Man, the NL West is full of some young teams. Yesterday we looked at the Arizona Diamondbacks and determined their best season, and today we're looking at the Colorado Rockies. Both teams have played less than 30 seasons.
But, like the Dbacks, the Rockies have seen some success in their short time. While they've never won a division title, they have made five playoff appearances and won a National League pennant in 2007. That makes it pretty easy to decide which season is the best in franchise history. The 2007 team won 90 games, and while they have won more in other seasons, it's not by much. The Rockies won 91 games in 2018 and 92 in 2009. But if you factor in the fact that 2007 was just their second postseason appearance ever and they managed to win a pennant, that has to take the cake as the better season. Let's take a look at some of the stats, too. The 2007 Rockies batted .280/.354/.437. They hit 171 home runs throughout the course of the season. For comparison, the 2009 Rockies batted .261/.343/.441 with 190 home runs. While the 2009 team did put up a better slugging percentage and more home runs, the 2007 squad has the better on-base plus slugging at .791. Each team only had two All-Star representatives, and none of them started in their respective games. When it comes to awards voting, here's another spot where the 2007 team comes out on top. The Rockies had players finish in the top 10 of both NL MVP and NL Cy Young voting in 2007. Matt Holliday placed second for the MVP while Jeff Francis came in ninth in Cy Young voting. The 2009 team had just one player finish in the top 10 for either award - Troy Tulowitzki placed fifth in MVP voting. Matt Holliday's 2007 season was actually insane, and I'd be willing to bet the only reason he didn't win the MVP award is because of the Coors Field effect. He finished the season hitting .340/.405/.607 with 36 home runs and 137 RBIs. Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins won the award with a slash line of .296/.344/.531 with 30 home runs and 94 RBIs. There's no reason Holliday shouldn't have won that award. But it is what it is, and the Rockies still had a great season in 2007. They've matched that win total twice since but neither time has resulted in as much postseason success as when they went on to their first World Series in franchise history. Of course, they lost in four games to the Red Sox, but overall, it was still a great season.
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We've gone through the NL East and NL Central in our Best Seasons series so far, so it's time to move on to the NL West. We'll start things off today with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The Dbacks have a pretty short history as they entered the league as an expansion team in 1998. They made an immediate impact though, winning 100 games in 1999. Two years later, they won their first and so far only World Series over the New York Yankees. Those two seasons are the obvious contenders for the best Dbacks season of all-time, but only one can take the crown. As I've said before, winning the World Series is not a criteria for a team's best season. I'm looking at the team that was on the field, and the best team doesn't always win the World Series. So with that in mind, I'm taking 1999 as the best Diamondbacks team in history. Their 100-62 record is the best the team has ever had. The '01 team won 92 games for comparison. The '99 team also performed better at the plate, batting .277/.347/.459 with 216 home runs. In '01, the Diamondbacks hit .267/.34`1/.442 with 208 home runs. Everyone knows the 2001 Diamondbacks for their pitching prowess that consisted of Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. The two aces finished first and second in Cy Young voting, respectively. They also won co-World Series MVP for their performances against the Yankees in the postseason. Despite their successes on the mound in 2001, the 1999 team was slightly better. The Diamondbacks finished the 1999 season with a 3.77 ERA compared to a 3.87 ERA in 2001. Curt Schilling wasn't yet with the team in '99, but Randy Johnson was, and his dominant season led to his second Cy Young Award. Johnson finished the 1999 season with a 2.48 ERA and 364 strikeouts. The 1999 team had four All-Stars - Jay Bell, Matt Williams, Johnson and Luis Gonzalez - compared to three on the 2001 squad. Any way you look at it, the 1999 team looks better than the 2001 Dbacks. Although the team clinched a championship in 2001, the product that was put on the field was better in 1999. And for the Diamondbacks to perform that well in just their second season of existence really says something about the management of the team. We wrap up our look at the best seasons by teams in the NL Central with the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cardinals, like multiple other teams in this division, have a long and storied history in Major League Baseball. Unlike the other NL Central teams, the Cardinals have been more successful. St. Louis has the second-most World Series wins in MLB with 11 championships. That made it a little difficult to determine which of those seasons