The Strongest Teams Ever

            Of course there are many ways to rank and compare the greatest teams ever, but in terms of having the strongest personnel, what was the greatest team ever put together?

            The 1931 New York Yankees.

            The 1931 Yankees had six Hall of Famers in their regular lineup—catcher Bill Dickey, first baseman Lou Gehrig, second baseman Tony Lazzeri, third baseman Joe Sewell, center fielder Earle Combs, and right fielder Babe Ruth.     The two regulars who are not in the Hall of Fame were shortstop Lyn Lary and left fielder Ben Chapman.    Chapman scored 120 runs, drove in 122, hit 17 homers, stole 61 bases and averaged .315, so he wasn’t too bad, either.    The non-Hall of Fame shortstop, Lary, scored 100 runs and drove in 107.   

            In the starting rotation the Yankees had three more Hall of Famers—Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez, and Herb Pennock.   The weak spot of the team was the fourth starter, Hank Johnson.   He didn’t throw strikes.  

            The 1931 Yankees did not win the pennant.   They finished “only” 94-59, thirteen and a half games behind the A’s.   They did, however, score more runs than any team in major league history (unless you count the 19^th century as major league baseball, which it wasn’t.)     They under-achieved, as a team, and the A’s were a good team, too, and the A’s beat them by a good margin. 

            They evened things up the next year.  In 1932 the Yankees won 107 games, and swept the Cubs in the World Series.   That team was really the same. . ..Frank Crosetti had replaced Lyn Lary at shortstop, and Johnny Allen and George Pipgras had replaced Pennock and Hank Johnson in the starting rotation.   We credit the 1931 team with 291 points, which adjusts to a team score of 315 when we allow for the thirteenth position (the comparison to teams using a relief ace.)   The 1932 team totaled 289 points, which adjusts to a score of 313.

            I shouldn’t say that those are the strongest teams of all time, because I haven’t checked all teams all time; I’ve actually checked only 250 full teams.   I checked the teams that I thought might rank at the highest level, and I’d be surprised if there was another team as strong.   These were the top ten teams that I have found, in terms of roster strength: 

            Basically, the 1920s/1930s Yankees and the 1970s Cincinnati Reds dominate the list of the strongest teams that I have found.   

            Let’s assume that you know as much as you need to know about the 1970s Cincinnati Reds.    There is something we learn already from doing this:  Even the very strongest teams don’t always win.   All of the top ten teams had winning records; all finished at least 18 games over .500.   Seven of the ten finished over .600—but five of the ten did not win their league or division championship.

            The 1920s/1930s Yankees and 1970s Reds dominate the list outside the top ten, so let’s give the devils their due, list the top 25, and then we can move on:

            Ok, we have acknowledged that the strongest rosters ever were those two teams.   The question then becomes, what are the strongest teams ever that weren’t the Ruth/Gehrig Yankees or the Morgan/Rose Reds?

            Here, we’re probably missing some teams; there are no doubt some teams I haven’t yet found that would crack the top ten “others” list.   But the ones I have found are:           

             Which is really seven teams, with two repeaters.  Let’s look at those one at a time:

            1.   The 1957-1958 Milwaukee Braves.    I have raved about the phenomenal strength of this roster many times before, and I’m obviously not surprised to see them on the list.   They had three front-rank Hall of Famers (Aaron, Eddie Mathews and Spahn) highlighting what was probably a competitive team even without those three players.   If those three guys missed the bus they still had the league’s best catcher, Del Crandall, a cleanup hitter in Joe Adcock, two outstanding starting pitchers in Lew Burdette and Bob Buhl, a strong double-play combination in Johnny Logan and Red Schoendienst (another Hall of Famer), and two more strong outfielders in Bill Bruton and Wes Covington.   And a strong reliever in Don McMahon.   A lot of talent.

            2.   The 1979 Yankees.    The Yankees won their division in ’76, ’77, ’78 and 1980, but didn’t win in 1979.    In ’79 Munson was killed in a plane crash, Goose Gossage hurt his thumb in an locker-room altercation with Cliff Johnson, Catfish Hunter disintegrated (finishing 2-9), and Bob Lemon was fired in mid-season.   The team never quite got their feet on the ground, and under-performed—but on paper, it was the strongest team of that run, and one of the strongest teams ever.   Which I didn’t realize until doing this study. . .a complete surprise to me.

            3.   The 1967-1968 St. Louis Cardinals.    This team, which I’ll write more about later, has been over-looked and under-rated in history.   I believe that they truly were one of the greatest teams of all time.

