Without boring you into a sniveling puddle of mild snooze soup, there’s some elaborate metrics system invented by Arpad Elo (great name) called “Elo ratings” and FiveThirtyEight wrote a humongous article ranking all 2,374 team-seasons from 1903 to 2015 using “composite Elo” to give a definite list of the greatest baseball teams of all-time. To do that, 538 blended each team’s peak, average and final Elo.
Spoiler alert: The 1939 New York Yankees are ranked #1 with the 1906 Chicago Cubs – a team that would’ve been tops if they won the World Series – comes in second. The worst team is the 1904 Washington Senators who went 38-113-6 because electricity and night goggles weren’t around yet. They eventually became the Minnesota Twins. Second worst team is the 2003 Detroit Tigers who went 43-119.
“…71 of the 100 best seasons fall before 1960. The New York Yankees’ insane dominance in the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s is responsible for a lot of this imbalance. Twenty-five of the 100 best seasons are Yankees seasons from those decades.”
The 2007 Colorado Rockies and 2003 Florida Marlins are the best teams in their franchise’s short-live histories and they barely crack the top 600 of all-time.
“The Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds have had a rough start and could make a run at new Elo lows for their franchises. But the real team to watch is the Chicago Cubs, who have started the season at 24-6 with an incredible +102 run differential. It’s a hard pace to keep up, but if they do, the Cubs could make a run at becoming one of the greatest teams of all time.“
Is the Cubs’ success due to their new clubhouse, which has been described as a high-end night club without chicks? I know sex make the legs weak, but I guarantee there’s been some ladies loosening up in that lair.
Hey, no pressure, Cubbies. You only haven’t won a World Series in triple digits. As much as I love lovable losers and underdogs, I can’t support this journey to all-time greatness because I’m a Mets fan. Though, if I had to pick a team to lose to, the Cubs would be it. Just to see that city’s World Series-winning celebration, which I picture being like this story times a thousand.
Via Fark, FiveThirtyEight