Post by sansterre - Milwaukee Brewers on May 16, 2019 8:05:09 GMT -5
Welcome to the 20s! Look behind you! That’s the Deadball Era! Going forward scoring is about to jump big-time. And why you may ask? A lot of theories have been brought forward but it comes down to a few things:
In an effort to increase the number of runs per game the league introduced the “live ball” with a cork center, but in 1910 and not in 1920 as is often asserted. For three years hitting spiked until something curious was discovered; that if the baseball were scuffed (say against concrete or emery boards) it would lead to unpredictable breaks on the ball when pitched. Pitchers relied on this and the spitter more and more and the hitters went back to the 1900s-levels of offense. It became the job of the pitcher and every other fielder to scuff up the ball as much as possible. Compounding this problem is that, as a cost-saving measure, the ball that the game was started with was used until the stitching had started to unravel; even home runs were thrown back into play to be used. This meant that before long into the game the ball became a "misshapen, earth-colored ball that traveled through the air erratically, tended to soften in the later innings, and, as it came over the plate, was very hard to see."
Going into the 1920 season the league decided to crack down on the defacing of the ball. Doctoring the ball in any way became illegal, including throwing a spitball. Pitchers that already threw the pitch were grandfathered in (as the league didn’t want to effectively end the career of those depending on its use) but no pitchers debuting after 1920 could (legally) throw that pitch. This change was massive in effect. Observe these differences:
1919 (defacing ball legal): 3.88 R/G, 263/322/348 line, 28 home runs per team
1920 (defacing ball illegal): 4.36 R/G, 276/335/372 line, 39 home runs per team
That, my friends, is a big difference. Taking away the pitchers’ ability to doctor the ball was worth half a run per game, 13 points of average, 24 points of slugging and 11 home runs per team.
Doctoring the ball was illegal, but the league still used the same ball for as long as it could, making it harder to see and therefor hit.
On August 16, 1920, the above came to a head. In a game between the Yankees and Indians, submariner pitcher Carl Mays (known for challenging hitters crowding the plate) threw a fastball high and inside against Indians’ shortstop Ben Chapman. Chapman, apparently not able to see the pitch come in, did not move out of the way. The ball hit Chapman’s head hard and rebounded into play. The impact was so loud that Mays assumed that the ball had bounced off the end of Chapman’s bat, fielded the ball and threw to first. Chapman, dazed and stumbling, tried to take his base but fell. He rose doggedly, stumbled another few steps, fell again and did not rise. He was carted off the field and taken to a hospital where he died of his injuries at 4:30 am the next day.
Chapman’s death was a tragic accident. But it contained within it massive policy implications for the league. After all, pitchers were throwing balls that were very hard to pick up visually as they approached the batter. It took little imagination to realize that this was a dangerous set of conditions to play in, and Chapman’s death was the natural consequence of this fact.
The league moved quickly implemented a new policy, that balls be replaced as soon as any sign of wear became visible.
Between these two changes pitchers had lost one of their most effective tools and batters gained a more visible, more lively ball (not by virtue of its construction but by the absence of wear). And the changes would give hitters dominance over the game for the next two decades; only in the steroid era was the balance of power so in favor of the hitters.
1919 (defacing ball legal, old balls): 3.88 R/G, 263/322/348 line, 28 home runs per team
1920 (scuffed ball illegal, old balls): 4.36 R/G, 276/335/372 line, 39 home runs per team
1921 (only new balls, no scuffing): 4.85 R/G, 291/348/403 line, 59 home runs per team
These two changes were worth a run per game, 28 points of average and 55 points of slugging. The changes suggest that the difference was worth 31 home runs per team as well, but the difference was actually greater. After all, these batters had built their swings for the deadball era and it took some time to adjust to swinging for the fences more; by 1930 teams were hitting almost 100 home runs a season.
Transition points are curious things. The things that made a great deadball era player (great contact, speed and fielding) were still useful in the liveball era, but not as useful. Conversely, players with uppercut swings simply weren’t that great in the deadball era, even if they occasionally had value (Gavvy Cravath, Socks Seybold, etc). Transition points are always ripe for exploitation by either 1) people that are savvy enough to detect the change in trend and adjust accordingly, and 2) people that by their nature are already engaged in the optimal behavior for the new environment.
Enter Babe Ruth: “How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball... The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.”
Ruth swung as hard as he could every time, though he was willing to wait for that right pitch. He struck out a ton (leading the league in strikeouts his first season as a batter, even though he only hit in 95 games, and finishing in the top two of strikeouts from 1918 to 1928) but his incredible reflexes, eyesight and strength meant that when he did make contact it went quite a ways (and that he played in a league where 3-4 K/9 was the average meant his aggression was not penalized too much). His lines for 1919-1920:
1919: 322 / 456 / 657, 29 home runs, 217 OPS+, 128 runs created (#2 was 109)
1920: 376 / 532 / 847, 54 home runs, 255 OPS+, 200 runs created (#2 was 178)
Ruth was already great. But the liveball era was *perfect* for Ruth. And it transformed him from a great hitter into arguably the greatest hitter ever.