            4.   The 1969-1970 Baltimore Orioles.    Again, a famous team, already recognized by some as one of the strongest teams ever.

            5.  The 1973 Oakland A’s.    Wrote about them earlier.   Three straight World Championships speak for themselves.

             6.  The 1975 Boston Red Sox.    The outfield was Lynn, Rice and Evans.  Any of the three could be in the Hall of Fame.   The lineup had two other Hall of Famers, Fisk and Carl Yastrzemski, and good players at the other positions—Burleson, Cecil Cooper, Luis Tiant, Bill Lee, Rick Wise.    They lost the Series to the Reds, who were of course an even greater team, and then they let the Yankees get ahead of them and take the division the next three years.    But the 1975 Red Sox were a tremendous team—a historic team.

            7.   The 1964 San Francisco Giants.   Mays, McCovey, Cepeda.   Marichal and Gaylord Perry as the 1-2 starters.   Solid personnel at most of the other spots.

            The Giants of the sixties may be history’s greatest multi-year under-achievers.   The 1964 team ranks 27^th on my list—but the ’63 team is 28^th, the ’67 team 29^th, the ’65 team 41^st and the ’68 team 44^th.   None of these teams won; they won in ’62, and then, despite a formidable collection of front-line talent, never won again.

Among the Missing 

            I haven’t thoroughly checked out, for example, all of John McGraw’s best teams, or all of the Honus Wagner-era Pirates, and there may be another team somewhere like the ’62 Giants, who won only one pennant but, when you look at the personnel on the team, might have had a dynasty. 

            I did check out, however, the Jackie Robinson era Dodgers.   I expected those teams to be right there with the Babe Ruth Yankees and the Johnny Bench Reds.    They had, after all, four Hall of Famers playing together for almost a decade (Snider, Robinson, Pee Wee Reese and Campanella), and then there is Don Newcombe, who was tremendous, and Junior Gilliam, Carl Furillo.   I thought it would be enough to put them in the same group.

            I checked out every Dodger team from 1941 to 1966.    The strongest Dodger team of that era—complete surprise to me—was actually the 1963 Dodgers.

            The ’63 Dodgers were a great team.   They won 99 games and swept the Yankees in the World Series.   The team was consistently successful from ’62 to ’66.  

            Still, perhaps unduly influenced by Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer, I always thought that the 50s teams had more talent.   Of course, maybe they do; maybe my system is totally wrong.   The Boys of Summer places the center of the Dodger dynasty at 1953, so let’s compare the 1953 Dodgers (105-49) to the 1975 Reds (108-54):

Catcher            Johnny Bench   40        Roy Campanella           26        Advantage Reds

First Base         Tony Perez      35         Gil Hodges                   22        Advantage Reds

Second Base    Joe Morgan     37         Junior Gilliam                19        Advantage Reds

Third Base        Pete Rose        33         Billy Cox                      10        Advantage Reds

            The Reds are ahead 145-77 after four positions, so let’s stop a moment and ask whether this is a legitimate evaluation.   Campanella in ’53 had his greatest year, and certainly Campanella in ’53 had a better year than Bench did in ’75—thus, I can understand someone saying that this is not an accurate comparison.   Still, in my judgment Johnny Bench had a greater career than Campanella, and comparing a 27-year-old Johnny Bench to a 31-year-old Roy Campanella, I think you would have to gamble on the 27-year-old Bench to have a better year.

            At first base we are (again) comparing similar players, Hodges and Perez; there’s not much difference between them, and it does seem that the 35-22 edge for Perez, based on the fact that Perez had a longer career and was voted into the Hall of Fame, might be excessive a little large.  

            Jim Gilliam was a good player, but it’s hard to argue the notion that Joe Morgan was quite a bit better, and obviously Pete Rose had a better career than Billy Cox.   We might, giving the Dodgers the benefit of the doubt, declare catcher and first base to be even at 62-62.   That would leave the Reds ahead 137-91 when we add in second and third.

Shortstop         Concepcion      26        Pee Wee Reese            27        Advantage Dodgers

Left Field          George Foster  23       Jackie Robinson            15        Advantage Reds

Center Field     Geronimo        16         Duke Snider                 32        Advantage Dodgers

Right Field        Ken Griffey      21        Carl Furillo                   18        Advantage Reds

            The Dodgers have Hall of Famers at three of these four positions, no Hall of Famers for the Reds, and the Dodgers win the group by a narrow 92-86 margin.   Pee Wee is in the Hall of Fame, Concepcion isn’t, but—like Hodges and Perez—there really isn’t much difference between them.    Pee Wee was 34, Concepcion was 27, and saying that Reese is even one point ahead is generous to the Dodgers.

