SWC75
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THE GREATEST TEAM EVER?
In his “New Historical Baseball Abstract” (written in 2000), Bill James has an article entitled “The Greatest Team What Ever Was” in which he says he has been asked several times to write a book on the subject. It was a natural question. James had already done superb books on the Hall of Fame, (The Politics of Glory, 1994), and the great baseball managers, (The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, 1997). In those books he had asked the questions that needed to be asked on the subject of who belongs in the Hall of Fame and who was the greatest manager and then devises systems of analyzing the questions that serve as an intellectual conduit to the truth. He also examines systems that have been used by other people and finds them wanting. They are pretty much of a tour de force.
But in the NHBA, Bill whiffs on the issue of the greatest team of all time. He’s decided to never write that book because:
A) You can’t write a book saying that the 1927 Yankees were the greatest team ever because it’s already been said too many times and
B) You can’t write a book saying that the 1927 Yankees weren’t the greatest team ever, because they were.
He adds that you could argue that, for example the 1998 Yankees were better than the 1927 Yankees just because athletes have become bigger and stronger and any 1998 team would be better than any 1927 of anything like similar accomplishment. Bill has another A and B about this:
A) Whatever assumption you make about the quality of play over time is absolutely going to determine who you decide was the greatest team ever and
B) You can’t convince anybody.
“So that’s a waste of time. What I fall back to is, it’s not the destination that counts, it’s the scenery- and that’s just not me. I’ve got to have a point to make or I don’t know what to say. Two of my friends, Eddie Epstein and Rob Neyer, wrote a book on the subject which came out just before this one went to the publisher. They had a different approach and a different solution to the problem plus they are both outstanding researchers with original approaches so that’s a terrific book. I will leave it to them.”
Epstein and Neyer’s book is called “Baseball Dynasties: The Greatest Teams of All Time”. I don’t have it. Reading Amazon’s reviews, I found this summary: “It's a unique book with chapters on each team consisting of statistical info like seasonal win-loss records and post season results, pennant races, how they fared against contenders, runs scored & allowed & sabermetric figures like Pythagorean Winning Percentage and Offensive Winning Percentages.” Also: “From this truly simple calculation (standard deviation of runs scored above a standard and runs allowed below a standard), the authors got a nice spreadsheet of team evaluations. And by sorting and accruing this data several different ways, they were able to make a book out of it. In truth, it makes a better statistical table than a book.” And: “Early in the book, Neyer and Epstein make the offhand remark, "...popular myth holds that the truly good teams are the ones that win the close games. That's complete bullsh--... Truly great teams... blow away their competition."
Here are their choices for the best 15 teams in baseball history, in rank order, (but upside down):
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/legendary/lidyna.shtml
So I guess you can write a book saying that the 1927 Yankees weren’t the greatest team ever. Maybe that means they weren’t?
Bill James, of course, has washed his hands of the debate. But it doesn’t prevent him from putting three more articles in the subject on his NHBA. In one of them, he says: “Some people have made efforts to evaluate the greatest teams ever by, for example, looking at the norms and standard deviations of runs scored by teams…Maybe it’s just me but I can’t really see that that type of analysis leads anywhere except back to the team’s won-lost record. To state the runs scored in terms of standard deviations from the norm, you’re going to have to look at standard deviations over a period of several years or you’re going to be subject to an irrelevant influence based on whether there was or was not another team in the league which could score runs and whether or not there happened to be a real bad team in the league…If you use multi-year standard deviations, then you’re probably going to conclude that the best team was the team that won the most games. While the won-lost record of the team is certainly a good starting point, it is, after all, a starting point. If you keep coming back that you’re walking in circles.” This is how you go from being, “outstanding researchers with original approaches” to “some people”.
By the way, here is a discussion of standard deviations in case you weren’t sure what they were, (of course, you may still be unsure after you read this):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation
In one of his articles on the subject he had abandoned, James proposes that if you had a team with a superior starter at every position, that would be a tough team to beat. Maybe you could evaluate teams based on how close they came to that standard. He discusses several teams that would rank well in that department but who cannot be considered a contender for the greatest team because they didn’t win it all: the 1930 Cubs, the 1941 Dodgers, the 1954 Indians, the 1962 Dodgers. He also sites a team that did win it all: The Big Red Machine, and suggests that if they’d gotten Tom Seaver two years earlier than they did, they might have been the greatest team. But they didn’t, so they weren’t. “The ’27 Yankees had poor catching, erratic defense in the middle infield, an aging third baseman and a big doofus reliever who was just a one year fluke. But Ruth and Gehrig were so good they count as two superstars a piece and Combs was the fourth-best player in the league.“ In other words, it’s about the quality of your best players, not the quantity of their good ones.
“There is a gentleman who has written some articles claiming that the 1929-31 Philadelphia A’s were really the great team of that era. His argument is that, of these two great teams the Yankees were ‘built first’ but that, when both teams were complete, the A’s had a better team. After all, he will point out, in 1929 the Yankees still had Ruth and Gehrig and Combs and Meusel and Lazzeri and had added Bill Dickey but the A’s beat them by almost twenty games. The A’s beat them by twenty games because, by 1929, the Yankee’s pitching staff had fallen apart. The 1927 Yankee pitching staff was outstanding but old By 1929 Herb Pennock was barely hanging on. Dutch Reuther was retired. Urban Shocker was dead. Waite Hoyt was ineffective and Wilcy Moore was back in the minors. …the 1929-31 A’s were a great team, but they were able to beat the Yankees because the Yankees were pitching Hank Johnson and Ed Wells and Ry Sherid.”
I think the “gentleman” in question might be William Nack:
http://www.si.com/vault/1996/08/19/...ary-yankees-so-why-hasnt-anyone-heard-of-them
In his third article on the subject, James discusses his standards for a great team. He stresses the need for sustained excellence. He grades teams over a five year period by the following six criteria: finishing over .500; winning 90 games; winning 100 games; winning the division; winning the league and winning the World Series. If you meet all six criteria, you get 6 points. The most points a franchise could get in five years is 30 and the closest anybody has come to that standard are the 1935-39 and 1949-53 Yankees, both with 25 points. The 1906-10 Cubs have 24. So do the 1942-46 Cardinals and the 1960-64 Yankees. The 1910-14 Athletics get 23 points. The 1971-75 Athletics and 1995-99 Braves get 22. The 1928-32 Athletics get 21 while the 1926-30 Yankees have only 18.
