Which Teams To Include?
Dynasty Project Thoughts
Which Teams To Include?
Let’s say you’re interested in doing one of those Dynasty projects. You know what I mean: a project like the one I wrote about just the other day. You want to take the best teams in baseball history and play them against each other.
There’s just one problem, however. How do you decide which teams to include?
In my experience, there are two general methods that people use to decide which teams to include in a greatest teams / dynasties project. Let’s go over them in a little bit of detail.
Regular Season Wins
The first method is the most obvious. Take a look at the teams with the highest regular season win totals in baseball history and choose from among them.
You’ll wind up with a list like this, from Baseball Almanac:
Now, you might wonder why we don’t go with the won-loss percentage instead. That’s easy, actually: high won-loss records favor teams that played fewer games. Your high won-loss record list will wind up looking like this (from Wikipedia):
I might be a tad too skeptical, but I just don’t see how the 1887 Browns, 1886 Wolverines, and the 2020 Dodgers belong in the same company as the 1939 Yankees and the 1931 Athletics.
Anyway, that list of high win total teams works, but there are a few issues:
Several teams are almost carbon copies of each other (for example, the 1969 Orioles and the 1970 Orioles).
You’ve got a bunch of teams that fell apart during the World Series or playoffs, when games mattered the most — most notably the 1906 Cubs.
Some teams didn’t even make the playoffs. How can you say the 1942 Dodgers are one of the greatest teams of all time when they couldn’t win their own league?
The list seems to be too heavily dominated by post-2000 teams.
Domination Index
We could always use the Domination Index as an alternative measure.
If you’ve forgotten what that index is, here’s a refresher:
Now, we’re going to get somewhat similar teams through this method that we do using raw win totals. That makes sense, of course: dominant teams usually win ballgames.
Here’s the National League top list, complete through the 2022 season (I still need to add in the 2023 numbers):
And here is the American League version:
You’ll notice right away that these lists aren’t quite as heavily weighted towards modern seasons. The 2022 Dodgers might have benefited from a favorable schedule. However, I really doubt anybody would argue about the 1998 Yankees.
Still, there are some problems with using the Domination Index to settle the question:
We’ve still got the carbon copy problem, especially when we’ve got the 2020 Dodgers, 2021 Dodgers, and 2022 Dodgers all together.
It’s not as flagrant, but there are still teams here that didn’t win their own league or division. The 1905 White Sox are the most obvious example of this: if I included more than the top 30 teams in each league, you’d see more.
Our measuring stick rewards good teams that beat up mercilessly on poor teams. Teams that overcame extremely difficult pennant challenges, such as the 1978 Yankees and the 1993 Braves, are nowhere to be seen.
Scattered Thoughts
I’ve got a few more thoughts on what would constitute a good “greatest teams” league. As you know, I’m not shy about sharing what I think.
Championships matter. No, we’re not going to have a project like this in which we don’t have the 1906 Cubs, the 2022 Dodgers, or the 2001 Mariners. Excluding those teams would be silly. However, it’s really hard to call a certain team an all-time great team if they fell apart in October.
Level of difficulty matters. The 1954 Indians might seem like a natural addition, but you’ve got to realize that they beat up on lousy teams like the Red Sox and Orioles: they were only .500 against the Yankees and White Sox. If you’re trying to decide between including one team and excluding another, you simply have to give the edge to a team that had to overcome a really difficult regular season opponent, such as the 1985 Cardinals, or the 1962 Giants.
Interleague play screws stuff up. I mentioned this above in connection with the 2022 Dodgers. It’s really hard to make meaningful conclusions when schedules are imbalanced. The problem with interleague play, however, is that you played certain teams that nobody else in your division played. I know that MLB has fixed this with the 2023 season. At the very least, you’ve got to do some digging to check to see if a team like the 2022 Dodgers didn’t have an unfair advantage.
You need to mix it up. Rather than having two big leagues, I’d recommend creating a series of smaller leagues — maybe 8 leagues of 8 teams each. The idea is to prevent teams that are copies of each other from playing against each other. Ideally, you don’t want to have the same players showing up in each isolated league. After all, nobody really wants to watch the 1950 Yankees take on the 1952 Yankees.
Treat the process like you’re hiring someone for a job. Yeah, the resume for the 2008 Cubs looks good on paper — but you’ve got to look deeper than just the number of wins and the domination levels. Are there memorable players on the team in question that you won’t find anywhere else? Is there a story worth following that could make your project more interesting? Maybe you have a personal connection to a certain team: for example, my dad and I took a trip to New York in August 2001 to see the Mariners take on the Yankees twice. You bet I’m not going to let the 2001 Mariners miss out on a project like this.
Anyway, there are a few things to think about. I’ll have more on this subject soon.