            George Foster in ’75 was 25 years old; Jackie was 34, and you kind of have to go with Foster in that one, I think.    Obviously, Snider was better than Geronimo.  In right field you have a career .299 hitter with some power and a great throwing arm against a .296 hitter who had a longer career, more speed, and again, Griffey is six years younger at the time of the comparison.

            The Dodgers by 1953 were aging.   We get higher ratings for Furillo, Robinson, Reese and Campy if we back it up a few years, but the problem with that is that if we back them up a few years, the team was weaker, not stronger.   Hodges and Snider exit their prime as Reese and Robby enter it (walking backward), and holes start to appear on the team as players like Gilliam and Carl Erskine are replaced by names like Hermanski and Rex Barney.

            Anyway, adding up the eight position players by our method the Reds are still ahead 231-169, or 223-183 with the subjective bonus we gave the Dodgers earlier.   Neither team has outstanding starting pitching:

#1 Starter         Billingham         17        Carl Erskine                 16        Advantage Reds

#2 Starter         Don Gullett       15        Russ Meyer                  12        Advantage Reds

#3 Starter         Gary Nolan      15        Billy Loes                       9        Advantage Reds

#4 Starter         Fred Norman   11        Preacher Roe                 8        Advantage Reds

            There are no stars here, on either team.  Billingham was 145-113 in his career, 3.83 ERA; Erskine was 122-78, 3.99 ERA.   Who do you want?   It’s close.   Freddy Norman and Preacher Roe were both lefties who didn’t find themselves until they had some bad seasons with bad teams (Norman was 3-12 with the Padres in ’71; Roe was 4-15 with the Pirates in ’47.)   Preacher had a little better career, but he was 38 years old in 1953; Norman was 30 years old in 1975.  Who are you going to take?

            Don Gullett was 109-50 in his career; Russ Meyer was 94-73, so that one probably isn’t really as close as our system scores it.  Gary Nolan was 110-70; Billy Loes had a 80-63.  Again, I think you have to take Nolan.   I’m not saying it’s a big difference, but I think the Reds’ starting pitching is a little better, and we’ve scored it 58-45 for the Reds, bringing us to 289-214, or 281-228 if we decide that Campanella and Hodges should be treated as the equal of Bench and Perez. 

            In 1953 the Dodgers’ ace, Don Newcombe, was in the Army, unavailable to pitch.  Newcombe scores at 24 in his best seasons—he actually scores the same as Sandy Koufax, for all practical purposes—so the Dodgers’ starting pitcher is stronger in years when Newcombe was with the team.   But that has the same problem; when you gain Newcombe, you lose something else.  By ’56, when Newcombe had his MVP season, Jackie Robinson was on his last legs, and all of those other guys whose age if a problem for the ’53 team, Reese and Campy and Furillo, their expected value—and their actual value—had dropped way off.  

            Finally there’s the bullpen:

Closer              Rawly Eastwick   9       Clem Labine     16        Advantage Dodgers

            Labine had a longer career than Eastwick and was closer to his prime, so our system assumes he should be better, which closes the gap a little:  Cincinnati 298, Dodgers 230. 

            It’s really not close.   You can conclude what you want; you can believe the system or not.   Brooklyn in the 1950s was a place where a great many writers grew up, and many, many of them went on in years later to wax romantic about the Boys of Summer, sometimes for the better part of their careers.  My conclusion is that I have been misled by this Dodger hagiography into believing that the talent on the team was more impressive than it really was.  

            Another team that doesn’t do particularly well in our analysis is the 1961 Yankees.   That’s an understatement.   Among the 250 teams that I have evaluated so far, the Yankees rank 109^th.   

            The ’61 Yankees, of course, are one of the most celebrated powerhouse teams of all time.    For many years, I have been arguing that they’re overrated, that their talent is really not that impressive.    But even I would never have guessed that they would come out as poorly as they do in this structure. 