Bill also suggests you should look at the number of great players a team has: “who is a star, who is a superstar and so on. Then you could scan the rosters and credit the team, perhaps with ten points for each legitimate superstar, seven points for an All-star, four points for a minor star and three points for a quality regular.“ Here we get another A and B from Bill: “Why would you want to do that? You would want to do that if:
A) You were serious interested in identifying the greatest team in the history of baseball and
B) You bought the theory that a great team must have great players. “
Of course, the system Bill describes evaluates not just great, but good players. And it sounds rather similar to his previously debunked system of seeing how many superior players a team has at each position.
His third criteria is interesting: “a great team needs to be able to win anywhere, anytime…How many different things did this team do well? Did they have speed and left-handed power and right-handed power and infield defense and outfield defense and starting pitching and relief pitching and right handed pitching and left-handed pitching and .300 hitters and leadoff men?.. I’m not saying that a team needs to be able to win on demand, but having a bunch of fast guys, a couple of .300 hitters and some pitchers who throw strikes may be enough to win 100 games if you’re playing in a big park. But you’ve got to go into Yankee stadium and beat the Yankees, so let’s look at your left-handed power.”
Bill’s final article on the subject dissects a team that is often offered up by modern fans as the greatest rival of the 1927 Yankees for the title: the 1961 Yankees. The ’61 Yankees have some serious strengths: This team hit 240 home runs, (the ’27 Yanks hit only 158). Their pitching staff allowed opponents to bat only .228 against them. And the most underrated thing about the team was their fielding. They may have had the best fielding line-up ever. Yogi Berra and Elston Howard were excellent defensive catchers. Bill Skowron was a superior defensive first basemen. Bobby Richardson and Tony Kubek were a terrific double play combination. Clete Boyer was one of the great third basemen. Mantle and Maris were superior outfielders. The one weakness might be left field, where whoever wasn’t catching among Berra, Howard and Johnny Blanchard, (who hit 64 home runs between them), would play.
James jumps on that: “And in left field, what do the Yankees have? A 36 year old catcher. Yeah, I know it’s Yogi Berra: he’s a 36 year old catcher. You want to try that in Riverfront Stadiumagainst the ’75 Reds? Good luck.” He’s talking about playing on an artificial surface. Of course, in 1961, deepest left field in Yankee Stadium was 461 feet. So the guys in left field couldn’t have been too bad. Even if thyey were inadequate, it didn’t prevent them from winning 109 games.
James not only doesn’t consider the 1961 Yankees the greatest team ever. He says they weren’t even a great team. He points out that, for all their home runs, they didn’t lead the league in runs scored. The Tigers did, (841-827). James says they aren’t in the top 200 all time in runs scored. “The ’61 Yankees led the league in home runs…slugging percentage and intentional walks. They were dead last in the league in doubles, tied for fifth in triples, next to last in (unintentional) walks, dead last in stolen bases.” He compares that unfavorably to the 1976 Reds, who led the NL in home runs, hits, doubles, triples, walks, steals batting average, on base percentage and slugging percentage, as well as fewest double plays grounded into. The ’61 Yankees do poorly in that third criteria- versatility. James noted that they had a 4-5 record vs. the last place Senators in Washington. That was the toughest home run park in the league so James uses that stat to project that the ’61 Yankees wouldn’t have done very well in the deadball era and couldn’t have beaten a top team of that time, being forced to play that style of ball for which they were ill-equipped.
James also says their bench was depleted by expansion, with Blanchard the only quality reserve and his value was mostly on offense. He goes beyond that to say that in 1961 the Yankees had the worst bench in the American League. I’m not sure about that but looking at the players involved and their numbers, Bill has a point there:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/NYY/1961.shtml
He also says that Whitey Ford was the only really good pitcher on the team. The team had only three pitchers who had winning records in the rest of their career, other than 1961: Ford, Bob Turley and Jim Coates. Turley was basically washed up and Coates was a middle reliever who always came in with a lead. Of course, the Yankees usually had leads because they were a good team. And these pitchers certainly had good records in 1961. They were pitching for a very good team. Many of them were with the Kansas City Athletics when they weren’t with the Yankees. The Yankees used the A’s almost as a farm team in the 50’s and when those guys pitched for the A’s they had lousy records because they were on a lousy team. James ends his diatribe by announcing ”The 1961 Yankees were not a great team. It’s my book: that’s my opinion.” Take two and call me in the morning.
In the NHBA, James picks the top 100 players at each position. He says there’s been about 3,000 players who could haven considered “Regulars” for major league baseball teams over the course of their careers. That means that James has ranked almost a third of them. This could be used as a device to look at the roster strength of teams. I decided to look up James’ ranking of the players listed for teams in Total Baseball, (they list the starters for each team plus 1-2 key reserves and the top pitchers), that might be considered among the greatest ever. I subtracted the number of each ranking from 101 to give that player what I called “James points” and then added up the James points for each team.
The 1927 Yankees had the #1 right fielder (Ruth) and 1st baseman (Gehrig) in the game’s history. 101-1= 100 so they each get 100 James points. The rest of the “Murder’s Row” consisted of Tony Lazzeri, the #19 second baseman, Earle Combs, the #34 center fielder and Bob Meusel, the #79 right fielder. 101-19 = 82. 101-34 = 67. 101-79 = 22, so those guys add another 171 James points. Third baseman Joe Dugan is #88, (101-88 = 13 points). Among the pitchers, Urban Shocker is #71 and Waite Hoyt is #78. Hall of Famer Herb Pennock isn’t in James top 100. Shocker and Hoyt give the 1927 Yankees another 53 James points for a total of 437.
The 1931 Athletics, (yeah, they lost the World Series but that was their peak team), Had Jimmie Foxx, the #21st baseman, (99 James points), Max Bishop, the #43 second baseman, (58), Jimmy Dykes the #52 third baseman, (49), Al Simmons, the #7 left fielder,(94), Doc Cramer, the #91 center fielder ((10), Mickey Cochrane the #4 catcher, (97) with Lefty Grove the #2 pitcher (99) and Ed Rommel the #85 pitcher, (16) for a total of 522 points. Maybe there’s some flaw in this system but it would seem that, by his evaluations of individual players, Bill James should rank the 1931 Athletics above the 1927 Yankees.
