How Baseball's Most Talented Team Ever Didn't Win the World Series

Описание: The 1928 Athletics had the highest combined career WAR of any team in MLB history. They were more talented than any other team ever, relative to their peers, yet the 1928 A’s didn’t even play for a championship that year. Why?

What does the most talented team in baseball history look like? Think about that, and we’ll come back to it in a minute. I’ll tell you right now what the best team in baseball history looked like: the 1927 New York Yankees. That season, the Yankees authored as scary an offense as you could possibly imagine, headlined by not one but two inner-circle Hall of Famers. Lou Gehrig had the 14th-highest OPS in a season in baseball history and didn’t even lead his team, as that was the year Babe Ruth whacked 60 home runs and also OPSed well over 1.200. They had two other Hall of Fame position players go over 6 WAR, creating a lineup still known today as Murderer’s Row. They also had the best pitching staff in baseball, paced by another two Hall of Famers to lead the AL in ERA. It was no accident the ‘27 Yankees won 110 games and swept their way to the World Series. Relative to their peers, there hasn’t been a better team than the Bronx Bombers of 1927. But they weren’t the best collection of talent in baseball history. In the shadow of the Yankees Death Star, perhaps inspired by an impending arms race to try to catch up with the greatest team ever assembled, Connie Mack collected more talent than there has ever been on any team in the history of baseball. In the span of just two offseasons, Mack acquired three of baseball’s four active WAR leaders to play for his Philadelphia A’s. These legends were joining a young core that already included four future Hall of Famers and a Hall of Fame manager. This is a roster with seven Hall of Fame players, and not just any – five of the seven Hall of Famers on the 1928 Philadelphia A’s finished their careers with over 90 career WAR. That’s five of the top 45 players in baseball history by wins above replacement, all on one team. A collection of all-time legends like that has never been seen anywhere else in baseball history. It never will again. The roster combines for 1,140 career wins above replacement over the course of their careers – the most in baseball history. It’s the greatest collection of talent in the history of the sport, but it didn’t lead to a ring. In an era where only two teams played past the regular season, the 1928 Philadelphia Athletics didn’t even earn the right to compete for a title that year. This is the story of how Connie Mack stacked an unprecedented number of legends on his roster at one time, and how it took moving past it to return him to the promised land.

Terms to know:
-GP: Games Pitched
-IP: Innings pitched
-W/L: Pitching Wins/Losses
-ERA: Earned run average: number of runs given up by the pitcher per 9 innings that were not a result of error or passed ball
-SO/K: Strikeouts
-SV: Saves: Games finished by a relief pitcher, under certain circumstances (close enough game, late enough)
-ERA+: Adjusted ERA stat, park and era adjusted, where 100 is league average
-WHIP: Walks and hits per innings pitched: number of walks and hits allowed on average per inning
-FIP: Fielding independent pitching: similar to ERA, but excludes batted balls in the field of play. Uses strikeouts, walks, and home runs.
-WAR: Wins above replacement: player’s value relative to a replacement-level player at their position. fWAR is Fangraphs’ version of war, and rWAR and bWAR are Baseball-Reference’s

• AVG: Batting Average - percentage of at-bats in which a player gets a hit
• OBP: On-Base Percentage - percentage of plate appearances in which a player gets on base
• SLG: Slugging Percentage - in essence, total bases per at bat
• OPS: On-Base Plus Slugging - the sum of OBP and SLG
• OPS+: a park and era adjusted version of OPS, where 100 is league average
• WAR: Wins Above Replacement - player's value, in wins, relative to a "replacement-level" player at his position

#mlb #mlbhistory #baseball #athletics #athleticsbaseball #baseballlegend #baseballhistory