            Let’s compare the 1961 Yankees to. . .I don’t know, the ’59 White Sox.  The ’59 White Sox were a famous team as well; they were called the Go-Go Sox.   They were famous for scraping together enough manufactured runs to win a breakthrough pennant, besting the Yankees one year, but nobody thinks of them as a truly great team:

Catcher            Elston Howard  24     Sherm Lollar                20           Advantage Yankees

First Base         Bill Skowron     17     Earl Torgeson                9           Advantage Yankees

Second Base    B Richardson    14     Nellie Fox                    34           Advantage White Sox

Third Base        Clete Boyer       17     Bubba Phillips             11           Advantage Yankees

Shortstop         Tony Kubek      11     Luis Aparicio               36           Advantage White Sox

Left Field          Yogi Berra        22     Al Smith                      15           Advantage Yankees

Center Field     Mickey Mantle  36     Jim Landis                   15           Advantage Yankees

Right Field        Roger Maris      21     Jim Rivera                     6           Advantage Yankees

#1 Starter         Whitey Ford     27      Billy Pierce                     23        Advantage Yankees

#2 Starter         Ralph Terry      12       Early Wynn                   15        Advantage White Sox

#3 Starter         Bill Stafford         4       Dick Donovan              14        Advantage White Sox

#4 Starter         Rollie Sheldon     4       Bob Shaw                    13        Advantage White Sox

Closer              Luis Arroyo         7       Turk Lown                   12        Advantage White Sox

            The Yankees have the advantage at seven positions, the Go-Go Sox at six, but the point count is 222-216, White Sox.   

            The White Sox third starter was Dick Donovan, 122-99 in his career, with seasons of 15-9, 16-6, 15-14 and 20-9, and also led the league in ERA one year when he was 10-10.   The Yankees third starter was Bill Stafford, who was 43-40 in his career, never won 15 games in a season, and was 21 years old in 1961.   Who are you going to take?

            The White Sox fourth starter was Bob Shaw, 108-98 in his career, 3.52 ERA.  The Yankees fourth starter was Rollie Sheldon, 38-36 in his career, 4.12 ERA, 24 years old in 1961.   Who are you going to take?

            Look, I’m not arguing the fact that the Yankees had a terrific year in 1961.  They over-achieved, as a team, by a huge margin.   What I’m arguing is the talent on the roster.   One of the things we mean by the term “a great team” is “a great collection of players.”   This doesn’t qualify.    You’ve got one true superstar here, Mantle, four stars (Elston Howard,  Yogi Berra, Roger Maris and Whitey Ford), five solid players and three positions that should have been weak, although those three players had career years and weren’t as weak as they look on paper.   Well, they weren’t weak at all; those three pitchers got terrific results, despite their short careers and general lack of credentials.

            And a primary reason that the 1961 Yankees overachieved by a historic margin was:  that the league was terrible.    The ’61 Yankees were miles away from being a truly great team, but they were the best team in the American League.   These are the ten American League teams in 1961, summarized into catcher, infield, outfield, starting pitching, and closer.   They are presented in the order of finish:

            The ’61 Yankees had the league’s best catcher, the league’s best outfield, an above-average infield, and above-average starting pitching.  They had the best team overall.  

            For the American League in 1961 there is a strong correlation between talent and performance—as their usually is.   Basically all of the teams finished about where they should have finished except the Minnesota Twins, who under-achieved by a wide margin.  

            But this is a very weak league.  Among the 250 teams that I have studied so far, only eleven had scores of less than 100—one team in 23.  In this ten team-league there are three of those teams.  

            Yes, of course, you are going to say; it was a weak league because of expansion.   That’s true—but it is part of the truth.   The whole truth is that the American League at that time was terribly weak anyway, and then it expanded, and then it was really weak.  

            At the time that I became a baseball fan—which was in 1961—it was the common wisdom of the experts that the American League was far weaker than the National League.   The American League lost the All-Star game with astonishing regularity and had lost the World Series in ’54, ’55, ’57, ’59 and ’60, and all the experts “knew” that the American had fallen behind the National League because they didn’t go after the best black players when the color line was broken, allowing most of the top stars to go the National League. 

            As an American League fan I deeply and bitterly resented this National League smugness, and I didn’t believe a word of it.   I also didn’t quite understand how it could be true.   Into the 1990s, when I was asked about the relative quality of the two leagues, I would always answer that I didn’t understand how a significant difference between the quality of the two leagues could be sustained.   The leagues draft players from a common pool, right?  They train players side-by-side in the minor leagues.   Players move back and forth between the two leagues all the time   Where does this disparity come from?  

            You live and learn.   With a schedule of 100+ inter-league games every year, it has become impossible to deny that there is a meaningful disparity between the leagues.   And, working inside baseball, I have come to see how this is possible.

