillies are considered some of the worst teams of all time.

Hope this gives you what you need.

Answer 3

My guess would be the Tigers (don't feel like doing the research tough.)

They finished 2003 with a 43-119 record and 47 games back. However, the division leader only won 90 games.  

Answer 4

The 1962 Mets finished 60.5 games behind.  Since they had the worst record ever, that could be it.

Answer 5

back in 1899 the Cleveland Spiders finished with a record of 20-134. Which put them 84 games out of first place.

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/yearly/y...