The St. Louis Browns And Philadelphia Athletics Were The Only Teams To Finish 7th Or 8th In The AL From 1935-39

I used data from Fangraphs. As far as I can tell, this is the only occurrence from 1901-61, when eight team leagues were used, that there were five straight years when only two teams occupied the last two places in the league.

In only one of these years did either team even come close to 6th place (1935). The table below shows this. In four of the five seasons, the 7th place team could get no closer than 10 games to the 6th place team. It must be hard knowing you don't even have much chance of coming in 6th place.

The A's went 28-78 over those five years against the pennant winners (1935 Tigers, 1936-39 Yankees). The Browns were 29-81. In both cases, that is a .264 winning pct.

In the table below, the 6th place team each year is in Red just for clarity.

Year	Pos	Team	W	L	Pct	GB
1935	6	WSH	67	86	0.438	27
1935	7	SLB	65	87	0.428	28.5
1935	8	PHA	58	91	0.389	34
1936	6	BOS	74	80	0.480	28.5
1936	7	SLB	57	95	0.375	44.5
1936	8	PHA	53	100	0.346	49
1937	6	WSH	73	80	0.477	28.5
1937	7	PHA	54	97	0.358	46.5
1937	8	SLB	46	108	0.299	56
1938	6	CHW	65	83	0.439	32
1938	7	SLB	55	97	0.362	44
1938	8	PHA	53	99	0.349	46
1939	6	WSH	65	87	0.428	41.5
1939	7	PHA	55	97	0.362	51.5
1939	8	SLB	43	111	0.279	64.5

The next table shows the last date each team was not in 7th or 8th place in all five years plus the highest rank they had all year. After May 18, the Browns were in 7th or 8th in every year. There is only one year where one of the teams was not in the last two slots after July 17, the A's in 1935.

Both teams had losing records in April each year except for 1937. When the A's were .500. The 1937 Browns were only in first place after winning on opening day. Then they lost 5 of 6. The A's that year spent 13 days in first place. Their high water mark was 6 games over .500 at 15-9. They then lost 16 of 17 including a 10 game losing streak. They fell from 1st on May 23 to 7th on June 6.

Year	Brown's Last Day Not In 7th Or 8th	Brown's Highest Rank	A's Last Day Not In 7th Or 8th	A's Highest Rank
1935	28-Apr	3	31-Aug	5
1936	14-Apr	5	5-May	5
1937	15-May	1	5-Jun	1
1938	28-Apr	2	3-Jul	6
1939	18-May	2	17-Jul	2