Last Place Update

September 29, 2011 – This is the final Last Place Update for the Major League Baseball season.  As stated in the previous update, the 56-106 Houston Astros are MLB’s Worst Champions.  They are the only team to have more than 100 losses this season.  The 63-99 Minnesota Twins are in second and the 67-95 Seattle Mariners are in third.

The honorable mention was supposed to go to Minnesota, but they lost that, too, because their collapse didn’t cost them playoff spots.  Instead, honorable mentions go out to the 90-72 Boston Red Sox and the 89-73 Atlanta Braves for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  The Braves went 12-21 since August 23, losing their last five games. The Red Sox went 7-20 in September.  Both teams missed the playoffs by losing the last game of the season.  At least the Astros went 9-16 in September and 14-20 since August 23.

Houston’s 2011 record was a game behind the 2010 champion Pittsburgh Pirates record of 57-105.  It’s the worst finish since 2005, when the Kansas City Royals also went 56-106.

The Last Place Updates are a tongue-in-cheek look at the worst teams, but it's also a fact that it takes a special kind of athlete to earn the privilege of wearing a professional sports uniform, whether it's for a season or a long Hall of Fame career.  Only a tiny percent of people are good enough to wear the uniform of a professional sports team whether it's a world champion team or even the cellar dwellers.  Hats off to all the MLB teams for a good 2011 season!!

Congrats to the St. Louis Cardinals and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for doing what Boston and Atlanta couldn’t do.  Good luck to all the teams in the playoffs.

Note: The Last Place Updates for the NFL’s Kings of the Cellar begin next week.