Breakdown by Year:
1920: 276/335/372, 4.36 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.5 home runs, 1.4 steals, 5.9 K’s
Pennant Winners: Cleveland Indians (98-56), Brooklyn Robins (93-61)
World Series: Cleveland Indians defeat Brooklyn Robins 5 - 2
Best Hitters: Babe Ruth, 2 (NYA), Rogers Hornsby, 4 (STL)
Best Pitchers: Stan Coveleski (CLE), Pete Alexander, 7 (CHN)
1921: 291/348/403, 4.85 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.8 home runs, 1.2 steals, 5.7 K’s
Pennant Winners: New York Yankees (98-55), New York Giants (94-59)
World Series: New York Giants defeat New York Yankees 5 - 3
Best Hitters: Babe Ruth, 3 (NYA), Rogers Hornsby, 5 (STL)
Best Pitchers: Stan Coveleski, 2 (CLE), Burleigh Grimes (BRO)
1922: 288/348/401, 4.87 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.9 home runs, 1.2 steals, 5.6 K’s
Pennant Winners: New York Yankees (94-60), New York Giants (93-61)
World Series: New York Giants defeat New York Yankees 4 - 0 - 1
Best Hitters: George Sisler (SLA), Rogers Hornsby, 6 (STL)
Best Pitchers: Urban Shocker (SLA), Wilbur Cooper (PIT)
1923: 287/347/391, 4.81 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.8 home runs, 1.3 steals, 5.7 K’s
Pennant Winners: New York Yankees (98-54), New York Giants (95-58)
World Series: New York Yankees defeat New York Giants 4 - 2
Best Hitters: Babe Ruth, 4 (NYA), Frankie Frisch (NYG)
Best Pitchers: Urban Shocker, 2 (SLA), Dolf Luque (CIN)
1924: 287/348/394, 4.76 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.7 home runs, 1.2 steals, 5.4 K’s
Pennant Winners: Washington Senators (92-62), New York Giants (93-60)
World Series: Washington Senators defeat New York Giants 4 - 3
Best Hitters: Babe Ruth, 5 (NYA), Rogers Hornsby, 7 (STL)
Best Pitchers: Howard Ehmke (BOS), Dazzy Vance (BRO)
1925: 292/354/411, 5.13 r/g/tm, the average game had 1.0 home runs, 1.1 steals, 5.4 K’s
Pennant Winners: Washington Senators (96-55), Pittsburgh Pirates (95-58)
World Series: Pittsburgh Pirates defeat Washington Senators 4 - 3
Best Hitters: Al Simmons (PHA), Rogers Hornsby, 8 (STL)
Best Pitchers: Howard Ehmke, 2 (BOS), Dazzy Vance, 2 (BRO)
1926: 281/345/389, 4.64 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.7 home runs, 1.0 steals, 5.5 K’s
Pennant Winners: New York Yankees (91-63), St. Louis Cardinals (89-65)
World Series: St. Louis Cardinals defeat New York Yankees 4 - 3
Best Hitters: Babe Ruth, 6 (NYA), Hack Wilson (CHN)
Best Pitchers: Lefty Grove (PHA), Hal Carlson (PHI)
1927: 284/345/393, 4.75 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.7 home runs, 1.2 steals, 5.6 K’s
Pennant Winners: New York Yankees (110-44), Pittsburgh Pirates (94-60)
World Series: New York Yankees sweep Pittsburgh Pirates 4 - 0
Best Hitters: Babe Ruth, 7 (NYA), Rogers Hornsby, 9 (STL)
Best Pitchers: Lefty Grove, 2 (PHA), Dazzy Vance, 2 (BRO)
1928: 281/344/397, 4.73 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.9 home runs, 1.0 steals, 5.8 K’s
Pennant Winners: New York Yankees (101-53), St. Louis Cardinals (95-59)
World Series: New York Yankees sweep St. Louis Cardinals 4 - 0
Best Hitters: Babe Ruth, 8 (NYA), Rogers Hornsby, 10 (NYG)
Best Pitchers: Lefty Grove, 3 (PHA), Dazzy Vance, 3 (BRO)
1929: 289/353/417, 5.19 r/g/tm, the average game had 1.1 home runs, 1.1 steals, 5.7 K’s
Pennant Winners: Philadelphia Athletics (104-46), Chicago Cubs (98-54)
World Series: Philadelphia Athletics defeat Chicago Cubs 4 - 1
Best Hitters: Jimmie Foxx (PHA), Rogers Hornsby, 11 (CHN)
Best Pitchers: Lefty Grove, 4 (PHA), Dazzy Vance, 4 (BRO)
Just an aside on the ‘Best Hitters’. You could be accused of getting a skewed impression with how many ‘Best Hitters’ Rogers Hornsby won. Don’t get it twisted, Hornsby was a monster. But (as with the AL in the prior decade) the AL’s second best hitter was better than Hornsby half the time; you’ll note, for example, that Lou Gehrig features here not at all.