I decided to rank other selected teams throughout baseball history using this procedure:
1875 Boston Red Stockings 89 points (Bill doesn’t rank Ross Barnes, Cal McVey or George Wright)
1880 Chicago White Sox 284 points
1886 St. Louis Browns 146 points (Bill didn’t think the AA was as strong as the NL)
1894 Baltimore Orioles 446 points
1897 Boston Beaneaters 542 points
1902 Pittsburgh Pirates 366 points
1905 New York Giants 448 points
1906 Chicago Cubs 516 points
1909 Pittsburgh Pirates 283 points
1910 Philadelphia Athletics 418 points
1912 Boston Red Sox 250 points
1912 New York Giants 218 points
1917 Chicago White Sox 413 points
1919 Cincinnati Reds 227 points
1922 New York Giants 347 points
1923 New York Yankees 267 points
1927 New York Yankees 437 points
1930 Chicago Cubs 432 points
1931 Philadelphia Athletics 522 points
1932 New York Yankees 685 points
1934 St. Louis Cardinals 281 points
1935 Detroit Tigers 449 points
1936 New York Yankees 547 points
1939 New York Yankees 601 points
1941 Brooklyn Dodgers 486 points
1942 St. Louis Cardinals 404 points
1946 Boston Red Sox 386 points
1951 New York Yankees 607 points
1954 Cleveland Indians 627 points
1954 New York Giants 341 points
1955 Brooklyn Dodgers 631 points
1957 Milwaukee Braves 527 points
1961 New York Yankees 557 points
1962 San Francisco Giants 484 points
1963 Los Angeles Dodgers 673 points
1967 St. Louis Cardinals 588 points
1968 Detroit Lions 325 points
1969 New York Mets 263 points
1970 Baltimore Orioles 549 points
1971 Pittsburgh Pirates 492 points
1972 Oakland Athletics 344 points
1975 Cincinnati Reds 595 points
1977 New York Yankees 554 points
1979 Pittsburgh Pirates 365 points
1980 Philadelphia Phillies 618 points
1981 Los Angeles Dodgers 453 points
1982 St. Louis Cardinals 501 points
1983 Baltimore Orioles 252 points
1984 Detroit Tigers 525 points
1986 New York Mets 378 points
1989 Oakland Athletics 468 points
1993 Toronto Blue Jays 329 points
1995 Atlanta Braves 364 points
1998 New York Yankees 434 points
Nobody past 2000 is rated because that’s when the book came out. The latter teams, especially the 1998 Yankees, are probably under-rated because they had players whose reputations have grown since: if James does another book, their players will no doubt be ranked higher. (He listed Derek Jeter and Nomar Garciaparra between #17 Alex Rodriguez and #18 Hughie Jennings among the shortstops with an XXX rating saying it’s too early to rate them: I gave Jeter a #18 ranking in computing the James points for the 1998 Yankees. I’m sure he’d be ranked a lot higher now and not with Garciaparra.)
So by James’ own rankings, 25 teams would seem to be better than the 1927 Yankees, (and I didn’t rate other teams that might have been because I chose certain teams to represent eras of their franchise: the 1930 Athletics, the 1937 Yankees, the 1953 Dodgers, the 1976 Reds, etc. might have been better as well.). Moreover, several teams have far more James points than “Murder’s Row”. What ironic is that one of them had Ruth and Gehrig in their line-up. The Top Ten:
1) 1932 New York Yankees 685 points
2) 1963 Los Angeles Dodgers 673 points
3) 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers 631 points
4) 1954 Cleveland Indians 627 points
5) 1980 Philadelphia Phillies 618 points
6) 1951 New York Yankees 607 points
7) 1939 New York Yankees 601 points
8) 1975 Cincinnati Reds 595 points
9) 1967 St. Louis Cardinals 588 points
10) 1961 New York Yankees 557 points
The 1927 Yankees aren’t even close to making this list. You could argue that the other players on the roster need to be considered as well. But it was the later Yankees, after they’d built up their farm system that were famous for having guys on their bench who would have started for other teams. And surely the talent base for baseball has increased over the years, even beyond the impact of expansion. The population of the country reached 100 million in 1915, 200 million in 1968 and 300 million in 2008. Blacks couldn’t play until 1947 and the last team to integrate was the Red Sox in 1959. The use of Latin players in significant numbers began in the 50’s and now we have Japanese and Australians. It just figures that benches are better now than in past decades.
But the bottom line is, I just have a hard time believing that the best team in the history of the game was a segregated team that played 9 decades ago. I have no problem believing that an individual from that era might have been the greatest player or among the greatest players. But when you extend that to an entire team, it gets harder to believe. I don’t know which team in baseball history is the best but I think these are the primary considerations:
1) Players have become bigger, stronger and faster over the decades.
2) The game has integrated and gone international while the population of the country has tripled since 1915. The talent base has surely increased, well beyond the impact of expansion. The 1927 Yankees may have been a great team, but wouldn’t they have been greater with Biz Mackey behind the plate instead of Pat Collins? Wouldn’t John Henry Lloyd have been a better shortstop than Mark Koenig? Could Jumping Joe Dugan have out-jumped Judy Johnson at third? Was Earle Combs better than Oscar Charleston or Cool Papa Bell? Could Bullet Rogan have helped the pitching staff? In a alter era, we’d have gotten to find out. The Dodgers of the 50’s, the Cardinals of 60’s, the Reds of the 70’s, etc. didn’t have that problem.
3) The techniques of playing the game have evolved and been perfected, or moved closer to perfection. The primary example of this is the variety of pitches being used.
4) Old timers say the big advantage they would have over a modern team is fundamentals. Of course they’ve been saying that since 1871. I agree with this to some extent: you see a lot of players who don’t use the full extent of their talent or play the game consistently hard and intelligently, (As a Met fan, I watched Darryl Strawberry for seven years, so I saw plenty of that). But I think that difference is basically eliminated if you are only looking at the teams considered to be candidates as the “greatest team of all time”. The 1998 Yankees wouldn’t lose any game to anyone because of poor fundamentals. Even the 1986 Mets, even with Strawberry, did a great many more things right than they did wrong.
