It’s time to name, and rank, the century’s most outstanding (or at any rate, most competitive) teams
Last time I showed how to measure the degree of competition in a sports league, and how to adjust the winning percentages of the teams in any given year by expanding, or squashing, the range of final winning percentages so that, in the two years being compared, they end up with the same competitive index (CI), reflecting the tightness of the year’s competition.
You’ll recognize that this doesn’t say that one team, in any year, is better than another team, in another year. “Better” is going too far. We’ll leave that for the winter off-season debates among fans. But “more competitive” is something we can calculate mathematically, by using the adjustment in the first paragraph.
Last time we looked at the 1906 Cubs, the 1927 Yankees and the 1998 Yankees. And it turned out that the 1927 Yanks were less competitive than the 1998 Yanks.
So, who’s the most competitive team of the 20th century? (Or at least, up to 1998. The 1999 season hadn’t started, when I did these calculations, and I haven’t the energy to update them.) Is it the 1998 Yanks?
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Well, it’s not the 1906 Cubs. The CI of the National League in 1906 was .143 – very high. Adjusted for the more competitive conditions of the AL in 1998, the 1906 Cubs would have had a winning percentage of .644 in 1998 (rather than their actual .763 in 1906), implying 104 wins in a 162-game regular season.
Who then? Permit me a little suspense, since that’s what I had to endure as I ran the figures through my computer.
It’s not the 1954 Indians either. The CI in the 1954 American League was .138 (in a word, high), so in 1998’s competitive environment they would have won only 101 games out of 162, for a winning percentage of .626.
In fact, of all the teams I looked at (all the NL and AL regular season champs since 1946, as well as earlier teams with high winning percentages), the 1927 Yanks weren’t in the top 24 (so they’re the 25th most competitive – at best), and the 1954 Indians were even lower down. I’ll introduce you to the top ten.
In tenth place are the 1902 Pirates. Honus Wagner and Jack Chesbro led them to a 103-36 (.741) record, which translates into .671 (109 wins) in 1998.
In ninth place are the 1970 Reds. Pete Rose and Johnny Bench led them to a record that doesn’t look spectacular at 102-60 (.630). But at .059, the NL CI that year was among the lowest of all time, so in the less competitive environment of the AL in 1998 their record improves to .673: fractionally higher than the 1902 Pirates, but the same number of wins, 109.
In eighth place are the 1968 Cardinals. Bob Gibson and Lou Brock were outstanding as they compiled their apparently mediocre (for a regular season champ) record of 97-65 (.599). But yes, you guessed it. That year the NL CI was only .044, the lowest of the years I looked at. Relax the CI to the looser .078 of the AL in 1998, and the 1968 Cards improve to .675 (109 wins).
In seventh place are the 1941 Yanks. Joe DiMaggio led them to a 101-53 (.656) record, which translates into a 1998 AL equivalent of .678 (110 wins).
In sixth place are the 1986 Mets. Despite Gary Carter’s career seaon, they topped none of the individual statistical lists and won no awards – other than the World Series! Their 108-54 (.667) regular season record translates into .683 (111 wins) in the 1998 AL.
In fifth place are the 1975 Reds. Joe Morgan, Bench and Tony Perez were among their heroes as they compiled a 108-54 (.667) record, translating to .685 (111 wins) in the 1998 AL.
In fourth place are the 1995 Indians. Though they didn’t win the World Series, Albert Belle, Kenny Lofton and Jose Mesa led them to 100 wins in a strike-shortened season (100-44, .694). This translates into .690 (112 wins in a full 162-game season) in the 1998 AL.
In third place are the 1990 A’s, despite their 4-0 sweep by the Reds in the World Series. Ricky Henderson, Dave Stewart and the bash brothers, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, led them to a 103-59 (.636) regular season record, which translates into .694 (112 wins) in the 1998 AL.
In second place are the 1984 Tigers. Remember their 35-5 start to the season, the overwhelming dominance of Willie Hernandez, and the World Series heroics of Jack Morris, Kirk Gibson and Alan Trammell? Their 104-58 (.642) regular season record in 1984 improves to .699 (113 wins) in the 1998 AL.
And that leaves only one contender for the most competitive team of all time, the only one that would have won 114 games in 1998, the only one with a regular season winning percentage over .700 in 1998 AL terms. Yes, it’s the 1998 Yanks, at 114-48 (.704). When I wrote this piece, in the winter of 1998-99, they were essentially a no-name team. Since then, Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter developed personal reputations for excellence to go along with belonging to this outstanding team. Let’s salute manager Joe Torre (and yes, owner George Steinbrenner) for the team that I truly believe, on the basis of these calculations, to have been the most competitive of the 20th century.
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I showed drafts of these two blog posts to my son David, who did all the heavy lifting when we did these calculations, meaning that he gathered all the data, my role being simply to do the calculations once we input his data. And then we could interpret the results together and be amazed at how we could compare teams across the ages. His reaction: “I remember this and how surprised we were that the 1927 Yankees were so far down the list.” He adds: “Also interesting that almost all of the top 10 was post-expansion. It shows how far the MLB has come to achieve parity.” Yes indeed, those competitive (tightness) indices certainly came down substantially after the 1960s series of expansions.
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Takeaway
Ah, memories, memories! Salute the 1998 New York Yankees, the 1984 Detroit Tigers and the 1990 Oakland Athletics as the 20th century’s baseball teams with the most competitive regular season records.
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I have written about retirement planning before and some of that material also relates to topics or issues that are being discussed here. Where relevant I draw on material from three sources: The Retirement Plan Solution (co-authored with Bob Collie and Matt Smith, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009), my foreword to Someday Rich (by Timothy Noonan and Matt Smith, also published by Wiley, 2012), and my occasional column The Art of Investment in the FT Money supplement of The Financial Times, published in the UK. I am grateful to the other authors and to The Financial Times for permission to use the material here.