Team of the Decade:
C: Wally Schang (BOS, NYA, SLA)
1B: Lou Gehrig (NYA)
2B: Rogers Hornsby (STL, NYG, CHN)
3B: Frankie Frisch (NYG, STL)
- Frisch was a 2B by trade, but he played a decent third and is good enough to merit inclusion here
SS: Joe Sewell (CLE)
OF: Babe Ruth (NYA)
CF: Tris Speaker (CLE, WAS)
OF: Harry Heilmann (DET)
SP: Dazzy Vance (BRO)
SP: Eppa Rixey (PHI, CIN)
SP: Pete Alexander (CHN, STL)
SP: Burleigh Grimes (BRO, NYG, PIT)
SP: George Uhle (CLE, DET)
Boston Braves: 0.394 win percentage, 0 Pennants, 0 Championships
Best Team: 1921, when they went 79-74, finishing 4th
Best Players: literally, none.
The Braves were terrible. They had the one winning season in 1921, somehow, but were catastrophic besides that. They had five separate seasons where they won 56 games or fewer.
Boston Red Sox: 0.388 win percentage, 0 Pennants, 0 Championships
Best Team: 1920, when they still had the leftovers of their strong teams in the teens, going 72-81 and finishing 5th. That was their *best* team.
Best Players: Howard Ehmke (SP), worth 12 WAR on the decade. Setting the bar low.
The Red Sox were merely bad from ‘20-24, winning between 71 and 75 games. But by 1925 the became full-on terrible, finishing dead last every single year.
Brooklyn Robins: 0.499 win percentage, 1 Pennant, 0 Championships
Best Team: 1920, when they went 93-61, won the NL by seven games and lost the World Series to Tris Speaker’s Indians
Best Player: Dazzy Vance (SP) by far, worth 45 WAR.
The Robins had a very curious decade. They had eight mediocre/bad seasons with two good ones. It’s the configuration that’s weird. In 1920 they won the NL, but on either side of that season they were 500. In 1924 they went 92-62, finishing 1.5 games out of first. But they had losing seasons on either side of that one. So what gives; what heavens aligned to make Brooklyn good for those two years in isolation? As far as we can tell, mostly luck. The 1920 team had a good record and pythag, but their WAR was only pretty good; it just happened to be a really weak year for the top half of the NL. And in 1924 their record was good, but their pythag and team WAR were just above average. Looking in the aggregate, the Robins just seem to be an average team that, in the random variation of chance had two unusually good years that happened to align with when the Giants and Cardinals were slightly off their game.
Chicago Cubs: 0.526 win percentage, 1 Pennant, 0 Championships
Best Team: Easily the 1929 Cubs, who went 98-54, won the league by 10.5 games and lost in the World Series to the murderous 1929 Athletics.
Best Player: Pete Alexander (SP), worth 27.6 WAR in the late part of his career, though Hack Wilson (OF) is a respectable second with 24.4 WAR.
The Cubs had been decent at the end of the teens and they continued to be at least average starting the 20s. They still had Pete Alexander, but Alexander in his 30s was merely a very good pitcher, not the world-beater he’d been in his 20s. Dancing around 500 for the first half of the decade, the Cubs owner ended up being bought out by Harry Wrigley, the chewing gum magnate, who renamed the Cubs’ stadium after himself to bring more attention to his gum. Ironic of course that Wrigley Field is known by many who are ignorant of baseball, but Wrigley gum is known far less. As part of the purchase Wrigley brought in Bill Veeck to GM the team.
In a few years Hack Wilson, who had struggled with the Giants, had been brought in and transformed into an All-Star. Along with Wilson, Veeck hired Joe McCarthy to run the team on the field. McCarthy was a relative unknown, but quickly proved more than up to the task, leading the Cubs to a 14-game jump in quality from ‘25 to ‘26, several winning seasons and a pennant. (It may seem weird that I’m pitching McCarthy’s role in this, but McCarthy may have been the best manager ever. McCarthy retired in 1950, having managed for 24 years. His resume: 9 Pennants, 7 Rings, 0 losing seasons. Record jump the year he signed on: +14, +8, +7. No joke, McCarthy was the real deal.)
From ‘26 to ‘28 the Cubs went 82-72, 85-68 and 91-62 but finished 4th, 4th and 3rd respectively. After the 1927 season Hall-of-Famer Rogers Hornsby had strained his relationship with new Cardinals GM Branch Rickey and was traded to the Giants. While the Giants improved with Hornsby, the “Rajah” clashed with John McGraw (unsurprisingly) and was known to be on the outs. The Cubs swung in and offered to take Hornsby off the Giants’ hands. For a negligible offer of prospects, the Cubs got the best second basemen of the decade (perhaps ever). And with Hornsby the club went 98-54 and won the league going away.
