PERFECT GAME CROSSCHECKER'S TOP TEN LIST
WEEK 11: 3/24/08 - 3/30/08
 
100 WINS: NOT WHAT IT USED TO MEAN
Monday March 24, 2008
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