was the best in franchise history, but the decision came down to two seasons. The Cardinals' two winningest seasons were 1942 and 1944, in which they won 106 and 105 games, respectively. They also won the World Series in both seasons, so either could have been selected as the best season in team history. The selection came down to one player: Stan the Man Musial. Musial played his first full season for the Cardinals in 1942, but it was 1943 when he started to become the legend that he is today. His 1943 season included his first of 24 All-Star selections and first of three NL MVP awards. He followed that up with another MVP-worthy performance, batting .347/.440/.549 with 12 home runs and 94 RBIs in 1944. He led the league in on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, hits and doubles. Musial earned his second All-Star appearance and placed fourth in MVP voting. (He should have won the award, but that's a whole other story.) His 1944 season was one of his best, but he wasn't the only one. The entire Cardinals team played better in 1944 than 1942. If you compare the two seasons, the Cardinals had a higher batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage in 1944. The team hit 100 home runs in 1944 compared to 60 in 1942. The Cardinals had six members selected to the All-Star game in each season. The 1944 Cardinals received more awards recognition, however, with four players finishing in the top 10 of MVP voting. While I personally think Musial had a fantastic season and should have won the 1944 MVP, the award ultimately went to his teammate Marty Marion, who batted .267/.324/.362 with six home runs and 63 RBIs. (See what I mean? How did Musial lose out on the award to Marion? Musial's batting average was almost as high as Marion's slugging percentage.) Along with those two, Walker Cooper and Mort Cooper also finished in the top 10 of MVP voting. The Cardinals finished the season 105-49 and with 16 more wins than the next-best team, who happened to be the St. Louis Browns. In the all St. Louis World Series, the Cardinals prevailed 4-2, giving Musial his second of three World Series championships and cementing that year as the team's best in franchise history. We're shifting gears today to talk about a team that's had a little more success. Yesterday's post took a look at the Milwaukee Brewers, and although they've had some good seasons, they still haven't clinched a World Series victory.
The Pirates, on the other hand, are one of the oldest teams in baseball and have had significantly more success than the Brewers. Pittsburgh has won nine National League pennants and five World Series titles since the team started play in 1882. Despite their lack of recent success - the Pirates have only made the playoffs three times since 1993 - the team has a winning history. Unfortunately for them, most of that winning was done over 100 years ago. Of the Pirates 16 seasons with a .600 winning percentage or higher, nine of those seasons took place before 1920. So you could say it's been a while since the Pirates have really been one of the best teams in MLB, which means it's also been a while since their best season in franchise history. That season took place in 1909, when the Pirates won 110 games and the World Series, their first championship in team history. That Pirates team ranked third in batting average (.260), second in on-base percentage (.327) and first in slugging percentage (.353) during the 1909 season. They were second in the league in total home runs with a whopping 25 dingers. They also led the league in doubles (218) and triples (92). By that days standards, this was a high-powered offense. The pitching staff wasn't as dominant, but they did post a 2.07 ERA, good for fourth in the league. The MVP award wasn't around yet, but if it was, Honus Wagner would have been a contender. The Hall of Fame shortstop hit .339/.420/.489 with five home runs and 100 RBIs. He trailed only fellow Hall of Famer Ty Cobb in most categories that season, but he did lead the league in doubles with 39. They finished the season 12 games ahead of the Detroit Tigers, who they would go on to beat 4-3 in the World Series. Now, there's no doubt that today's players are bigger, faster, stronger and all around better than at any point in history. It's a fair argument to say that any team today could beat the 1909 Pirates. If you put the 1909 Pirates on the field against, say, the 1991 Pirates, the '91 team would likely win that matchup. But it's all relative to the respective era. If the players from the past had the knowledge, training and resources that modern players have, they would still be the all-time greats. You have to respect the players and teams of the past, and that's why the 1909 Pittsburgh Pirates are the best team in franchise history, and they will be until another Pirates team wins more than 110 games. The time has come in our Best Seasons blog series to examine a team that has never won a World Series. All the teams we've written about so far have at least one title to their name, but there are six teams who have never won a championship, and the Milwaukee Brewers are one of them.