There’s a certain tragedy when a team has its best year when somebody else is having a better one. The 1906 Giants were great, but they happened to exist in the same league as the 1906 Cubs. The 1912 Pirates were great, but they happened to exist in the same league as the 1912 Giants. The 1998 Astros happened to be in the same league as the 1998 Braves, who happened to be in the same year as the 1998 Yankees. And the 1929 Cubs, the best Cubs team for a decade just happened to exist in the same season as the 1929 Athletics, one of the best teams ever. It happens.
Chicago White Sox: 0.476 win percentage, 0 Pennants, 0 Championships
Best Team: The 1920 White Sox, who went 96-58, finishing a close second to the Indians who would go on to win the World Series.
Best Player: A pair of veterans. Red Faber (SP) was 32 at the beginning the decade but he would pitch through it and into the 1930s, good for 36.3 WAR. Eddie Collins was 33 in 1920 and played for the Sox until 1926 (age 39). In those seven years he put up 35.2 WAR. From ages 33-39. Did I mention that Eddie Collins was good?
The more discerning of you may be confused. Wasn’t the Black Sox scandal in 1919; weren’t a bunch of players banned from baseball? How did they follow up a great year without those players? That’s a great question. The answer is that the commissioner only banned those players after the jury exonerated them, and the court system takes a long time. So even though the scandal happened in 1919, the ban didn’t happen until after the 1920 season. So 1920 was the final ride of the 1919 team, falling just short. That can’t have been a comfortable clubhouse . . .
The White Sox struggled a bit after the ban, rebuilt themselves to be slightly above average in ‘25 and ‘26 and then collapsed, culminating in a 59-93 1929 season. Not an embarrassing decade, but not much to brag about either.
Cincinnati Reds: 0.521 win percentage, 0 Pennants, 0 Championships
Best Team: The 1926 Reds were one of the least remarkable really good teams ever. They only went 87-67, finishing 2nd behind the Cardinals by two games, but had the most Team WAR by a respectable margin. But the team had absolutely zero stars; it was just an incredibly solid all-around performance from everyone.
Best Player: The pitching trio of Eppa Rixey, Dolf Luque and Pete Donohue contributed 36.3, 34.8 and 29.6 WAR for the decade.
The Reds had the best pitching of the decade. They had the best pitching season (1925) and five of the top 17 pitching WAR seasons. The unfortunate bit is that in this era pitching wasn’t anywhere near as important as hitting+fielding (remember that batter WAR includes both); the standard deviation on batter WAR for the decade is 10, and for pitching WAR is about 3.5; suggesting that a truly dominant team of hitters gains about 20 wins from it, while a truly dominant pitching team gained perhaps 7. Heck, the Giants of the early 20s had below average pitching every year and still won a slew of pennants and a few rings. The number of teams that won their league in the 20s with below average batter WAR is . . . wait, it never happened. The lowest (1920 Robins) were still above average, and they had a lot of pitching help. The top five batter WARs of the decade all won their league; of the top sixteen batter WARs of the decade, thirteen won their league and eight won the World Series. Of the top five pitcher WARs of the decade, none won their league (though all had a winning record) and of the top 25, only three won their league.
This is all a long way of saying that Cincinnati probably had the best pitching of the decade, but you shouldn’t get too excited about that fact. Furthermore they didn’t have the best pitching by virtue of having dominant aces (this decade didn’t really have those aside from Lefty Grove and perhaps Dazzy Vance); they simply had a deep rotation of very good pitchers. The team was consistently good, finishing 2nd three times and 3rd twice. And it’s not like they had bad hitters; they were above average most years. But their bats were never great even for a year, and they never had the luck to overperform their WAR at the same time that their league was weak (like the 1920 Robins). Still. A good team with a solid decade.
Cleveland Indians: 0.512 win percentage, 1 Pennant, 1 Championship
Best Team: 1920 when they went 98-56, beating the White Sox by 2 games and winning the World Series over the Robins.
Best Player: Tris Speaker only played with them until 1926 but in those 7 years put up 46.2 WAR. Joe Sewell (Honorable Mention) played the whole decade with them and fell just barely short of 40 WAR.
The late teen early 20s Indians were fantastic. From 1919-1921 they won 60% of their games each year. In 1919 they fell just short of the White Sox, in 1921 they fell just short of the Yankees, but in 1920 they won it all. The success of the early 20s Indians more or less depended on the supporting cast of hitters. Speaker was going to put up 6-10 WAR no matter what, and Stan Coveleski and George Uhle would both be strong. In 1922 the rest of the team struggled and the Indians were just above average. In 1923 the Indians played their butts off but never saw it in the win column, finishing 17 games behind the ‘23 Yankees (despite the fact that the teams were very evenly matched in WAR). They suffered two down years, then one last hurrah in ‘26 when they finished only three games behind the Yankees (88-66), even though the 38 year-old Tris Speaker could only contribute a paltry (for him) 5.4 WAR in his last year with the team. The rest of the decade was a bit underwhelming, though they perked up in 1929 going 81-71. That team had a lot of the core of their next decade, rookie Earl Averill, 21 year old Wes Ferrell and 20 year old Mel Harder.
The Tris Speaker teams of the early 20s were really good. They had excellent pitching, a decent supporting cast and, of course, Speaker, and it was enough to win the Indians one of their two Championships in the century.