5) Contrary to what Bill James seemed to be saying, (of course, he seemed to be saying different things at different times), I believe that success in baseball is the product of the strength of the entire roster, not the greatness of certain individuals. The Cubs of the 60’s had Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Ron Santo and Ferguson Jenkins. They were no dynasty. The Mariners of the 90’s had Junior Griffey, Alex Rodriguez, Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez and Jay Buhner. They didn’t win anything. They got rid of most of those guys and won 116 games. Everybody has their turn at bat: there’s no such thing as giving the ball to Jim brown on every play or Michael Jordan every trip downcourt. Every starting pitcher has his spot in the rotation, every relief pitcher or bench player his role to play. Greta stars don’t make a team great: Ruth and Gehrig may count for two superstars each in 1927, but they also did in 1929-31 and look where it got them.
6) I think it’s best avoid two things: teams in expansion years, when they and the rest of the league have been weakened by having another mouth to feed: eventually things get sorted out so we know who the major leaguers are and the ever-increasing pool of talent absorbs it but for a year or two, the top teams will naturally tend to win more games and the bottom teams lose more. Also, avoid teams whose success is based on career years or teams having “dream season”. Those career years and dream season are part of the story and if you play that team, that’s what you’ll have to compete with but in evaluating those teams, (as opposed to competing with them), consistent success is more impressive than sudden and unsustained success. Go for the perennials, not the annuals. Everyone talks about Ruth and Gehrig and Murder’s Row but really, the reason this team won 110 games instead of a more conventional number is Wilcy Moore, an early relief specialist who won 19 games and saved 13 more. The next year he won 4 games and saved three and the Yankees won 101 games. They again swept the World Series but nobody talks about the 1928 Yankees as the greatest team. The difference was Wilcy Moore. If the 1927 Yankees had won 101 games instead of 110, would we be talking about them as the greatest team ever? By the same logic, teams like the 1984 Tigers and 1986 Mets don’t rank with the 1998 Yankees because that same Yankee team, (essentially) won four titles in five years. 1998 was their peak year. Neither the Tigers or the Mets were able to win another title in their eras.
7) The greatest team of all time should be the greatest team of their era. I’m with William Nack: I think the A’s of the period were at least as good and may have been better. “The A's had a record of 313-143 (.686) between 1929 and '31; the Yanks, 302-160 (.654) between 1926 and '28. And while Philadelphia scored six fewer runs than the Yankees--2,710 to 2,716--the A's had five fewer runs scored against them: 1,992 to 1,997. That represents a difference between the two teams, in net scoring, of only one run.” I’ll extend that a little: from 1926-1931, the Yankees and Athletics both won three straight pennants and two World Series, 9both were upset by the Cardinals when they lost). Their records for those six years, (including the World Series) were: Yankees 581-357 (.619), Athletics 596-335 (.640). In the three years the Yankees won the pennant, the A’s finished behind them by a combined 30.5 games. In the three years the A’s won the pennant. They finished 47.5 games ahead of the Yankees. The Yankees did come out on top in head to head matches 68-64. The Yankee’s did have to rebuild their pitching staff in the years the A’s topped them. But they did so with Red Ruffin and Lefty Gomez, both of whom James has rated higher than anyone on the ’27 staff. The A’s staff with Grove, Rommel and George Earnshaw was arguably better anyway. And the 1931 Yankees were the highest scoring teams of the 20th century with 1067 runs. The 1930 Yankees were almost as good with 1062. So those struggling pitchers had a lot to work with. But they were no match for the A’s.
8) It’s not even clear that the ’27 Yankees were the greatest Yankee team of that era. It’s the ’32 Yankees that have the most James points in history. They were 107-47, (vs. 110-44) and won their pennant by 13 games over the A’s and then swept the World Series. They had Ruth and Gehrig. It was the Babe’s last really great year but it was a great one, (.341-41-137-120. They also had Combs and Lazzeri, still going strong. Hall of Famer Bill Dickey was behind the plate. Hall of Famer Joe Sewell was at third. Frankie Crosetti was at short. James ranked him at #67Mark Koenig didn’t make the top 100. Ben Chapman was surely the equal of Bob Meusel in right field (.299 with 41 doubles, 15 triples, 10 home runs and 38 steals. Ruffing and Gomez were in their primes and James had them rated higher than Pennock and Hoyt. Why not that team?
9) The Yankees were not really a dynasty yet in the Babe Ruth Era. They won 7 pennants and 4 World Series in 15 years. That’s very impressive. But it means that half the time somebody else won the pennant and half the time somebody else won the World Series. it doesn’t compare to what the Yankees did from 1936-64, when they won 22 pennants and 16 World Series in 29 years, (and it would have been more but for the war. In Ruth’s era. The difference was that the Yankees had used all the money they made in the Ruth Era to copy Branch Ricky’s concept of a farm system but to do it on a grander scale. When people talk about the great Yankees teams of the 36-64 era, they acknowledge the greatness of DiMaggio and Mantle and even Berra and Ford but what they talk about most is that the Yankees had guys on their bench who could start for other teams. They could fill out a pitching rotation better than anyone else. They invented the bullpen. But that came after the Babe Ruth period. It’s not surprising that the 1932 Yankees were actually better than the 1927 Yankees and I think the 1936-39 Yankees were better than either one of them, (a conclusion Epstein and Neyer also came to). And I think the integrated teams of future decades were better than them.
I don’t know who the greatest team ever was but I don’t believe it was the 1927 Yankees. I think they were viewed as such for so many years because that was the year Babe Ruth hit the most home runs he ever hit, so people assumed that was the franchise’s peak year. They certainly were dominant in that year but not in an unprecedented sense:: other teams had won more games and a higher percentage of them and won the pennant by more games. Their remarkable success in the World Series helped cement their reputation but I’ve always felt the regular season was a better measure of a team’s strength. I don’t think they were better than the Athletics of that era, who had the misfortune to get upset by the Cardinals in their peak year, rather than their initial year. I agree with Nack that they suffered from representing Philadelphia, rather than New York and for being less colorful than the Yankees. But they weren’t a worse team. In what sport does anybody think that the greatest team played in the 1920’s? And no matter how good a segregated team was, wouldn’t they have been better if they were integrated? I think I’d go with the ’63 Dodgers, the ’70 Orioles the ’75 Reds or the ’98 Yankees, but I’m not sure which one.