            In the American League East, we build better teams than they have in some of the other divisions because we have to.   The Yankees started it.   They Yankees came up with three or four Hall of Fame-quality players in just a few years in the early 1990s, and they got to be ridiculously good.   Although they couldn’t continue to produce Derek Jeters and Jorge Posadas and Mariano Riveras and Bernie Williamses every year, they continued to import talent at the highest level, bringing in Hall of Fame pitchers and MVP sluggers almost every winter.

            It gave the rest of the division two options:  get better or accept losing.   Work harder, work smarter, take more risks, spend more money, hold yourself to a higher standard—or let the Yankees have it.   It’s up to you.

            I now believe that the conventional wisdom about the relative quality of the leagues in the 1960s, which I hated at the time, was essentially correct.    The disparity between the quality of the leagues really started when Walter O’Malley lured Branch Rickey away from St. Louis, and brought him to Brooklyn, in 1942.  

            The Cardinals at that time were to the National League essentially what the Yankees were to the American League—not exactly, but essentially.   Both teams were down-and-out organizations before World War I.   Both teams started to get organized and started to take charge of their fortunes about the end of World War I.   The Cardinals didn’t quite dominate to the extent the Yankees did, but they won the National League in 1926, 1928, 1930, 1931 and 1934.   They had a tough stretch in the late 1930s, when they let Frankie Frisch ruin the team, but by 1942 they were back in control, winning the NL in 1942, ’43, ’44 and ’46.   Nine pennants in 21 years.

            But in the American League, years of domination by the Yankees had gradually beaten down most of the league.  By the 1950s most of the teams in the American League, on some level, had come to terms with the fact that they just weren’t going to beat the Yankees—just like you and I; we come to terms with the fact that the boss is the boss and we’re not.  

            This didn’t happen in the National League, and it didn’t happen mostly because Walter O’Malley, when he bought the Dodgers, refused to accept the domination of the league by the St. Louis Cardinals.    He went after Branch Rickey, the genius who had constructed the Cardinal machine.  Rickey broke the color line, and the other teams in the league—at least some of them—realized that they had to go after the same kind of players, or they were going to get left in the dust.   The National League remained competitive while the American League effectively conceded to the Yankee domination. 

This competition had caused the National League, by 1960, to become much stronger than the American League.

            Then there was expansion, which introduced two extremely weak teams into this very weak league.    In 1961 the American League had not a single team that was in the top 40% of all teams in terms of talent—while having three teams that were in bottom five percent.   In this environment the Yankees—who were the best team in the league—had a year where several players over-achieved, and they had what looks like a historic year, with 109 wins and several major home run records that would not be broken until the steroid era. 

            And then they caught another break when they faced in the World Series a team, the Reds, that was far from the best team in the National League.  The ’61 Reds had tremendously over-achieved, but were, on paper, one of the weakest teams ever to win the National League.   The Yankees routed them, and that cemented their reputation as a historic team.   But. …just my opinion. . they weren’t a great team; they weren’t even really a good team.    In my opinion, there have been leagues in which the 1961 Yankees would have finished in the second division.

            Another team that disappoints in our analysis is the 1929-1931 Philadelphia A’s.   There is a gentleman (sorry I am blanking out on the name) who has been arguing for 30 years that this team was greater than the ’27 Yankees.   I think his name is Swindell.  Anyway, his argument. .. which, to an extent, I would have bought into before doing this research. ..is that the ’27 Yankees were “built first”, but that, when both teams were assembled, the Athletics were clearly the better team, beating the Yankees by wide margins all three seasons. 

            Well, maybe.   The ’29-’31 Athletics did win two World Championships and did beat the Yankees by wide margins, and we’re certainly not trying to deny them credit for what they accomplished.    But by our analysis, the team on paper is not in the same country club as the ’27 Yankees.   Let’s compare the ’31 A’s to the ’31 Yankees, which was the strongest team on paper that I have yet encountered:

Catcher            Bill Dickey        33        Mickey Cochrane         31        Advantage Yankees

First Base         Lou Gehrig       33        Jimmie Foxx                 31        Yankees

Second Base    Tony Lazzeri     29        Max Bishop                  13        Yankees

Third Base        Joe Sewell        28        Jimmy Dykes                20        Yankees

Shortstop         Lyn Lary          18        Dib Williams                   3        Yankees

Left Field          Babe Ruth        29        Bing Miller                      9        Yankees