Detroit Tigers: 0.494 win percentage, 0 Pennants, 0 Championships
Best Team: Probably 1923, when they went 83-71 and finished a mere 16 games behind the Yankees.
Best Player: You may be expecting it to be Ty Cobb, but the Georgia Peach was already 34 in 1920 and only played with the Tigers until 1926 (he still contributed 33.3 WAR in those years). The best player was Harry Heilmann (OF), good for an impressive 54.1 WAR over the decade.
The Tigers, honestly since 1901, did a consistently poor job of developing talent around their stars. In the teens the Tigers had two stars, one old one young (Sam Crawford and Ty Cobb) but never assembled the pieces necessary to support them. In the 20s there was a similar pair in Cobb and Heilmann and they had the exact same problem. Some of this problem can obviously be laid at Cobb’s feet; he was the manager from ‘21-’26 (managers in this part of the century were generally also the team’s GM; every team having a specialist who managed the administrative side of personnel and payroll would not happen for some time). But yeah, the Tigers had consistently average or below average pitching, and if you took out Cobb and Heilmann the team contributed only 25.5 WAR a year, or what you would expect from a 73-win team.
The Tigers had a decent team all decade but never really threatened. Toward the end of the decade though there was at least one bright spot. A young second baseman named Charlie Gehringer was picked up and by 1929 (age 26) he was starting to be very good. But no Tigers fans would have reason to be particularly optimistic about the team’s future.
New York Giants: 0.582 win percentage, 4 Pennants, 2 Championships
Best Team: The teams from ‘21-’24 were really good, but I’d pick the ‘22 team as the best. They went 94-60, won the Pennant and beat the Yankees in the World Series.
Best Player: Frankie Frisch (2B), with 38.8 WAR over the 1920-1926 seasons.
Talking about John McGraw’s Giants is weird as hell, because they’re so unremarkable. From 1920 to 1924 they were great, winning the Pennant four times and the World Series twice. They had two down years where they were about average, then bounced back from ‘27-29, finishing 2nd once and 3rd twice. It was a heck of a decade.
The team had little pitching but it had hitting in abundance. Frankie Frisch was a future Hall of Famer who played for them until he was traded for Rogers Hornsby (who was better). Ross Youngs put up 33.7 WAR over 7 seasons between 1918 and 1924 before sudden illness sapped his strength and eventually killed him at 30. The problem with McGraw teams is that he had such a reputation for identifying and developing hitters that they seemed interchangeable. Travis Jackson? Put up 29 WAR in seven years at shortstop in the decade, solid hitter, great fielder. Which makes him identical to Dave Bancroft (the shortstop he replaced) or Art Fletcher (the shortstop that Bancroft replaced). McGraw just had a gift for getting the most out of everybody; it’s rare to see a McGraw team without an above-average player at every position on the field.
New York Yankees: 0.608 win percentage, 6 Pennants, 3 Championships
Best Team: The Yankees had many excellent teams in the decade, with ‘21, ‘23 and ‘28 leaping to mind. But anyone that doesn’t pick the 1927 Yankees as the best of the decade is suffering from a cognitive impairment. They went 110-44, won the AL by 16 games and were in second for no day of the season. They had more batter WAR than any team in 1927 had *total WAR*, which is to say, if the Yankees that year had only had replacement level, AAA-quality pitching they’d still have been the best team in the MLB. The 1927 Yankees are often picked as the best team of all-time and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see why.
Best Player: Lou Gehrig put up 40 WAR starting in 1925 (averaging 8 WAR a season) but the Babe put up 108 WAR in the decade. Legit, a 10-WAR season for Ruth in the 20s was a down year.
The story of the Yankees in the 20s is invariably the story of Ruth. And for good reason; from 1920 to 1924 the Babe was a full 42% of the team’s batting + fielding contribution. While the team in the first half of the decade had its share of good players (Roger Peckinpaugh and Wally Pipp leap to mind) none would break 5 WAR in a season and most years the team had a number of below average contributors. It’s just that when you need 30 WAR from your batters to contend, and you have a guy who can put up 10 a year, well, getting 20 WAR from seven other starters plus your bunch just isn’t that hard. The Yankees had respectable pitching the whole decade but they lived and died with their bats, and for the early 20s Ruth was so good that little else mattered. In fact, here’s the Yankees’ 1920-1924 assuming Ruth were replaced with an average outfielder:
1920: 85-69, 3rd
1921: 87-66, 2nd
1922: 90-64, 2nd
1923: 86-66, 1st (it was a weak year)
1924: 79-73, 3rd
The early 20s Yankees was no juggernaut without Ruth; even with Ruth they were mortal. In the first two World Series’ against the Giants, John McGraw called every pitch from the dugout (feeding him mostly slow curves and off-speed pitches) and Ruth batted 220/363/338 for those losses to the Giants. Of course in 1923, when the teams met again, Ruth hit 368/556/1000 and led the Yankees to victory.
