Determining the Best Major League Baseball Team Ever From 1902-2005

I. Selecting the Teams for Comparison

Teams That Were Included

I used fairly basic criteria for selecting teams for the comparison. All World Series winning teams were included, except for a few whose circumstances I will explain. Also, teams like the 1954 and 1995 Cleveland Indians were undoubtedly great teams, yet neither won the World Series. For that reason, all teams with regular season winning percentages of at least .670 were included. While this number is quite arbitrary, it worked as a good cutoff point between including some great teams who didn't win the World Series, and allowing too many teams to be included in the scoring. There are a few exceptions to this rule, though.

The 1998 Atlanta Braves are included in the rankings although their winning percentage was just .654. They played dominantly, and if not for a very "lucky" San Diego Padres team, these Braves may have won the World Series.

The 1994 Montreal Expos are also included. Since there was no World Series in 1994, it seemed logical to include the team with the best record from the regular season. Since part of the scoring is based on postseason play, the 1994 Expos, 1904 Giants, and 1902 Pirates, all of whom never played in playoffs or a World Series, are included and are given arbitrary, but fair 50% postseason winning percentages.

Teams That Were Not Included

There are a few teams not included in the final rankings. Mainly, the period from 1942-1945 was not included because it was the time of World War II. Most teams lost many good players to the war effort, and young, inexperienced, and probably inferior quality players were called into major league action. The talent level of major league baseball went down, as did that of the minor leagues as a result, creating a few years of mostly inexperienced players. It isn't fair to compare Babe Ruth's teams to teams made up of mostly minor or lower league players.

As stated before, teams from before 1920 are sometimes excluded from all time rankings. While it isn't fair to exclude them completely, I include them along with a ranking for teams post-1920 excluding teams from pre-1920.

II. The Formula

Most importantly, a team must win the majority of its games. Winning is what determines the champion, so winning should be the number one basis for how to decide a great team. Winning, though, is determined by a team's ability to produce and defend against runs. For that reason, I view a team's scoring dominance over the opponents as a similarly important aspect of greatness.

While it is given great importance to some historians, I don't view games ahead of second place as a key determining factor, but it does deserve some merit, since a great team should be able to separate itself from the competition easily. A team's dominance over the rest of the league or division defines its unique ability to win in the year it played. Great teams don't finish second. The Florida Marlins have twice won a World Series despite never winning their division. Had they finished with the record they had prior to 1994, the year in which the Wild Card was created, the Marlins would have missed the postseason.

A great team should finish atop both leagues, with the trophy in the display case. While not winning a championship doesn't necessarily take away from a team's winning ability, a team like the 1954 Indians, who finished the regular season 111-43, but lost in the World Series 4 games to 0 should not be placed on the same level as a team who finished with a 107-47 regular season record but won the World Series 4 games to 0, even though both finished with the same final record of 111-47.

A large determinant of a team's greatness is how it performs in the postseason. Great teams don't choke. They continue to play as they had all season long, or better in the postseason, dominating their opponents in the World Series, and any Playoffs.

The Regular Season vs. the Postseason

It is greatly debated as to how much the regular season should count compared to the postseason in a comparison. Here is how I determined this aspect:

I will give 85% of the overall score to a combination of regular season winning percentage, run scoring dominance over opponents during the regular season, and postseason winning percentage.

Since the length of the regular season and the playoffs has changed frequently throughout history, there is no uniformly fair way to determine how much weight to give the postseason. I will try to determine the relative importance of the postseason, in essence, how many regular season games the postseason should count for using the current setup of the season.

First of all, the regular season is 162 games. The playoffs are usually an average of about 15 games for any given team that plays in the World Series. But, for the first 162 games, all 30 MLB teams are involved. In the first round of the playoffs, just eight are involved. Therefore, I think games in the first round of the playoffs should be considered 3.75 (30/8) times as important as regular season games, since about one fourth the number of teams plays in them. Games in the second round of the playoffs see only 4 teams playing, so it seems those games should be about 8 (30/4) times as important as regular season games. Games in the World Series match just two teams, so they should be about 15 (30/2) times as important as a regular season game.