Center Field     Earle Combs    24        Al Simmons                  34        Philadelphia

Right Field        Ben Chapman   13        Mule Haas                    12        Yankees

#1 Starter         Red Ruffing    38          Lefty Grove                  32        Yankees

#2 Starter         Lefty Gomez   20          George Earnshaw         15        Yankees

#3 Starter         Herb Pennock 19        Rube Waddell              15        Yankees

#4 Starter         Hank Johnson   7          Roy Mahaffey                 9        Philadelphia

            The representation that Red Ruffing was stronger than Lefty Grove, because he was younger and had a longer career, is dead wrong.    Our system simply misses that one.   It’s wrong, but it’s six points in a battle in which the Yankees whomp the A’s 291-224 (311-243 with the “thirteenth man” adjustment).    Let’s suppose we make that one 40-30 Philadelphia and also flip the catcher advantage the other way (33-31 Philadelphia).  That would make the score 281-234, Yankees.    Give the A’s a superstar shortstop, and they’re still not close to the Yankees, in terms of the strength of the roster.  And yes, the A’s won 107 games and won the league, but then, the Yankees won 107 games and won the World Series the next year.  

            Another team that doesn’t come out as strong as I thought they would is the 1942 Cardinals.    The ’42 Cardinals evaluation by our method may be damaged by the war, which cut several years out of the careers of some of their stars—Slaughter, Beazley. 

But I don’t know that that’s exactly it.   I have this team scored at 216—even with the ’61 Yankees—and probably the war is robbing them of 15, 20 points.   But if you look at them, several of their best players played THROUGH the war, and actually may have enhanced their credentials by playing through the war.   My opinion at this time is that the 1942 Cardinals just really were not as good as I thought they were, and probably were not as good as they have been ranked by other historians.

            The 1919 White Sox. . .I have that team scored at 225, but of course there we have really serious problems with truncated careers and players of Hall of Fame caliber being denied Hall of Fame status.   This method doesn’t really prove anything about the relative quality of the 1919 White Sox, except that they were obviously pretty good.   They score at 225, and they have to have lost at least 40 points in our scoring system due to the scandal.   That would put them among the top 40 teams we have found, or thereabouts.    

The Weakest Rosters Ever 

            Andy Seminick, 24 years old, played 80 games and batted 188 times for the 1945 Philadelphia Phillies.   That wouldn’t ordinarily qualify him as a regular, but the Phillies split their catching duties four ways and somebody has to be listed in the catcher’s slot, so Seminick is elected.  

            Seminick was a good player; even at age 24 he scores at 17, which is Solid+.   These 17 points are more than one-fourth of the team’s total.   You remember before I talked about Tony Daniels, who was the only player I had found who was a regular but scored at zero?   He was on this team.   Their third baseman, John Antonelli, scores at “1”, and the shortstop, Bitsy Mott, scores at “1”.   Their best starting pitcher, Charley Schanz, scores at 4.   He had a career record of 28-43, 4.33 ERA.  

            In a war-ravaged league in which even the best teams were terrible, the Phillies finished 46-108.   Their twelve regulars total up to 61 points, which we adjust to 66 to give them credit for an extra position player.   This makes the 1945 Phillies easily the worst team that I have found—in fact, the Phillies of that era dominate the loser boards to an even greater extent than the Yankees and Reds dominate the leader boards, so let’s list those and get them out of the way:

            I have no doubt that there are other really terrible teams in history that I just haven’t found yet.   I wouldn’t be surprised if there are other teams out there somewhere whose rosters were as sparse as lean as the ’45 Phillies. 

            Anyway, other than the Phillies of that era, these are the worst rosters that I have so far located:

            All of those teams lost 90+ games except the ’45 Dodgers and the 1911 New York Yankees, then more often called the Highlanders.  The ’45 Dodgers competed, of course, because all the good players were off fighting the war.   The 1911 Highlanders are discussed in some of the interviews in The Glory of Their Times.

            Anyway, next on the list we have two expansion teams, the two in the American League in ’61.  The Red Sox from the time they began selling talent to the Yankees (about 1918) got worse and worse until Tom Yawkey bought the team; the ’31 team is one of the last pre-Yawkey Red Sox rosters.   The ’61 A’s, my first favorite team, were awful, and we have the expansion Royals on the list and the first four Padre teams, ’69, ’70, ’71 and ’72.   As I say, I’m sure there are other teams out there that were equally bad.

            In tomorrow’s article we’ll get to the question which started this line of thought;  over-achieving teams.