Superlatives and Inferlatives
The Washington Nationals, coming into this afternoon’s game, have given up the most runs in MLB but have also scored the most runs in MLB. This doesn’t happen a lot, nor do the other combinations of tops and bottoms in runs scored and runs allowed. Here are the relevant teams, with the GNats included through last night:
Best Pitching, Best Batting
| Season | Team | RS | RA | Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | LAN | 847 | 513 | 111-51-0 |
| 2001 | SEA | 927 | 627 | 116-46-0 |
| 1906 | CHN | 712 | 381 | 115-36-3 |
| 1902 | PIT | 780 | 439 | 102-36-3 |
| 1898 | BSN | 872 | 614 | 102-47-3 |
Best Pitching, Worst Batting
| Season | Team | RS | RA | Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | LAN | 574 | 556 | 85-77-0 |
| 1989 | LAN | 554 | 536 | 77-83-0 |
| 1937 | BSN | 579 | 556 | 79-73-0 |
| 1927 | BRO | 541 | 619 | 65-88-1 |
| 1913 | CHA | 488 | 498 | 78-74-1 |
Worst Pitching, Best Batting
| Season | Team | RS | RA | Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | WAS | 284 | 301 | 25-27-0 |
| 2008 | TEX | 901 | 967 | 79-83-0 |
| 1991 | TEX | 829 | 814 | 85-77-0 |
| 1986 | CLE | 831 | 841 | 84-78-1 |
| 1970 | SFN | 831 | 826 | 86-76-0 |
| 1968 | CIN | 690 | 673 | 83-79-1 |
| 1933 | PHA | 875 | 853 | 79-72-1 |
Worst Pitching, Worst Batting
| Season | Team | RS | RA | Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 | BAL | 546 | 786 | 53-107-0 |
| 1974 | SDN | 541 | 830 | 60-102-0 |
| 1952 | PIT | 515 | 793 | 42-112-1 |
| 1949 | WS1 | 584 | 868 | 50-104-0 |
| 1932 | BOS | 566 | 915 | 43-111-0 |
| 1916 | PHA | 447 | 776 | 36-117-1 |
| 1908 | SLN | 372 | 626 | 49-105-0 |
| 1899 | NY1 | 741 | 868 | 62-88-2 |
| 1898 | SLN | 571 | 929 | 39-111-4 |
Observations:
- I’m a little surprised Colorado never made the Worst Pitching, Best Batting List. If we looked at home games alone, I bet they’d be there routinely. But half their games are on the road, and to be able to pitch in Coors Field at all, the pitchers have to be so good that their road performance keeps them from the bottom. (This is a guess. If this were Rockies Journal, I’d explore it.)
- Some of the best and worst teams of all time are on the top and bottom tables, as you’d expect
- You’ll never have a great team no matter how well you pitch if you can’t hit, and vice versa, but the poor pitching teams that score a lot of runs are usually on the good side of 0.500, while great pitching teams that can’t score are generally below 0.500. But the only other team in the Nationals’ boat in the last 35 years also finished under 0.500. So maybe the game has changed.
- We’re not even quite one-third of the way through the season, and the Nationals are only 3 runs scored ahead of the Braves, though they’re a healthy 23 runs allowed ahead of the penultimate Orioles.
- The Braves, as I just said, are only 3 runs out of gaining the lead in Runs Scored and have given up only 13 more than the MLB-stingiest Brewers. So a spot on that top chart is far from out of the question, and the records in that top chart are mouthwatering. Of course, the Braves’ current win percentage extrapolation translates to 112 wins, which is not my predicted 162 but is only one digit off.
- English has no Latinate word that is an antonym of “Superlative.” That’s a little weird, and is based on the fact that a superlative can be superlatively bad: “worst” is a superlative. I did not coin “inferlative,” as it appears on at least one Internet website as a potential word nobody uses. But really, nobody uses it (the only time i could find it used was a 1990 review of an EP record that I suspect even ububba has never heard of) so I’m claiming it, though I admit Claude gave me a set of choices and it’s the one I picked. And the fact that inferlative has a connotation of Hell-like fits well with anyone who was a fan of the 1952 Pirates or the 1988 Orioles.
Commercials
I know everyone gets different commercials on these broadcasts, but I suspect everyone gets that ad for JBL earbuds. I am not a violent person, but I want to punch that guy in the face. I probably won’t, partly because I’m not sure if he exists. But if I ever meet the person who wrote “moonbeams ice cream taking off your blue jeans” in a bar, I’m definitely going to yell at them. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can count yourself lucky.