The Yankees struggled to separate themselves from the shadow of the Giants (at that point, perhaps the best franchise in the game). Compounding matters, the Yankees played at the Polo Grounds, the Giants’ stadium. The two teams feuded and ultimately the Yankees constructed an enormous new park, Yankee Stadium, that at the time was considered the greatest stadium ever built. For this and many reasons, the time the Yankees remained in the Giants’ shadow was at an end.
In 1925 Ruth missed time and played badly (for him) hitting 290/393/543 and contributing only 3.5 WAR. The Yankees finished 7th. But good things were on the horizon. Earle Combs started in the outfield in 1925. And a bright-eyed youngster with incredible talent had been sitting on the bench behind stalwart Wally Pipp, but when Pipp was struggling Miller Huggins benched him in favor of the youngster. On June 2, 1925, Lou Gehrig started, went 3 for 5 with a double and didn’t miss a game until 1939, setting a consecutive-games-played record that would stand for fifty-plus years. In 1926 Tony Lazzeri gained the starting job at second.
In 1927 it all came together. Gehrig (who would have been the most feared slugger in the era if not for Ruth) contributed 11.8 WAR, Ruth 12.4 WAR, Combs 6.9 and Lazzeri 6.3. In those four players contributed more WAR that season than *any team* received from *all their batters* for the entire decade. They stomped everyone through the season and swept the World Series. In 1928 they regressed horribly (almost 20 WAR worse) and they still won the AL and swept the World Series, plus added an excellent young catcher in Bill Dickey. In 1929 the Yankees were honestly about as good as they had been in ‘28, except that the 1929 Athletics were ridiculously good and won the league by 18 games.
It had been a good decade. They’d won the AL six of ten years, won three championships, and had put the Yankees on the map. But the A’s were an unstoppable force and Ruth was about to be 35. If you took the odds on the 30s being even better for the Yankees than the 20s in the offseason of 1929, I’d say they’d have been long. Of course, if you took odds on whether the roaring 20s would be followed by the worst depression the country had ever seen, you'd have gotten long odds too. Interestingly, the two had a lot to do with each other.
Philadelphia Athletics: 0.505 win percentage, 1 Pennant, 1 Championship
Best Team: Obviously the 1929 team, going 104-46 and beating the Yankees (who still had Ruth and Gehrig) by 16 games and beating the Cubs in 5 games. Ironically this may have helped the Yankees, as the Cubs would ultimately fire manager Joe McCarthy for losing the series, which eventually led McCarthy to managing the Yankees to great success in the 30s and 40s.
Best Player: Al Simmons (OF) put up 31.5 WAR over six seasons (1924-1929), while Lefty Grove (SP) put up 28.6 WAR over five.
When last we were with our heroes, the Athletics were catastrophically bad for the second half of the teens, thanks to Connie Mack selling off his stars in response to financial pressure from the Federal League. Well, that trend just kept right on, with the A’s winning 48 and 53 games in ‘20 and ‘21, but was gradually offset by Mack finding and developing what became an avalanche of talent that would soon crush even the mighty Yankees.
The next two years (‘22 and ‘23) they won 65 and 69, finishing 7th and 6th. In ‘24 they went 71-81, finishing 5th, but added two young players, outfielder Al Simmons (22) and second baseman Max Bishop (24). In ‘25 those two combined for 9 WAR and the team went 88-64, finishing 2nd. But they also added pitcher Lefty Grove (25) and catcher Mickey Cochrane (22). In ‘26 and ‘27 the team played well, going 83-67 (3rd) and 91-63 (2nd), with Grove establishing himself as the best pitcher in the American League. In 1928 they went 98-55, still finishing second, with a problem. They had a 20-year-old phenom, but no room for him. He was a first basemen but Joe Houser was holding that spot down fine, he could play a little third but Sammy Hale was decent and he could even catch, though Mickey Cochrane made that unnecessary. But Jimmie Foxx hit 328/416/548, better than anyone on the team, while playing for only 70% of the season.
In 1929 Mack promoted Foxx to the starting job. Simmons and Foxx each threw up 7.9 WAR and the A’s crushed the Yankees by 18 games. With a star-studded lineup and Lefty Grove on the mound, the A’s rightly looked like the team to beat going into the 30s.
Philadelphia Phillies: 0.370 win percentage, 0 Pennants, 0 Championships
Best Team: The ‘29 Phillies were not terrible going 71-82 and finishing 5th.
Best Player: Cy Williams (OF) put up 25.5 WAR over ten seasons for the franchise.
The Phillies were a smoldering garbage fire this decade. Let us not dwell.
Pittsburgh Pirates: 0.572 win percentage, 2 Pennants, 1 Championship
Best Team: The 1925 Pirates went 95-58, winning the NL by 8.5 games and the World Series in 7.
Best Player: The Pirates had four players contribute almost equally: Max Carey (OF) contributed 26.1 WAR in 6.5 years, Paul Waner (OF) contributed 25.5 WAR in 4 years, Pie Traynor (3B) contributed 24.7 WAR in 10 seasons and Wilbur Cooper (SP) contributed 24.4 WAR in 5 years.