Sorry, Bill.
In his “New Historical Baseball Abstract” (written in 2000), Bill James has an article entitled “The Greatest Team What Ever Was” in which he says he has been asked several times to write a book on the subject. It was a natural question. James had already done superb books on the Hall of Fame, (The Politics of Glory, 1994), and the great baseball managers, (The Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers, 1997). In those books he had asked the questions that needed to be asked on the subject of who belongs in the Hall of Fame and who was the greatest manager and then devises systems of analyzing the questions that serve as an intellectual conduit to the truth. He also examines systems that have been used by other people and finds them wanting. They are pretty much of a tour de force.
But in the NHBA, Bill whiffs on the issue of the greatest team of all time. He’s decided to never write that book because:
A) You can’t write a book saying that the 1927 Yankees were the greatest team ever because it’s already been said too many times and
B) You can’t write a book saying that the 1927 Yankees weren’t the greatest team ever, because they were.
He adds that you could argue that, for example the 1998 Yankees were better than the 1927 Yankees just because athletes have become bigger and stronger and any 1998 team would be better than any 1927 of anything like similar accomplishment. Bill has another A and B about this:
A) Whatever assumption you make about the quality of play over time is absolutely going to determine who you decide was the greatest team ever and
B) You can’t convince anybody.
“So that’s a waste of time. What I fall back to is, it’s not the destination that counts, it’s the scenery- and that’s just not me. I’ve got to have a point to make or I don’t know what to say. Two of my friends, Eddie Epstein and Rob Neyer, wrote a book on the subject which came out just before this one went to the publisher. They had a different approach and a different solution to the problem plus they are both outstanding researchers with original approaches so that’s a terrific book. I will leave it to them.”
Epstein and Neyer’s book is called “Baseball Dynasties: The Greatest Teams of All Time”. I don’t have it. Reading Amazon’s reviews, I found this summary: “It's a unique book with chapters on each team consisting of statistical info like seasonal win-loss records and post season results, pennant races, how they fared against contenders, runs scored & allowed & sabermetric figures like Pythagorean Winning Percentage and Offensive Winning Percentages.” Also: “From this truly simple calculation (standard deviation of runs scored above a standard and runs allowed below a standard), the authors got a nice spreadsheet of team evaluations. And by sorting and accruing this data several different ways, they were able to make a book out of it. In truth, it makes a better statistical table than a book.” And: “Early in the book, Neyer and Epstein make the offhand remark, "...popular myth holds that the truly good teams are the ones that win the close games. That's complete bullsh--... Truly great teams... blow away their competition."
Here are their choices for the best 15 teams in baseball history, in rank order, (but upside down):
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/legendary/lidyna.shtml
So I guess you can write a book saying that the 1927 Yankees weren’t the greatest team ever. Maybe that means they weren’t?
Bill James, of course, has washed his hands of the debate. But it doesn’t prevent him from putting three more articles in the subject on his NHBA. In one of them, he says: “Some people have made efforts to evaluate the greatest teams ever by, for example, looking at the norms and standard deviations of runs scored by teams…Maybe it’s just me but I can’t really see that that type of analysis leads anywhere except back to the team’s won-lost record. To state the runs scored in terms of standard deviations from the norm, you’re going to have to look at standard deviations over a period of several years or you’re going to be subject to an irrelevant influence based on whether there was or was not another team in the league which could score runs and whether or not there happened to be a real bad team in the league…If you use multi-year standard deviations, then you’re probably going to conclude that the best team was the team that won the most games. While the won-lost record of the team is certainly a good starting point, it is, after all, a starting point. If you keep coming back that you’re walking in circles.” This is how you go from being, “outstanding researchers with original approaches” to “some people”.
By the way, here is a discussion of standard deviations in case you weren’t sure what they were, (of course, you may still be unsure after you read this):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation
In one of his articles on the subject he had abandoned, James proposes that if you had a team with a superior starter at every position, that would be a tough team to beat. Maybe you could evaluate teams based on how close they came to that standard. He discusses several teams that would rank well in that department but who cannot be considered a contender for the greatest team because they didn’t win it all: the 1930 Cubs, the 1941 Dodgers, the 1954 Indians, the 1962 Dodgers. He also sites a team that did win it all: The Big Red Machine, and suggests that if they’d gotten Tom Seaver two years earlier than they did, they might have been the greatest team. But they didn’t, so they weren’t. “The ’27 Yankees had poor catching, erratic defense in the middle infield, an aging third baseman and a big doofus reliever who was just a one year fluke. But Ruth and Gehrig were so good they count as two superstars a piece and Combs was the fourth-best player in the league.“ In other words, it’s about the quality of your best players, not the quantity of their good ones.
“There is a gentleman who has written some articles claiming that the 1929-31 Philadelphia A’s were really the great team of that era. His argument is that, of these two great teams the Yankees were ‘built first’ but that, when both teams were complete, the A’s had a better team. After all, he will point out, in 1929 the Yankees still had Ruth and Gehrig and Combs and Meusel and Lazzeri and had added Bill Dickey but the A’s beat them by almost twenty games. The A’s beat them by twenty games because, by 1929, the Yankee’s pitching staff had fallen apart. The 1927 Yankee pitching staff was outstanding but old By 1929 Herb Pennock was barely hanging on. Dutch Reuther was retired. Urban Shocker was dead. Waite Hoyt was ineffective and Wilcy Moore was back in the minors. …the 1929-31 A’s were a great team, but they were able to beat the Yankees because the Yankees were pitching Hank Johnson and Ed Wells and Ry Sherid.”
I think the “gentleman” in question might be William Nack:
http://www.si.com/vault/1996/08/19/...ary-yankees-so-why-hasnt-anyone-heard-of-them
In his third article on the subject, James discusses his standards for a great team. He stresses the need for sustained excellence. He grades teams over a five year period by the following six criteria: finishing over .500; winning 90 games; winning 100 games; winning the division; winning the league and winning the World Series. If you meet all six criteria, you get 6 points. The most points a franchise could get in five years is 30 and the closest anybody has come to that standard are the 1935-39 and 1949-53 Yankees, both with 25 points. The 1906-10 Cubs have 24. So do the 1942-46 Cardinals and the 1960-64 Yankees. The 1910-14 Athletics get 23 points. The 1971-75 Athletics and 1995-99 Braves get 22. The 1928-32 Athletics get 21 while the 1926-30 Yankees have only 18.
