MLB: The Five Worst Pitching Staffs Post-Deadline

As we assess all the changes from the MLB Trade Deadline, here are the five worst pitching staffs in baseball as we hit the home stretch.

With the non-waiver trade deadline come and gone for MLB, we have a better sense of how teams stand over the last 60 games of the 2016.

In the first of two slideshows, Call to the Pen will look at what pitching staffs are primed for a run deep into October and which are ready to prepare for 2017. The competition, and the high price paid the last week of July, at the top is intense.

For the five teams at the bottom of baseball’s ladder, it is another story. Whether they tried to get the pieces in place to build for the future or already cashed in a couple years ago, the back end of Major League Baseball’s pecking order is ugly. As we look at the worst pitching staffs in the game going into the last third of the season, remember some teams weakened themselves a great deal to restock farm systems needing help. They are not tanking, per se, but they moved anyone with value to fight again tomorrow.

Others on the list are going through a bad year. It happens because of injuries or prospects not progressing as fast as their scouting reports claim. Teams gamble and fail, sometimes in fantastic fashion.

Whatever the reason is, this is a list you never want to see your team on. The good news is that none of the squads here are bad on a historical level. In 2016, there are no equals to the 1962 New York Mets or 2003 Detroit Tigers. That does not mean, however, that fortunes will change for the better soon.

Here are the five worst pitching staffs in baseball.

Next: A Red Season in Ohio