Baseball’s Greatest Deep & Well Rounded Teams (Sorta/Kinda)
This is a quick and dirty, back of the envelope, attempt to find which teams in baseball history had a lot of good hitters and pitchers in the same season.
First, I took this list:
From 1901 to 2011, teams with 10+ batters where OPS+>=100 and they had at least 80 PA.
Then, I cross-referenced it, via eye-ball, with this list:
From 1901 to 2011, teams with 9+ pitchers where ERA+>=100 and they had at least 40 IP
And, I got the following teams to make both lists:
The 1942 St. Louis Cardinals
The 1997 New York Yankees
The 1998 New York Yankees
The 1999 Cleveland Indians
The 2006 Toronto Blue Jays
The 2007 San Diego Padres
Those last two teams surprised me. And, it suggests that this is not the best way to slice this pie.
Still, it would be fun to see the ’42 Cards and the ’98 Yankees match up in a best of seven and see what happens…
Related: http://articles.courant.com/1998-10-25/features/9810250316_1_yankees-rank-eras-top-teams
A better way to slice the pie?
6 or more batters with OPS+ of 120 and at least 400 PA, PLUS
4 or more starting pitchers with ERA+ of 120 and at least 160 IP, PLUS
3 or more relievers with ERA+ of 140 and at least 60 IP.
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These requirements are so stringent that at first guess, I don’t know if there are any teams that meet all of them….OK, took a quick search, and there are no such teams. Let’s relax the standards a bit. 3 starters and 2 relievers….nope.
Don’t have the time now to play with this. Try again another day.