Bill also suggests you should look at the number of great players a team has: “who is a star, who is a superstar and so on. Then you could scan the rosters and credit the team, perhaps with ten points for each legitimate superstar, seven points for an All-star, four points for a minor star and three points for a quality regular.“ Here we get another A and B from Bill: “Why would you want to do that? You would want to do that if:
A) You were serious interested in identifying the greatest team in the history of baseball and
B) You bought the theory that a great team must have great players. “
Of course, the system Bill describes evaluates not just great, but good players. And it sounds rather similar to his previously debunked system of seeing how many superior players a team has at each position.
His third criteria is interesting: “a great team needs to be able to win anywhere, anytime…How many different things did this team do well? Did they have speed and left-handed power and right-handed power and infield defense and outfield defense and starting pitching and relief pitching and right handed pitching and left-handed pitching and .300 hitters and leadoff men?.. I’m not saying that a team needs to be able to win on demand, but having a bunch of fast guys, a couple of .300 hitters and some pitchers who throw strikes may be enough to win 100 games if you’re playing in a big park. But you’ve got to go into Yankee stadium and beat the Yankees, so let’s look at your left-handed power.”
Bill’s final article on the subject dissects a team that is often offered up by modern fans as the greatest rival of the 1927 Yankees for the title: the 1961 Yankees. The ’61 Yankees have some serious strengths: This team hit 240 home runs, (the ’27 Yanks hit only 158). Their pitching staff allowed opponents to bat only .228 against them. And the most underrated thing about the team was their fielding. They may have had the best fielding line-up ever. Yogi Berra and Elston Howard were excellent defensive catchers. Bill Skowron was a superior defensive first basemen. Bobby Richardson and Tony Kubek were a terrific double play combination. Clete Boyer was one of the great third basemen. Mantle and Maris were superior outfielders. The one weakness might be left field, where whoever wasn’t catching among Berra, Howard and Johnny Blanchard, (who hit 64 home runs between them), would play.
James jumps on that: “And in left field, what do the Yankees have? A 36 year old catcher. Yeah, I know it’s Yogi Berra: he’s a 36 year old catcher. You want to try that in Riverfront Stadiumagainst the ’75 Reds? Good luck.” He’s talking about playing on an artificial surface. Of course, in 1961, deepest left field in Yankee Stadium was 461 feet. So the guys in left field couldn’t have been too bad. Even if thyey were inadequate, it didn’t prevent them from winning 109 games.
James not only doesn’t consider the 1961 Yankees the greatest team ever. He says they weren’t even a great team. He points out that, for all their home runs, they didn’t lead the league in runs scored. The Tigers did, (841-827). James says they aren’t in the top 200 all time in runs scored. “The ’61 Yankees led the league in home runs…slugging percentage and intentional walks. They were dead last in the league in doubles, tied for fifth in triples, next to last in (unintentional) walks, dead last in stolen bases.” He compares that unfavorably to the 1976 Reds, who led the NL in home runs, hits, doubles, triples, walks, steals batting average, on base percentage and slugging percentage, as well as fewest double plays grounded into. The ’61 Yankees do poorly in that third criteria- versatility. James noted that they had a 4-5 record vs. the last place Senators in Washington. That was the toughest home run park in the league so James uses that stat to project that the ’61 Yankees wouldn’t have done very well in the deadball era and couldn’t have beaten a top team of that time, being forced to play that style of ball for which they were ill-equipped.
James also says their bench was depleted by expansion, with Blanchard the only quality reserve and his value was mostly on offense. He goes beyond that to say that in 1961 the Yankees had the worst bench in the American League. I’m not sure about that but looking at the players involved and their numbers, Bill has a point there:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/NYY/1961.shtml
He also says that Whitey Ford was the only really good pitcher on the team. The team had only three pitchers who had winning records in the rest of their career, other than 1961: Ford, Bob Turley and Jim Coates. Turley was basically washed up and Coates was a middle reliever who always came in with a lead. Of course, the Yankees usually had leads because they were a good team. And these pitchers certainly had good records in 1961. They were pitching for a very good team. Many of them were with the Kansas City Athletics when they weren’t with the Yankees. The Yankees used the A’s almost as a farm team in the 50’s and when those guys pitched for the A’s they had lousy records because they were on a lousy team. James ends his diatribe by announcing ”The 1961 Yankees were not a great team. It’s my book: that’s my opinion.” Take two and call me in the morning.
In the NHBA, James picks the top 100 players at each position. He says there’s been about 3,000 players who could haven considered “Regulars” for major league baseball teams over the course of their careers. That means that James has ranked almost a third of them. This could be used as a device to look at the roster strength of teams. I decided to look up James’ ranking of the players listed for teams in Total Baseball, (they list the starters for each team plus 1-2 key reserves and the top pitchers), that might be considered among the greatest ever. I subtracted the number of each ranking from 101 to give that player what I called “James points” and then added up the James points for each team.
The 1927 Yankees had the #1 right fielder (Ruth) and 1st baseman (Gehrig) in the game’s history. 101-1= 100 so they each get 100 James points. The rest of the “Murder’s Row” consisted of Tony Lazzeri, the #19 second baseman, Earle Combs, the #34 center fielder and Bob Meusel, the #79 right fielder. 101-19 = 82. 101-34 = 67. 101-79 = 22, so those guys add another 171 James points. Third baseman Joe Dugan is #88, (101-88 = 13 points). Among the pitchers, Urban Shocker is #71 and Waite Hoyt is #78. Hall of Famer Herb Pennock isn’t in James top 100. Shocker and Hoyt give the 1927 Yankees another 53 James points for a total of 437.
The 1931 Athletics, (yeah, they lost the World Series but that was their peak team), Had Jimmie Foxx, the #21st baseman, (99 James points), Max Bishop, the #43 second baseman, (58), Jimmy Dykes the #52 third baseman, (49), Al Simmons, the #7 left fielder,(94), Doc Cramer, the #91 center fielder ((10), Mickey Cochrane the #4 catcher, (97) with Lefty Grove the #2 pitcher (99) and Ed Rommel the #85 pitcher, (16) for a total of 522 points. Maybe there’s some flaw in this system but it would seem that, by his evaluations of individual players, Bill James should rank the 1931 Athletics above the 1927 Yankees.
