The Worst. Ever.

The 1930 Philadelphia Phillies did not have much in the way of pitching.  The Phils that year compiled a team ERA of 6.71, which is how you manage to hit .315 as a team, (.324 when you don't include the pitchers) and still finish last in the National League. Playing in the old Baker Bowl bandbox, in a hitting era, they were simply wretched.

There has been plenty of other bad pitching over the years.

From 1935-1940, the three cellar-dwellers of the American League, the St. Louis Browns, the Philadelphia Athletics, and the Washington Senators—a.k.a., "The Three Stooges"—constantly put up ERAs of over 5 runs a game.

(Some people felt they must have been behind Pearl Harbor.  Hey, they had bombed everywhere else.)

Then there were the 1962 Mets, with an ERA of 5.05 at the start of what was really a pitching era (something due, albeit, in part to their flamboyantly awful fielding).

Texas, from 2001-2003 ran up a collective team ERA of over 5.00, showing how you finish last three years in a row with A-Rod at his juicy best.  The Royals, even with that big ballpark, and the Orioles in recent years have repeatedly put up terrible pitching numbers and repeated ERAs of over 5.

But nobody has ever done what the Yankees accomplished last week.

According to the estimable Hartford Courant—a struggling newspaper but one that still, defiantly, prints the major-league boxscores—the Yankees' starters last week surrendered 6 or more runs in the first 4 innings or less, for 6 straight games.

Dating back to 1920, no other team has ever done that.

Considering that 1920 was when the live ball era began, it is possible that no other team, period, has ever allowed that in the 149-year era of professional baseball.

ESPN last night added an array of other accomplishments.

The Red Sox, in those 4 games, totaled 122 bases with their 36 extra-base hits—more than in ANY OTHER 4-game series, EVER, save for one in 1936 when the Yanks did the bopping.  This year, too, the Sox scored the most runs, at 44, in any 4-game Yankees-Red Sox series, ever.

The Yanks' ERA in the series was 14.29; since the All-Star Game, it has been 7.89.

Folks, what you are seeing here is the absolute pitching meltdown we have all feared, complete with injuries, head cases, and assorted other bells and whistles.

Sure, part of it is due to playing with Super Happy Fun Ball, and part of it is the continuing juicing by the megalithic players out there.  And yes, yes, I know:  small sample.

But this is a breakdown, pure and simple.  Once upon a time, when we still had management that cared, this would have meant the guillotine for both Larry "Rumpled Bed" Rothschild, and Coopsie his own self.

Not now.  But what it does say is that Cashman making his usual, disastrous deal for a "young power arm" (YPA) is even more idiotic than ever.  We would need about ten such arms.

This Yankees team does not have the pitching to win a World Series, period.  That is part and parcel of a long-term development program, and it cannot be rectified in a week of slipshod horse-swapping (fun as slipshod horse-swapping always is to see, particularly to polka music).