The Pirates were consistently good for the decade. From 1920-1929 they had no losing seasons and never finished below 4th. Like the Giants they had a deep core of solid players that often intersected. Even as Wilbur Cooper aged and left the team, spitballer Burleigh Grimes came on. Even as Max Carey was leaving Paul Waner came on. Reliable stalwarts like Kiki Cuyler and Pie Traynor were never dominant but were always consistently good, making Pittsburgh’s excellence a matter of routine. Their two best years were 1925 and 1927, the two years they won the NL. In 1925 they won a very competitive NL (no team finished worse than 68-86) by 8.5 games and overcame the Senators in 7, overcoming a 3-1 deficit. In 1927 they barely won the NL by 1.5 games over the Cardinals, earning the dubious privilege of facing the ‘27 Yankees in the World Series. It went about like you’d expect.
St. Louis Browns: 0.498 win percentage, 0 Pennants, 0 Championships
Best Team: The 1922 went 93-61, finishing 2nd, 1 game behind the Yankees. The Browns were the better team that year.
Best Player: You might have guessed George Sisler (1B), but actually Ken Williams (OF) put up 36.7 WAR over 8 seasons. Much of Sisler’s peak was in the late teens and he was fairly washed up by the mid 20s.
The Browns were actually decent for this decade, with 7 average years, 2 bad years (‘26-’27) and 1 great year, 1922. About that 1922 year: it was a fluke but a powerful one. It was a 93-61 season with an 81-73 before it, and a 74-78 after it. And yet that team was far better than the its record. They won only 1 less game than the Yankees but had a pythag seven wins better and a team WAR twelve wins better. The underlying numbers don’t suggest that the ‘22 Browns were as good as the ‘22 Yankees; they suggest that the Browns were much better. It was the perfect storm: George Sisler had his second best year ever (420/467/594, OPS+ 170, 8.7 WAR), Ken Williams had his best year ever (332/413/627, OPS+ 164, 7.9 WAR) and Urban Shocker had his best year ever (3.9 K/9, 1.5 BB/9, 0.6 HRA/9, FIP- 81, ERA- 70, 6.9 WAR, 8.9 rWAR). Add on to that all the supporting players played well; the team had almost no below replacement level performances and plenty of ordinarily average players post 3 and 4 WAR seasons. The whole team came together and, individually and collectively, had their best season to date. And yet, in what can only be described as an unfortunate imperfection of reality, the Browns still finished second to a worse team.
The Browns would wait another two decades for their first pennant, and even that was in the distorted environment of World War II. The franchise’s first peacetime pennant would take did not occur until the 60s, so long in fact that they would no longer go by the same name. The 1922 edition was almost certainly the best team to wear the name ‘St. Louis Browns’.
St. Louis Cardinals: 0.536 win percentage, 2 Pennants, 1 Championship
Best Team: The 1926 Cardinals went 89-65, winning the NL by two games and beating the Yankees in 7.
Best Player: Rogers Hornsby (2B) contributed 66.5 WAR over 7 seasons.
The Cardinals in the first two decades of the century had been terrible. In those first nineteen years they had four winning seasons, never finished in the top two, and only finished in the first division three times.
The Cardinals in the 20s were a story of two men: Rogers Hornsby and Branch Rickey. Hornsby was the National League’s best player eight times that decade, five of them with St. Louis. In fact, from 1920-1925 Hornsby led the NL in AVG, OBP, SLG and OPS+ every season. Despite these contributions, the Cardinals were merely just above average, finishing 3rd twice and 4th once in those six years. In the offseason after 1925 the manager, Branch Rickey, was fired and Hornsby made the player-manager. That year the Cardinals, not appreciably better than the year prior except in wins and in the acquisition of an aged Pete Alexander, won the NL and the World Series.
Branch Rickey was hurt by his termination, but the Cardinals’ owner Sam Breadon wanted to keep him on in a more administrative capacity. While Rickey seemed to struggle to manage a ballclub, his gifts for player development were not lost on Breadon. Rickey became the business manager of the team (the term General Manager was not then used) and began rigorously investing in minor league talent. Remember, at this point, the minor leagues were separate but smaller than the MLB. Rickey used the Cardinals’ funds to buy several of these minor league teams and convert them to use as scouting and development teams for the Cardinals, farms to grow players. The Commissioner of baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, worried that this move would eventually lead to the death of the minors, forcibly released the players of Rickey’s farm system twice, but Rickey continued undaunted.
While it would help little in the 20s, by the 30s the Cardinals would reap what Rickey had sown, and other teams would either follow suit or be left behind. There have been four major paradigm shifts in MLB history and in each one the early adopters quickly gained a massive advantage over the competitors who failed to do so. These four great shifts are: 1) the development of farm systems; 2) the use of players of color; 3) the development of talent development and acquisition of hispanic players abroad; and 4) the integration of statistical analysis into the making of baseball decisions. Rickey was the first to utilize each of these and his teams benefited greatly (while he died long before the ‘Moneyball’ revolution, he was the first GM to employ a statistician and determine that OBP was better than AVG, but this didn’t happen until the 40s with the Dodgers). The Cardinals would only benefit from the first.