I decided to rank other selected teams throughout baseball history using this procedure:
1875 Boston Red Stockings 89 points (Bill doesn’t rank Ross Barnes, Cal McVey or George Wright)
1880 Chicago White Sox 284 points
1886 St. Louis Browns 146 points (Bill didn’t think the AA was as strong as the NL)
1894 Baltimore Orioles 446 points
1897 Boston Beaneaters 542 points
1902 Pittsburgh Pirates 366 points
1905 New York Giants 448 points
1906 Chicago Cubs 516 points
1909 Pittsburgh Pirates 283 points
1910 Philadelphia Athletics 418 points
1912 Boston Red Sox 250 points
1912 New York Giants 218 points
1917 Chicago White Sox 413 points
1919 Cincinnati Reds 227 points
1922 New York Giants 347 points
1923 New York Yankees 267 points
1927 New York Yankees 437 points
1930 Chicago Cubs 432 points
1931 Philadelphia Athletics 522 points
1932 New York Yankees 685 points
1934 St. Louis Cardinals 281 points
1935 Detroit Tigers 449 points
1936 New York Yankees 547 points
1939 New York Yankees 601 points
1941 Brooklyn Dodgers 486 points
1942 St. Louis Cardinals 404 points
1946 Boston Red Sox 386 points
1951 New York Yankees 607 points
1954 Cleveland Indians 627 points
1954 New York Giants 341 points
1955 Brooklyn Dodgers 631 points
1957 Milwaukee Braves 527 points
1961 New York Yankees 557 points
1962 San Francisco Giants 484 points
1963 Los Angeles Dodgers 673 points
1967 St. Louis Cardinals 588 points
1968 Detroit Lions 325 points
1969 New York Mets 263 points
1970 Baltimore Orioles 549 points
1971 Pittsburgh Pirates 492 points
1972 Oakland Athletics 344 points
1975 Cincinnati Reds 595 points
1977 New York Yankees 554 points
1979 Pittsburgh Pirates 365 points
1980 Philadelphia Phillies 618 points
1981 Los Angeles Dodgers 453 points
1982 St. Louis Cardinals 501 points
1983 Baltimore Orioles 252 points
1984 Detroit Tigers 525 points
1986 New York Mets 378 points
1989 Oakland Athletics 468 points
1993 Toronto Blue Jays 329 points
1995 Atlanta Braves 364 points
1998 New York Yankees 434 points
Nobody past 2000 is rated because that’s when the book came out. The latter teams, especially the 1998 Yankees, are probably under-rated because they had players whose reputations have grown since: if James does another book, their players will no doubt be ranked higher. (He listed Derek Jeter and Nomar Garciaparra between #17 Alex Rodriguez and #18 Hughie Jennings among the shortstops with an XXX rating saying it’s too early to rate them: I gave Jeter a #18 ranking in computing the James points for the 1998 Yankees. I’m sure he’d be ranked a lot higher now and not with Garciaparra.)
So by James’ own rankings, 25 teams would seem to be better than the 1927 Yankees, (and I didn’t rate other teams that might have been because I chose certain teams to represent eras of their franchise: the 1930 Athletics, the 1937 Yankees, the 1953 Dodgers, the 1976 Reds, etc. might have been better as well.). Moreover, several teams have far more James points than “Murder’s Row”. What ironic is that one of them had Ruth and Gehrig in their line-up. The Top Ten:
1) 1932 New York Yankees 685 points
2) 1963 Los Angeles Dodgers 673 points
3) 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers 631 points
4) 1954 Cleveland Indians 627 points
5) 1980 Philadelphia Phillies 618 points
6) 1951 New York Yankees 607 points
7) 1939 New York Yankees 601 points
8) 1975 Cincinnati Reds 595 points
9) 1967 St. Louis Cardinals 588 points
10) 1961 New York Yankees 557 points
The 1927 Yankees aren’t even close to making this list. You could argue that the other players on the roster need to be considered as well. But it was the later Yankees, after they’d built up their farm system that were famous for having guys on their bench who would have started for other teams. And surely the talent base for baseball has increased over the years, even beyond the impact of expansion. The population of the country reached 100 million in 1915, 200 million in 1968 and 300 million in 2008. Blacks couldn’t play until 1947 and the last team to integrate was the Red Sox in 1959. The use of Latin players in significant numbers began in the 50’s and now we have Japanese and Australians. It just figures that benches are better now than in past decades.
But the bottom line is, I just have a hard time believing that the best team in the history of the game was a segregated team that played 9 decades ago. I have no problem believing that an individual from that era might have been the greatest player or among the greatest players. But when you extend that to an entire team, it gets harder to believe. I don’t know which team in baseball history is the best but I think these are the primary considerations:
1) Players have become bigger, stronger and faster over the decades.
2) The game has integrated and gone international while the population of the country has tripled since 1915. The talent base has surely increased, well beyond the impact of expansion. The 1927 Yankees may have been a great team, but wouldn’t they have been greater with Biz Mackey behind the plate instead of Pat Collins? Wouldn’t John Henry Lloyd have been a better shortstop than Mark Koenig? Could Jumping Joe Dugan have out-jumped Judy Johnson at third? Was Earle Combs better than Oscar Charleston or Cool Papa Bell? Could Bullet Rogan have helped the pitching staff? In a alter era, we’d have gotten to find out. The Dodgers of the 50’s, the Cardinals of 60’s, the Reds of the 70’s, etc. didn’t have that problem.
3) The techniques of playing the game have evolved and been perfected, or moved closer to perfection. The primary example of this is the variety of pitches being used.
4) Old timers say the big advantage they would have over a modern team is fundamentals. Of course they’ve been saying that since 1871. I agree with this to some extent: you see a lot of players who don’t use the full extent of their talent or play the game consistently hard and intelligently, (As a Met fan, I watched Darryl Strawberry for seven years, so I saw plenty of that). But I think that difference is basically eliminated if you are only looking at the teams considered to be candidates as the “greatest team of all time”. The 1998 Yankees wouldn’t lose any game to anyone because of poor fundamentals. Even the 1986 Mets, even with Strawberry, did a great many more things right than they did wrong.
