The Pittsburgh Pirates, who, as you may recall, went 57-105 this season, have fired manager John Russell.
Not since the mid-1950s have the Pirates been as bad as they were under Russell, who had records of 67-95 in 2008, 62-99 in 2009 and 57-105 this season. Only the 1952 Pirates, who went 42-112, lost more games in baseball’s modern era than Russell’s final team, which was the National League’s worst in batting, pitching and defense.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Buffalo
Detroit
Carolina
San Francisco
Final MLB loser update:
Houston finishes 76-86, with a .469 winning percentage. Not quite Lawrence’s 61-101, but not quite the Chron‘s 81-81 either.
Baltimore, our early favorite, finished 66-96, with a .407 winning percentage.
Arizona finished 65-97, with a .401 winning percentage.
Seattle sort of snuck up on us, finishing 61-101 with a .377 winning percentage.
And Pittsburgh missed grabbing the 110 loss brass ring, but still finished 57-105, with a .352 winning percentage.
..and they succeed, admirably.
“My Generation”, a show I’d never heard of until last night, and which was apparently on ABC, is the second cancellation of the season.
A little bird alerted me to a strange and curious fact: the September 21, 2010 “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” column is missing from ESPN’s web site. The columns from the 14th and 28th are there, along with all the other ones from this season (as far as I can tell).
This is particularly interesting since that was the concussion column. I’m not willing to suggest that there’s anything nefarious going on here yet; it could just be a glitch with ESPN’s website. But it is odd and worthy of note.
Edited to add: Actually, the column is still on ESPN’s website; it just doesn’t show up in the Easterbrook archives, or the Page 2 listing for September 21st, but you can still get to it by clicking on the direct link. That lends more credence to the theory that it’s a website glitch.
Since baseball’s regular season ends Sunday, I’m going to hold off on doing a Friday loser update this week, and plan to do a combined MLB/NFL loser update either Sunday night or early Monday morning.