The Brewers haven't been around for a long time by MLB standards. Their first season was in 1969, and in their 51 seasons, they've had some successes. They won the NL pennant in 1982, but lost the World Series 4-3 against the Cardinals. They've made it to the NLCS twice in the past decade, but haven't been able to squeak out a win either time. When it came time to determine which year was the best season in Brewers' history, it was actually a tough call. It came down to two separate seasons - 2011 and 2018. Both of these years are actually very similar, but only one can stand out as the best Brewers team of all-time. Milwaukee won 96 games in both 2011 and 2018, but their winning percentage was slightly higher in 2011. During the 2018 season, the Brewers finished tied in the standings with the Cubs, forcing a one-game playoff to decide the NL Central champion. Because they played that one extra game, the 2011 winning percentage is a few points higher than the 2018 team. Not only did the Brewers win the same amount of games each year, their stats were also very similar. In 2011 the team batted .261/.325/.425 with 185 total home runs. The 2018 team finished the season hitting .252/.323/.424 with 218 home runs. The ratio stats were slightly higher in 2011 while the total home runs saw an increase in 2018. The pitching stats aren't too far off either. The 2011 Brewers pitching staff finished the season with a 3.63 ERA and 1,257 strikeouts. The 2018 team had an ERA of 3.73 with 1,428 strikeouts. Now, over the past few years, strikeouts and home runs have increased across the league, so that should be taken into account when looking at these statistics. So let's look at some of the other notable events from these seasons. In 2011, the Brewers had three players make the All-Star roster. Prince Fielder, Rickie Weeks and and Ryan Braun all started for the National League in the game. The 2018 team had five players make the All-Star team, but they were all reserves. As for the awards voting, here is where I think the decision is made. The 2011 Brewers had two pitchers - Yovani Gallardo and John Axford - finish in the top 10 in Cy Young voting. The 2018 Brewers had one pitcher finish in the top 10. Now get this - both teams had that season's NL MVP on the roster. Ryan Braun won the award in 2011 while Christian Yelich won it in 2018. But, the 2011 also had Prince Fielder, who finished third in MVP voting. If we look at Braun and Yelich's stats, these seasons get even more similar. Braun hit .332/.397/.597 with 33 home runs and 111 RBIs in 2011. Yelich finished the 2018 season batting .326/.402/.598 with 36 home runs and 110 RBIs. However, Braun finished with 7.7 WAR while Yelich had 7.3. This is a really tough one to decide, but due to the 2011 Brewers winning their division by six games, having two players finish in the top three in MVP voting and having three starters on the All-Star roster, 2011 is the best Brewers season in history. The 2011 season was also Milwaukee's first division championship since 1982, breaking a 30-year drought for the Brewers. It's eerie how similar these teams were in terms of stats and wins. Both teams had great success on the field and both will go down in Brewers history, but only one can be considered the best season that Milwaukee has ever had, and that title has to go to the 2011 team. Most of the teams that I've written about so far in this series have been pretty easy. The Nationals and Marlins don't have very long histories and the Cubs have been around for a while but haven't had a whole lot of success.
