For My Next Series Of Time-Wasting Posts

I'm going to try and determine which is the worst St. Louis Cardinals team of my fandom, so from 1985 to now. I started thinking about this sometime last fall, while reading one of Joe Posnanski's posts on the Royals. He said he thought the 2009 Royals might be the worst version he had covered.

It wasn't as simple as them having the worst record, which they didn't. It was more the fact that they were terrible in all facets. Even with Zack Grienke, who would end up winning the Cy Young, their rotation was not very good. Even Joakim Soria, an excellent young closer, their bullpen was lousy. They had Billy Butler, who hit more than 20 HRs and 50 doubles at the age of 23, something only done by 7 hitters before him, all Hall of Famers or potential future Hall of Famers, yet they weren't good at hitting for average, or hitting for power, or drawing walks. They weren't a speed team, nor were they a good defensive team. Actually, they were the worst fielding team in the league, according to some statistics. Even the front office was doing poorly, giving Kyle Farnsworth multi-year contracts, and trading for Yuni Betancourt, who the Mariners couldn't wait to rid themselves of. Even with some very good players, they were simply a disaster.

So I want to do the same with the Cardinals. Fortunately, they've been good enough over the last 25 years, I don't have too many teams to sift through. Sticking solely to teams with losing records, I have the following years: 1986, 1988, 1990, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1999, and 2007. So over the next, however long this takes me, I'm going to go through each year, discuss them a bit, based on what I remember or can look up, and eventually, I'll try and settle on the worst team. I've already essentially weeded four teams out on contention, on the grounds they were a little too good at either scoring runs, or run prevention, but I still want to discuss them, as taking a more in-depth look may change my mind. Anyway, that's what I have planned, in addition to any other posts I happen to feel like putting up.