The Best Record in Baseball and Winning the World Series: A History

One of the common complaints about the recent rounds of playoff expansion is that the increasingly chaotic postseason doesn't reward teams for sustained excellence over the long regular season. For Braves fans, this has been a particularly bitter pill, as the club has watched as three NL East rivals who finished behind Atlanta in the regular season standings went on to hoist the Commissioner's Trophy (the Marlins in '97 and '03, the Nationals in '19), while two others reached the Series ('00 Mets and '22 Phillies).

Of course, the Braves won a world title two seasons ago in a year where they finished 88-73, the worst winning percentage of any of their division-winning teams since 2018. Baseball is funny like that, and a postseason format that's now ballooned to 12 teams and four rounds seems likely to produce further "funny" results in October. Ostensibly this doesn't advantage or disadvantage any particular franchise, though fans of perennial powers like the Braves and Dodgers would likely beg to differ. There's a philosophical debate here over the wisdom of playing such a long regular season when you keep adding teams to the postseason, but we'll sidestep that for now and instead provide some historical perspective on what the Braves (and closely pursuing teams like the Orioles, Dodgers, and Rays) are trying to accomplish.

Prior to 1969, there were no divisions, just the American and National Leagues. So the long regular season (either 154 or 162 games) was designed to produce the two worthiest clubs to then play in the World Series. In that era, having the best record in baseball gave you a 50/50 shot at winning the title, but when further expansion brought about division play in 1969, things changed.

Initially there were just four divisions, Easts and Wests in each league. The strike-shortened 1994 season saw the advent of a six-division format and the introduction of the wild card, though we had to wait 'til 1995 to see the wild cards in action. (I wonder how many people can recall who the first two wild card teams were, way back in '95?) That format held until 2012, when an extra wild card spot was introduced, leading to the one-game wild card playoff. The experiment with expanded playoffs in the 2020 Covid season laid the groundwork for the last year's most recent expansion, with now three wild card teams per league and an extra round added to the playoffs. It's a lot, and we're all curious how that format will work out in year two. (Last year felt like an advantage for the wild cards, with the teams who were given a bye seeming flat when they finally got back on the field in the divisional round.)

With what is increasingly becoming an October gauntlet, how realistic is it to expect the team with the best regular-season record to then carry that form on into the postseason and also lift the hardware in the Fall Classic? Well, let's look at what history tells us.

During the four-division era from 1969-1993, which covers 25 seasons, the team with the best regular-season record only won the World Series eight times. To be honest, I was surprised it didn't happen more often. Here are those squads that did it.

- 1970 Orioles (108-54)
- 1975 Reds (108-54)
- 1976 Reds (102-60, the Big Red Machine was truly dominant)
- 1978 Yankees (100-63, game 163 was the Bucky Dent game)
- 1983 Orioles (98-64)
- 1984 Tigers (104-58)
- 1986 Mets (108-54, winning the Bill Buckner World Series)
- 1989 Athletics (99-63, silk robes and kimonos in tow)

Note that Sparky Anderson managed three of those teams (both Reds teams and the '84 Tigers). Also note that the Braves finished with baseball's best record in the final two seasons during this era, '92 and '93, and lost to the Blue Jays in the World Series and the Phillies in the NLCS respectively (who themselves then lost to the Blue Jays).

The wild card really took hold in 1995, obviously a memorable year for Braves fans. Since then, we've had 28 seasons played, and the team with the best regular-season mark has only won the whole ball of wax seven times. Those teams are...

- 1998 Yankees (114-48, another all-time dominant squad)
- 2007 Red Sox (96-66, tied for the best record with Cleveland)
- 2009 Yankees (103-59)
- 2013 Red Sox (97-65, tied for the best record with St. Louis)
- 2016 Cubs (103-58)
- 2018 Red Sox (108-54, maybe the best 21-century team)
- 2020 Dodgers (43-17 in the Covid year)

The Braves have finished with the best record (or tied for it) three times in the wild card era, in 1997, 1999, and 2003 (tied with the Yankees). Oddly, the Braves team with the best regular season record ever came in 1998, when they went 106-56 but were overshadowed by the 114-win Bronx Bombers.

We dig through all this history as the Braves look to pull off something that's only become more difficult over time, but was surprisingly difficult even back in the late '60s. We can, and will, debate the merits of the long regular season and the ever expanding postseason, but I say all this to point out how difficult it is to essentially pull off a double, to borrow a European soccer term. But for the relatively few teams who've done it, it's the road to history.

(Also those first two wild card teams back in '95 were the Yankees and the Rockies, who were only in their third year of existence.)

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