So when it came time to write about the Cincinnati Reds, I thought this post would be a difficult one. The team has been around since 1881 and has won five World Series titles. With that amount of history, it looked like it would be a tough task to determine the best season in Cincinnati's history, but that wasn't the case after all. The most consistent success the Reds have ever seen came during the 1970s when the team brought together a plethora of great players and became known as the Big Red Machine. During that time, they won 100 or more games in three separate seasons, made it to four World Series and won two championships. The season that stands out as their best of all-time, though, is 1975. The Reds won 108 games, the most in franchise history. They won 10 more games than the next best team, the Oakland A's. The Reds finished the season 20 games ahead of the Dodgers, by far the biggest lead by any division winner. The swept the Pirates in the NLCS before winning a tightly-contested seven-game World Series over the Boston Red Sox. The Reds led MLB in run differential, were third in batting average (.275), first in on-base percentage (.353) and fourth in slugging percentage (.401). The pitching staff wasn't great, but was still in the top 10 in both ERA and WHIP. Joe Morgan won the NL MVP in 1975, batting .327/.466/.508 with 17 home runs and 94 RBIs. Four other players - Johnny Bench, Dave Concepcion, Pete Rose and Tony Perez - all made the All-Star Game along with Morgan. The team had four future Hall of Famers - Bench, Morgan, Perez and manager Sparky Anderson. If you throw in Pete Rose, who has been banned from baseball for betting on games, there were really five Hall of Famers on the team. Between the All-Stars, the awards, the 108 wins and the World Series victory, there's no doubt that the 1975 Reds were the best team in franchise history, but they were also one of the best teams in MLB history. In 2014, Bleacher Report named the team as the third-greatest team of all-time, and rightfully so. The Chicago Cubs have a long and storied history in Major League Baseball, although most of that history is known for going 108 years without winning a World Series.
The Lovable Losers of Chicago dealt with the Curse of the Billy Goat for a long time, but they finally shook it off in 2016 when they won their most recent championship. Despite that long championship drought, they've had plenty of good seasons throughout their time. They've had 15 seasons with a winning percentage of .640 or above and six seasons with 100 or more wins. Only one of those seasons has happened after 1935, though, and it's their magical 2016 championship year. That team is by far the best group of players the Cubs have ever put on the field. They had seven All-Stars, the NL MVP, two Gold Glove winners and two Silver Slugger winners. The Cubs were second in the league in on-base percentage (.343) and third in OPS (.772). Their pitching staff led the league in ERA (3.15) and was third in strikeouts (1,441). They led the entire league in wins during the 2016 season and were the only team to win 100 games. They also led the league with a 1.6 run differential per game. Any long-time Cubs fan can tell you how great it was to see them finally win that long-awaited championship in 2016, and the magic of that feeling could be enough to crown 2016 as the best Cubs team of all-time. But the reality is that this was a really dominant team that was built to compete for years to come, and they will go down as a historically great team in MLB. Check out the rest of our best seasons posts here, and stay tuned over the next few days as we go through the rest of the NL Central teams to determine each of their best seasons. We're wrapping up our look at the best season of each NL East team today with the Washington Nationals. I should point out, I'm only looking at seasons since 2005, when the team moved to D.C. and became the Nationals. I won't take the Montreal Expos history into account for this post.
The Nationals have had some pretty good seasons in their relatively short history, winning four division championships and earning a Wild Card berth last season. Of course, in 2019 they also won their first postseason series, and then another one, and then the World Series. I think it's pretty evident that the best season the Nats have ever had was their 2019 championship season. While I've said that winning a World Series is not criteria for a team's best season, in this case it's hard to deny that 2019 is the best year the franchise has ever had. The Nats didn't start out so hot last season, but as they like to point out on social media, they went from 19-31 and in fourth place in the division to World Series champions. The run that the Nats made from mid-May to the end of the season was a very impressive one, and although they didn't win the division and there have been other years when they had more wins, 2019 is by far their best season to date. The 2019 Nats set franchise records in home runs, RBIs, slugging percentage, OPS and runs scored. The pitching staff also struck out the most batters in team history at 1,511. Despite the success the team had, only two players - Anthony Rendon and Max Scherzer - made it to the All-Star Game. By the end of the year, more players got the recognition they deserved. Rendon and Juan Soto finished third and ninth in NL MVP voting, respectively. Stephen Strasburg finished 15th in MVP voting. Scherzer, Strasburg and Patrick Corbin each finished in the top 11 in NL Cy Young voting. The 2019 Nationals had a historic run that will be hard to repeat, and as everyone knows, it culminated in a historic World Series victory over the Houston Astros. They lost Rendon over the offseason, but they've still got a core that should be able to compete for championships for years to come. As we make our way through the National League East teams and try to find the best season for each franchise, it's time to take a look at the Philadelphia Phillies.