This means that the average 15 game playoff is worth 138.75 regular season games. Divided by this value, this makes the regular season for a given team 117% as important as the postseason including the World Series. This result though seems a little high for my purposes.

There is another method, which includes just assuming the entire playoffs include 8 teams. This means that the 15 games of the playoffs should be multiplied by 3.75 (30/8) to get the number of regular season games the playoffs are worth. This outcome is 56.25 games, meaning the regular season is 288% as important as the playoffs.

To get my value, I averaged these two outcomes to find that the regular season should count 202.4% as much as the postseason. I left 85% open for the regular season and postseason stats, so of that, about 57% should be made up of regular season statistics, and 28% of postseason stats. The regular season, though, I split into two categories. I will split that 57% into Regular Season Winning Percentage and Run Scoring Dominance over opponents.

Based on these thoughts, I tried to give a percentage value to each aspect of a great team.

* The asterisk next to run scoring dominance over opponents: Run scoring dominance is difficult to define. A team may either be a dominant defensive team, or a powerful offensive team. For this reason, run scoring dominance over opponents is split into two categories, each which counts 14.214% of the overall grade.

1. Average runs per game - team ERA

A great team wins its games by several runs on average. I determined this statistic by dividing runs scored by the number of games played by the team Earned Run Average.

2. Percentage of Runs scored in the season

A defensive team might not win its games by great margins, but may score a great majority of the runs scored in a game. This percentage is determined by dividing a team's runs scored by the sum of their runs scored plus their team ERA times the number of games played.

If these percentages are added up, the total is only 95%. The other 5% is a small measure of what rank among all major league baseball teams for that season that this team took. This category serves not any real purpose other than to punish teams slightly for not winning the World Series or the LCS. Some would say that a team that doesn't win the World Series should lose almost all of its points, but logically, it isn't fair to totally eliminate the 1954 Cleveland Indians who finished 111-43 but lost the World Series if we also keep the 1987 Minnesota Twins, who finished 85-77, but won the World Series. Keep in mind also that this is not the only place in which teams are punished for performing poorly in the postseason. Another 28% of the grade is devoted to a team's winning percentage in the postseason. This place in the final MLB standings is determined by their place rank among all teams in MLB after the postseason. A World Series winner will be #1, a W.S. loser #2, an LCS loser either 3 or 4, etc. The weight of this category shouldn't be focused on as being too small. It simply tweaks the rankings a little, and is not meant to serve as a major component of the score. The playoff winning percentage of a team is what really does the job that many on first glance would expect this component to do, and that is punishing teams for not winning the World Series.

Inserting the Numbers

It would seem to make sense just to multiply a team's totals by the desired percentages, but that would leave far too much emphasis on games above second place and postseason winning percentage. For that reason, I tried dividing the desired percentage by the average count for a certain category. This seemed to work, but there was a problem. With the categories like winning percentage, there is a very small span that these teams cover, yet with games above second place, there is a large span between best and worst, which left games over second place counting far more than regular season winning percentage, even with the applied desired percentages, and this was not my intention.

This led me to consider standard deviations, since they are an accurate span of difference from the average. What I finally found to be most accurate was to divide the desired percentage by the standard deviation for that category. By doing this, I made it so the possible difference between the best and the worst teams in that certain category is equal to the desired percentages of overall grade. This is somewhat confusing, but here is a chart to help define how the formula was ultimately created. (All winning percentages and % of runs scored are divided by 100. They are a fraction of 1.)

To get the resulting score for a team, I multiplied its season totals by the numbers in the column labeled "Multiplied by". If this seems crazy to multiply winning percentage by 605, and games above second by just 1.4, remember that the goal was to make the difference created between the best and worst teams be equal to the desired percentage. Most of the 605 is guaranteed for every team. Only a small portion of that is different between teams. Every team on the list has a winning percentage of at least .530, but none has a winning percentage above .741. Yet, the span between games above second goes from -10 to 30. If you don't understand it, just trust that I spent a great deal of time figuring this out mathematically.

