Who was the best baseball team of all time? This timeless question can most effectively be answered through comprehensive analysis of baseball statistics. Over the course of a season, winning teams tend to score more runs while allowing fewer than their opponents. The greater the difference in runs per game, the more a team can be expected to win. Comparing this data for the top five percent of Major League nines from 1901 through 2014, this book argues that runs above league average is the best statistic for ranking teams. The author sorts 220 teams by era, franchise and skills—hitting, fielding, baserunning, pitching—evaluates their strengths and weaknesses and assigns numerical values to each player’s skills to demonstrate how they contributed to team performance.

Don Cox is a program manager living in Leland, North Carolina, and is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).

Don Cox
Format: softcover (8.5 x 11)
Pages: 208
Bibliographic Info: tables, appendices, index
Copyright Date: 2016
pISBN: 978-1-4766-6328-9
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2319-1
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents


Preface  1

Introduction  3

Part I

1. The ­Dead-Ball Era (1901–1919)  13

2. The ­Live-Ball Era (1920–1960)  47

3. The Expansion Era (1961–2014)  103

Part II

4. Rankings  155

5. Great Teams by Franchise  173

Appendix A: Team Valuations  187

Appendix B: Player Valuations  189

Index  191