Houston Astros: Three reasons why a decade of 100’s was worth it

Reason #1: Worst to First

Bad News Teams

2011: 56-106

2012: 55-107

2013: 51-111

When the team was losing badly, you heard the jokes of the Disastros, Lastros, A**tros, and more. What were we known for back then? Well, we had a 0.0 rating on the Nielsen ratings one time, we had a bunch of names that we didn’t know about except for Altuve. Plus, we had baseball’s version of the Butt Fumble (aka. Butt Slide).

It seemed like we were in a period where we were setting history for the wrong reasons. Fortunately, I was able to dig up some information thanks to the Houston Chronicle back in 2013, after we had just completed our worst season ever. There were 10 teams that went through this painful process.

They were:

#1 1910-1912 St. Louis Browns

• 1910: 47-107
• 1911: 45-107
• 1912: 53-101

#2 1919-1921 Philadelphia A’s

• 1919: 36-104
• 1920: 48-106
• 1921: 53-100

#3 1922-1924 Boston Braves

• 1922: 53-100
• 1923: 54-100
• 1924: 53-100

#4 1925-1927 Boston Red Sox

• 1925: 47-105
• 1926: 46-107
• 1927: 51-103

#5 1938-1942 Philadelphia Phillies

• 1938: 45-105
• 1939: 45-106
• 1940: 50-103
• 1941: 43-111
• 1942: 42-109

#6 1952-1954 Pittsburgh Pirates

• 1952: 42-112
• 1953: 50-104
• 1954: 53-101

#7 1961-1964 Washington Senators

• 1961: 61-100
• 1962: 60-101
• 1963 : 56-106
• 1964: 64-100

#8 1962-1964 New York Mets

• 1962: 40-120
• 1963: 51-111
• 1964: 53-109
• 1965: 50-112

#9 1977-1979 Toronto Blue Jays

• 1977: 54-107
• 1978: 59-102
• 1979: 53-109

#10 2004-2006 Kansas City Royals

• 2004: 58-104
• 2005: 56-106
• 2006 62-100

I was totally caught off guard by the fact that three teams actually went through four or five straight 100-loss seasons. But when I look back in those times, it made sense as to why. The Phillies didn’t have the finances to compete with the Cardinals, Cubs, and Giants back in those days while both the Senators and Mets were expansion teams, as was the case with the Blue Jays too. Of course, it took the Mets until 1969 to win the World Series while the Senators (now the Texas Rangers) have yet to win it all.

The St. Louis Browns were never known for being anything but second to the Cardinals, which included a 1944 World Series loss to them. The Philadelphia A’s and Red Sox would go through their struggles after winning titles once upon a time. The Braves posted two winnings seasons from 1917 to 1932 after their miraculous 1914 World Series title while the Pirates were building a championship-caliber team for 1960 in their three-year misfortune with former Dodger general manager Branch Rickey at the helm. As for the Royals, cheap ownership prevented them from being a threat to their AL Central counterparts.

So the Houston Astros are a part of this famous (or infamous) list of teams to have three 100-loss seasons in a row. But that was at the beginning of the decade. The 2014-2016 years were steppingstones to what was the beginning of a new era in Houston Astros baseball.