The 2008 major league season opens Tuesday in
Japan, with the reigning World Series champion Boston Red Sox taking on the
Oakland A’s. The Red Sox will certainly be favored to win again by numerous
fans and media outlets throughout the country, but accurately predicting World
Series winners in recent years has become a roll of the dice.
Boston became the first team in this decade to win the World Series twice.
Since 1997, a wild-card team has won five times, including 2006, when the St.
Louis Cardinals rode a lowly 83-win season to a championship. Nine times since
2000 has a wild-card team appeared in the World Series, including both teams in
2002 and 2006.
Since baseball went to a three-division, wild-card format in 1994, 18 teams
have won 100 games in a season, but only one, the 1998 New York Yankees
(114-48), has used that regular-season success as a springboard to a World
Series title. The most successful team in that period, the 2001 Seattle
Mariners (116-46), never even made it to the World Series.
The Atlanta Braves won 100 or more games five times in a 10-year run from 1993
to 2002, but their only World Series triumph came in a 90-win season in
1995—admittedly, a season shortened by a work stoppage, though the Cleveland
Indians still managed to win 100 games that year. Three teams won 100-plus
games in 2002, but all bowed out in division championship play as two wild
cards, the Anaheim Angels and San Francisco Giants, battled it out in the World
Series.
While the 1998 Yankees are the only team in the last 20 years with 100 or more
wins to capture a World Series, it wasn’t always that way. From the advent of
division play in 1969 through 1986, a total of 10 teams won the World Series
after winning 100 or more games during the regular season.
Following are baseball’s 10 winningest teams since three-division play started
in 1994, and the success (or lack of it) they achieved in post-season play.
|
| |
| Rank |
Team |
Record |
Post-Season |
| 1. |
Mariners ’01 |
116-46, .716 |
Lost in ALCS |
| 2. |
Yankees ’98 |
114-48, .704 |
Won World Series |
| 3. |
*Indians ’95 |
100-44, .694 |
Lost in World Series |
| 4. |
Braves ’98 |
106-56, .654 |
Lost in NLCS |
| 5. |
*Expos ’94 |
74-40, .649 |
World Series cancelled |
| 6. |
Cardinals ’04 |
105-57, .648 |
Lost in World Series |
| 7. |
Yankees ’02 |
103-58, .640 |
Lost in ALDS |
| 8. |
Braves ’99 |
103-59, .636 |
Lost in World Series |
| |
Athletics ’02 |
103-59, .636 |
Lost in ALDS |
| 10. |
Braves ’02 |
101-59, .631 |
Lost in ALDS |
|
| * Season shortened by work stoppage |
| -- Allan Simpson |
Top Ten List Archives |
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