This team was actually pretty hard to decide on. The Phillies have had three seasons in which they won 100 games, but they didn't win a World Series in any of those seasons. Their two World Series-winning seasons were actually pretty far down the list of their best winning percentages. So after taking into account regular season record, number of All-Stars and award winners, I'm going with 2011 as the best season in Philadelphia Phillies' history. The Phillies won 102 games in 2011, finishing with a winning percentage of .630, the best in team history. The team had five players make it to the All-Star Game that year - Placido Polanco, Shane Victorino, Roy Halladay, Cole Hamels and Cliff Lee. The team's rotation is rated as one of the best of all-time. Halladay, Lee and Hamels each won at least 14 games and each finished with an ERA of 2.79 or below. They also finished second, third and fifth respectively in Cy Young voting. The team led the league in ERA (3.02) and was third in strikeouts (1,299). The offense wasn't great, but players like Ryan Howard and Shane Victorino still finished in the top 15 in NL MVP voting. The Phillies weren't able to keep their momentum going throughout the playoffs, though as they lost to the Cardinals in the NLDS. They took St. Louis to game five, but couldn't finish, losing the final game 1-0. Although finishing the season with a championship would've been nice, when you set your franchise record for wins and lead the league in wins for a season, while having one of the best pitching staffs of all time, that's a pretty great season. So far I've outlined what I believe to be the best seasons in Atlanta Braves and Miami Marlins history, so it's time to keep going down the list of NL East teams.
As I've said in each of the previous blog posts, a team's best season doesn't necessarily have to be a year in which they won the World Series. But when you win the World Series and have your best winning percentage of all-time, it's hard not to pick that as the best year in franchise history. The 1986 New York Mets won 108 games for a final record of 108-54. That's a winning percentage of .667. The Mets have only won 100 games two other times in their history - their other World Series season in 1969 and in 1988. The '86 Mets won 12 more games than the next best team, the Houston Astros. They had the best run differential in the league and were in the top 10 in several offensive categories. Their pitching is what really led the team, though, as they led the league in ERA and were second or third in other notable pitching stats. The team had five All-Stars, including pitchers Sid Fernandez and Dwight Gooden, the latter of which started the 1986 All-Star Game. Keith Hernandez, Daryl Strawberry and Gary Carter all started at their respective positions for the National League as well. The Mets won their division by a wide margin before going on to defeat the Astros in the NLCS, setting up a matchup with the Red Sox in the World Series. Boston of course was still trying to break the Curse of the Bambino, but the Mets wouldn't let it happen this year. Most people remember the series for Mookie Wilson's 10th inning at bat in Game 6. The Red sox led the series 3-2 and were winning the game 5-3 going into the bottom of the 10th inning. The Red Sox came within one out of winning the championship, but couldn't close. The Mets got two runs across to tie the game, bringing Wilson to the plate with the winning run on base. Wilson battled in his at bat, and on the 10th pitch he hit it down the first base line. Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner tried to make a play, but the ball rolled through his legs, allowing the winning run to score. The Mets would go on to win the series in Game 7, claiming the franchise's second championship. It's hard to beat a season in which you win 108 games and a World Series. The Mets have had some other good years, most recently in 2015 when they made it back to the World Series, but nothing has topped the 1986 campaign yet. Make sure to check back in tomorrow as we take a look at the best season in Philadelphia Phillies' history. |
AuthorMatthew Atkins, Journalist and Baseball fan. Archives
March 2023
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