III. Scoring the Teams

If you have figured out how the scoring works, you can figure out the team rankings.

Before I expose the team by team rankings, I should give some basic data about the overall findings. (All winning percentages and % of runs scored are divided by 100. They are a fraction of 1.)

For all teams:

Because the average score of teams from before 1920 is so much higher than the average score of teams from after 1920, it is probably a good idea to eliminate all teams from before 1920 to insure a more accurate rating system. Certain lurking variables skew the results form before 1920. Mainly, these are that the competition was poorer, and since the league was smaller, one team could attain more great players. Also, the postseason was shorter, so it was easier for a team to win all their postseason games. Also, with a smaller league, a team had a better chance to finish many games ahead of second place.

In my rankings, I will rank all teams in order of score, but I will also give post-1920 teams a ranking among all teams from that era.

Here is another interesting feature comparing the decades.

Obviously, this is not an accurate comparison of all baseball between the decades. What I believe accounts for the recent decline is the addition of playoffs and the Wild Card, which allows for weaker teams to win the World Series, and since these rankings include all World Series winners, this may have an impact.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, there is a steady decline. This may be because the leagues were getting larger, yet there was still just one division in each league, which left for smaller annual "games above second place" counts. This idea is supported by the average increase in the 1970s, as divisions became a factor.

It is interesting to note that the 2000s have been the weakest years. This can be explained by the fact that three Wild Card teams have won the World Series. These were weaker teams that would not have been in the World Series in prior years.

The Teams

110 teams are included in the Rankings.

Note that disparities in the numbers of games played were taken into account in the formula. Also note that teams from seasons in which there were no playoffs are given an arbitrary, but fair 50% winning percentage in the playoffs, since it can be safely assumed all teams on the list would have made the playoffs.

The 110 teams list with statistics and their scores can be downloaded here (Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet). The file is 100% safe and completely free with all 110 teams listed chronologically.

Notes For Download

The Florida Marlins have won two World Series', but they make up two of the worst teams on this list, because neither won the division, and both had fairly poor records, and got "lucky" many times, winning by small margins. They never got "hot" until the playoffs.

The dynasty of the Oakland Athletics in the 1970s supposedly had some great teams, as they won three straight World Series titles. However, none of those teams scored above 706, a very poor score eclipsed by even a Wild Card winner like the 2002 Anaheim Angels.

The 1987 Twins are the lowest ranked team on the list. They finished the regular season 85-77.

The teams from pre-1920 have on average higher rankings than they probably deserve for a number of reasons, previously mentioned.

IV. Top 10 Rankings

All Teams:

There is no truly conclusive way to determine the best team ever. There are so many different criteria that can be used. Some would say that a team must win the World Series to be considered great. Some say that teams from before a certain time shouldn't be included. The outcome depends on the formula used, and the qualifications for teams even to be included. After completing the comparison, I feel that teams from prior to 1920 should be eliminated. There is a bias that causes them to get higher scores. This is probably the most accurate criteria to use.

Teams Post-1920 Only:

Other Criteria

Another set of criteria that may be used is the 1947 incorporation of blacks into Major League Baseball. Truly, blacks improved the quality of play, and the quality of the competition of the great teams. It would be interesting to see how Babe Ruth would perform if he were playing the premier black baseball players of his day. For this reason, some people like to eliminate all teams from prior to 1947. Some people also like to note that the league expanded in 1961, spreading out the good players, reducing their possible concentrations on great teams. This leaves the option to consider the 1947-1960 years the best era of baseball ever.

Here are rankings from the age of post-1947.

Here are rankings from the age of 1961-2005.

Is there a truly conclusive answer for the question of best baseball team ever? No. It depends on what one considers important to a great team. Everyone's answer is different.

There are so many "What If's" for so many teams. If certain players had stayed healthy, or certain teams played in different eras, or with different players, everything could be different. There is no way to figure those scenarios out, though, so we must work with what we have. Even then, there are too many questions to define with too much accuracy which are the best teams ever. Teams from tens of years apart never got to play each other, and there isn't even any comparable competition.