The Game
A fairly rare Saturday day game in Atlanta. My memory of growing up in Atlanta is that it poured every afternoon in summer for about an hour, so 4:00 is an odd time to start a game. Sure enough, rain delay at 4:35 after an inning-and-a-half. 15 minutes of real rain and a startup again around 5:10. tfloyd and friends staying dry?
Jake Irvin against Sherlocks. Holmes was very sharp in his two innings of work before the rain but quickly loaded the bases with no outs in the third. A comebacker to the mound was turned into a double play with a nifty snare by new Folk Hero™ Chadwick Trump digging out a low throw from Holmes to pivot the twin killing.
Realizing that this “getting men on base” thing wasn’t helping them score, a solo homer in the 4th made it 1-0. Another solo homer in the 5th made it 2-0. Sherlocks was done, but he struck out 10 around those two homers. Drake Dodd replaced him and did fine: three scoreless innings. Tyler Kinley worked the 9th after a resurgent performance last night in the 11th. No problems.
I would love to say something about what was going on in the bottom of innings, but through 5 Jake Irvin had yielded nary a hit. Then something happened… Irvin got hurt and had to leave. He was replaced by Brad Lord, who worked a nice 3 innings, paralleling Dodd.
Seventh inning. Time to get to work. Michael Harris II led off with a single. Matt Olson, fighting a mild slump, hit a tailor-made double play that Jorbit Vivas dropped before he could shovel it to 2nd and, after a review, Harris was safe at 2nd. After Albies popped out, Dominic Smith flew out and it was up to the questionably resurgent Austin Riley. With a strikeout, the questions persist.
RAJ struck out for the fourth time to end the 8th inning. I’m starting to think there could have been a wee too much celebration last night.
Richard Lovelady, yesterday’s opener, came in at the bottom on the 9th as today’s closer.
This was just about the perfect two outcome game. 26 strikeouts, eight total hits and two solo homers for the only runs. The good news: a refreshed bullpen for the rubber game tomorrow afternoon.
I don’t get the JBL earbuds ads, happily, but I know how awful these earworms can be. I still have that “Subaru, we’re going places in the South” jingle from the 1980s TBS broadcasts rattling around my cranium.
Aren’t the 4:00 Saturday start times because Fox has paid up for an exclusive Saturday evening national game? So everybody else has to tie themselves into knots because goodness knows there’s not enough money in the owners’ and players’ pockets otherwise.
You’re right that those “scattered afternoon showers” that are in the forecast most every summer day in ATL tend to center around 4:00. Yesterday we had just settled into our seats about 3:30 when they rolled the tarp out, just before a brief shower. It was so brief that the game actually started right on time. Then an hour later the one that caused the delay hit. It rained very hard for a few minutes, but the sun was back out in about 15 minutes. Fortunately we were sitting near the stairs and made it to the covered concourse without getting wet both times. It rained again after the game just as we got into our car in the parking lot. So we were pretty lucky all in all (other than the outcome of the game itself, of course).
Despite the rain, I like the 4:00 start. There is something different and fun about daylight baseball. But in ATL it’s so hot that sitting in the sun is usually miserable, and there is very little shade for a 1:00 start. The few seats in the higher rows of the field section under the overhangs give shade (and cover from rain) but in my opinion the view is not good. But in a 4:00 start, seats on the first base side work great. The sun is at your back at the start and soon drops behind the stands. We were in shade for most of the game yesterday. Seats on the third base side, though, stare right at the sun for a couple of hours.
I hope this is not the start of a team slump but they looked baaaaaaad yesterday at the plate. Maybe they were just overconfidant after the walk-off Friday. There’s no way Jake Irvin, Brad Lord, and Richard Lovelady should be that dominant….. Heck, we gave up on Richard Lovelady a few years ago.
Dylan Dodd is certainly much better then Aaron Bummer.
Can you imagine how good the Braves can be if Schwellenbach and/or Waldrep and/or Ritchie come back and Holmes and Perez go to the bullpen? With Baldwin back, the Braves will be unstoppable.