5) Contrary to what Bill James seemed to be saying, (of course, he seemed to be saying different things at different times), I believe that success in baseball is the product of the strength of the entire roster, not the greatness of certain individuals. The Cubs of the 60’s had Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Ron Santo and Ferguson Jenkins. They were no dynasty. The Mariners of the 90’s had Junior Griffey, Alex Rodriguez, Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez and Jay Buhner. They didn’t win anything. They got rid of most of those guys and won 116 games. Everybody has their turn at bat: there’s no such thing as giving the ball to Jim brown on every play or Michael Jordan every trip downcourt. Every starting pitcher has his spot in the rotation, every relief pitcher or bench player his role to play. Greta stars don’t make a team great: Ruth and Gehrig may count for two superstars each in 1927, but they also did in 1929-31 and look where it got them.
6) I think it’s best avoid two things: teams in expansion years, when they and the rest of the league have been weakened by having another mouth to feed: eventually things get sorted out so we know who the major leaguers are and the ever-increasing pool of talent absorbs it but for a year or two, the top teams will naturally tend to win more games and the bottom teams lose more. Also, avoid teams whose success is based on career years or teams having “dream season”. Those career years and dream season are part of the story and if you play that team, that’s what you’ll have to compete with but in evaluating those teams, (as opposed to competing with them), consistent success is more impressive than sudden and unsustained success. Go for the perennials, not the annuals. Everyone talks about Ruth and Gehrig and Murder’s Row but really, the reason this team won 110 games instead of a more conventional number is Wilcy Moore, an early relief specialist who won 19 games and saved 13 more. The next year he won 4 games and saved three and the Yankees won 101 games. They again swept the World Series but nobody talks about the 1928 Yankees as the greatest team. The difference was Wilcy Moore. If the 1927 Yankees had won 101 games instead of 110, would we be talking about them as the greatest team ever? By the same logic, teams like the 1984 Tigers and 1986 Mets don’t rank with the 1998 Yankees because that same Yankee team, (essentially) won four titles in five years. 1998 was their peak year. Neither the Tigers or the Mets were able to win another title in their eras.
7) The greatest team of all time should be the greatest team of their era. I’m with William Nack: I think the A’s of the period were at least as good and may have been better. “The A's had a record of 313-143 (.686) between 1929 and '31; the Yanks, 302-160 (.654) between 1926 and '28. And while Philadelphia scored six fewer runs than the Yankees--2,710 to 2,716--the A's had five fewer runs scored against them: 1,992 to 1,997. That represents a difference between the two teams, in net scoring, of only one run.” I’ll extend that a little: from 1926-1931, the Yankees and Athletics both won three straight pennants and two World Series, 9both were upset by the Cardinals when they lost). Their records for those six years, (including the World Series) were: Yankees 581-357 (.619), Athletics 596-335 (.640). In the three years the Yankees won the pennant, the A’s finished behind them by a combined 30.5 games. In the three years the A’s won the pennant. They finished 47.5 games ahead of the Yankees. The Yankees did come out on top in head to head matches 68-64. The Yankee’s did have to rebuild their pitching staff in the years the A’s topped them. But they did so with Red Ruffin and Lefty Gomez, both of whom James has rated higher than anyone on the ’27 staff. The A’s staff with Grove, Rommel and George Earnshaw was arguably better anyway. And the 1931 Yankees were the highest scoring teams of the 20th century with 1067 runs. The 1930 Yankees were almost as good with 1062. So those struggling pitchers had a lot to work with. But they were no match for the A’s.
8) It’s not even clear that the ’27 Yankees were the greatest Yankee team of that era. It’s the ’32 Yankees that have the most James points in history. They were 107-47, (vs. 110-44) and won their pennant by 13 games over the A’s and then swept the World Series. They had Ruth and Gehrig. It was the Babe’s last really great year but it was a great one, (.341-41-137-120. They also had Combs and Lazzeri, still going strong. Hall of Famer Bill Dickey was behind the plate. Hall of Famer Joe Sewell was at third. Frankie Crosetti was at short. James ranked him at #67Mark Koenig didn’t make the top 100. Ben Chapman was surely the equal of Bob Meusel in right field (.299 with 41 doubles, 15 triples, 10 home runs and 38 steals. Ruffing and Gomez were in their primes and James had them rated higher than Pennock and Hoyt. Why not that team?
9) The Yankees were not really a dynasty yet in the Babe Ruth Era. They won 7 pennants and 4 World Series in 15 years. That’s very impressive. But it means that half the time somebody else won the pennant and half the time somebody else won the World Series. it doesn’t compare to what the Yankees did from 1936-64, when they won 22 pennants and 16 World Series in 29 years, (and it would have been more but for the war. In Ruth’s era. The difference was that the Yankees had used all the money they made in the Ruth Era to copy Branch Ricky’s concept of a farm system but to do it on a grander scale. When people talk about the great Yankees teams of the 36-64 era, they acknowledge the greatness of DiMaggio and Mantle and even Berra and Ford but what they talk about most is that the Yankees had guys on their bench who could start for other teams. They could fill out a pitching rotation better than anyone else. They invented the bullpen. But that came after the Babe Ruth period. It’s not surprising that the 1932 Yankees were actually better than the 1927 Yankees and I think the 1936-39 Yankees were better than either one of them, (a conclusion Epstein and Neyer also came to). And I think the integrated teams of future decades were better than them.
I don’t know who the greatest team ever was but I don’t believe it was the 1927 Yankees. I think they were viewed as such for so many years because that was the year Babe Ruth hit the most home runs he ever hit, so people assumed that was the franchise’s peak year. They certainly were dominant in that year but not in an unprecedented sense:: other teams had won more games and a higher percentage of them and won the pennant by more games. Their remarkable success in the World Series helped cement their reputation but I’ve always felt the regular season was a better measure of a team’s strength. I don’t think they were better than the Athletics of that era, who had the misfortune to get upset by the Cardinals in their peak year, rather than their initial year. I agree with Nack that they suffered from representing Philadelphia, rather than New York and for being less colorful than the Yankees. But they weren’t a worse team. In what sport does anybody think that the greatest team played in the 1920’s? And no matter how good a segregated team was, wouldn’t they have been better if they were integrated? I think I’d go with the ’63 Dodgers, the ’70 Orioles the ’75 Reds or the ’98 Yankees, but I’m not sure which one.
Sorry, Bill.