I bet we don’t get healthy and effective enough at one time that we truly have too many options. Schwellenbach seems pretty far away, Waldrep is still a rookie (I think), and AJSS has his own issues with effectiveness pre-injury. Ritchie has not pitched well in the big leagues yet. I’m just glad we have a Holmes who’s actually incredibly effective
Your analysis of the teams that lead (and trail) the league in runs scored and in runs against caused me to look at the great Braves run of the 1990’s. I had not realized until I looked it up that the Braves led all of MLB in runs/against each season from 1992-2002, with the exception of the great Mariners team in 2001, and then the Braves were second. Interestingly, though, they never came very close to leading MLB in runs scored, even when they won over 100 games/year in the late 90’s. Part of that was the imbalance due to the AL having the DH; AL teams scored a good many more runs than NL teams. But the Braves never led their own league in runs scored during that period. They did finally lead the league in runs scored in 2003, but by then the pitching was not as good and they finished 8th in runs/against.
I was going to make a comment about the split DH rules (1974-2019,2021), but that was a huge factor.as to why the only split-league best-best or worst-worst teams were the 2001 Mariners, the 1988 Orioles and the 1974 Padres, who were still basically an expansion team at that point, having never won 65 games. It also explains why, during that period, the best batting-worst pitching teams were all in the AL and the opposite were in the NL. Another reason it’s still hard to do it is 30 teams — you have a lot more teams to beat now that you did in 1922.
That 1989 Dodgers team that had the best pitching and worst hitting was just lights out but phew they couldn’t score. Orel Hershiser had a 2.31 ERA but led the league in losses, going 15-15. John Shelby put up one of the worst offensive seasons by a regular of all time with a .466 OPS and Alfredo Griffin was their leadoff hitter with a .287 OBP.
And it’s been said that the previous year’s Dodgers, the 1988 World Champions, were one of the worst offensive teams in history to win a title. They also won the WS w/o its NL MVP (save one swing, of course).
JonF… Oh, that’s some obscure indie rock circa 1990… I supposed I don’t miss bands with names like New Fast Automatic Daffodils… although Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine still makes me laugh (Jimmy Carter or Sgt. Carter?)
I did notice a mention of the Soup Dragons from the Glasgow area. A colleague of mine once interviewed them, then walked into my office with the tape of the conversation, played the singer’s first answer & we both realized that the interview was just never going to get transcribed. The Scottish singer was speaking English, but we couldn’t understand a word he said.
Hard not to get a chuckle out of this, yet another self-flagellating treatise from a Mets fan:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/24/opinion/mets-fans-baseball-lose.html
Second inning and already three strikeouts looking. The magic is over, we may not score today either.
Of course, the Braves get a leadoff double and do not score but the gNats get a lead off double and immediately score. I guess we miss Baldwin.
The best thing that could happen would be for the skies to open up before the end of the fifth and to punt the rest of this game for two months. This offense has gone into multi-game hibernation mode.
(Edit: Too late.)
It’s true the offense has looked pretty anemic in this series. They did just score 26 in the last three games in Miami, so it’s not exactly an extended slump.
What is so encouraging to me is the pitching this deep into the season. Sale and Elder have been excellent all year. Strider is looking better than he did all last year., and Grant Holmes and Martin Perez continue to be perfectly adequate 4th and 5th starters. The back end of the pen is the best in years, and Didi is turning out to be a real gem.
Coming out of Spring Training, with the many injuries, I assumed the pitching would be the weak spot, and that if the team would compete for the postseason it would take an overpowering offense. I don’t know if the pitchers can keep up this pace, but I like the chances.
It’s Memorial Day — I think I’ve seen enough. The Braves have a big problem with Austin Riley.
Long term? Sure. But short term? He’s on a 2 WAR pace this year even if he doesn’t improve at all. Let that sink in. He’s still well above replacement even as poorly as he has hit relative to the standards he’s being paid for.
Shame the rain ended Didi’s outing. Reylo is in; he’s thrown several fastballs at 96-97 mph. He hasn’t done that all year, has he?
It’s true the offense has looked pretty anemic in this series. They did just score 26 in the last three games in Miami, so it’s not exactly an extended slump.
What is so encouraging to me is the pitching this deep into the season. Sale and Elder have been excellent all year. Strider is looking better than he did all last year., and Grant Holmes and Martin Perez continue to be perfectly adequate 4th and 5th starters. The back end of the pen is the best in years, and Didi is turning out to be a real gem.
Coming out of Spring Training, with the many injuries, I assumed the pitching would be the weak spot, and that if the team would compete for the postseason it would take an overpowering offense. I don’t know if the pitchers can keep up this pace, but I like the chances.
Recap coming in the morning.
Recapped.