Anyhow. Rickey and Hornsby did not get along terribly well and Hornsby tried to use his success in 1926 as leverage to win himself a new 3 year, $50k per year deal (about $722k annually in modern money; Ruth at the time was earning $52k per year though he would shortly get a new deal worth $70k annually). Rickey ultimately traded Hornsby to the Giants for the younger (by two years), less skilled and less belligerent Frankie Frisch who was on the outs with John McGraw. Frisch played well for the Cardinals (if not as well as Hornsby) and the team did not miss a beat, finishing 2nd and 1st (losing to the Yankees in the WS) in ‘27 and ‘28 before finishing 4th in 1929. But thanks to Rickey’s farm system, the future for the Cardinals was very bright indeed.
Washington Senators: 0.519 win percentage, 2 Pennants, 1 Championship
Best Team: The ‘24 Senators won the Championship but the ‘25 Senators were slightly better, finishing 96-55 and taking the Pirates to 7 games.
Best Player: Goose Goslin (OF), 38.7 WAR over 8 seasons
The 20s were a great decade for change. Four of the franchises that had struggled for the past 20 years (the Cardinals, Senators, Browns and to some extent, the Highlanders/Yankees) turned their fortunes around for the decade. Walter Johnson, who had been dominant for over a decade was finally able to be on a winner. In 1924 it all came together for Washington. 23 year-old outfielder Goose Goslin had a breakout year with 6+ WAR, Roger Peckinpaugh (SS) hit decently and played Gold Glove defense and Walter Johnson (36 years old) led the league in Wins, ERA, shutouts, strikeouts, FIP and WHIP (I know we didn’t give Johnson the Cy Young for that year; the defense supporting him made him look better than he was). Then in 1925 the team did it all over again, except the hitters were slightly better and Johnson regressed. The Senators bounced between 3rd and 5th the rest of the decade, good but not great. And in 1929 Joe Cronin (22 years old) got the starting job at shortstop and would help lead the Senators to an excellent first several years in the 30s.
I’m just happy that Walter Johnson finally got his ring.
Franchises that Dominated the Most this Decade:
1. New York Yankees
2. New York Giants
3. Pittsburgh Pirates
4. St. Louis Cardinals
5. Philadelphia Athletics
Franchises that Dominated the Least this Decade:
1. Philadelphia Phillies
2. Boston Red Sox
3. Boston Braves
4. Chicago White Sox
5. Detroit Tigers
Franchises that Stunk the Most this Decade:
1. Philadelphia Phillies
2. Boston Red Sox
3. Boston Braves
4. Chicago White Sox
5. Philadelphia Athletics
Franchises that Stunk the Least this Decade:
1. Pittsburgh Pirates
2. New York Giants
3. New York Yankees
4. Cincinnati Reds
5. St. Louis Cardinals
Best Teams of the Decade:
10. 1928 New York Yankees
Results: 101-53 (.656), 5.81 r/g vs 4.45 ra/g (.619), 1st by 2.5 games, won AL, won WS 4-0
Ratings: Hitting: +1.74, Pitching: -0.18, Fielding: -0.69
Top Batters: Babe Ruth, OF (10.6), Lou Gehrig, 1B (9.7), Tony Lazzeri, 4.6 (2B), Earle Combs, OF (4.5)
Top Pitchers: George Pipgras (5.0), Herb Pennock (3.9)
Comments: Look how freaking lopsided that team is. Below average pitching, bad fielding but the lineup was so strong that they could still win the championship. It also goes to show how aberrant the ‘27 season was. Not that it wasn’t a great team, but the ‘28 team is almost the exact same roster. It’s so interesting to see how big a swing between an on-year and an off-year can be with the same set of players.
9. 1922 New York Giants
Results: 93-61 (.604), 5.46 r/g vs 4.22 ra/g (.615), 1st by 7 games, won NL, won WS 4-0-1
Ratings: Hitting: +1.75, Pitching: -0.56, Fielding: +1.68
Top Batters: Dave Bancroft, SS (6.9), Frankie Frisch, 2B (4.9), George Kelly, 1B (4.6), Ross Youngs, OF (4.5), Irish Meusel, OF (4.0), Casey Stengel, OF (3.3)
Top Pitchers: none worth mentioning
Comments: Every single Giants team this decade (especially early in the decade) looks exactly like this. Fantastic fielding (the Giants were the best almost every year in Fielding), great hitting and no pitching.
8. 1929 Chicago Cubs
Results: 98-54 (.645), 6.29 r/g vs 4.87 ra/g (.614), 1st by 10.5 games, won NL, lost WS 4-1
Ratings: Hitting: +1.58, Pitching: +1.02, Fielding: +1.30
Top Batters: Rogers Hornsby, 2B (11.1), Hack Wilson, OF (6.6), Kiki Cuyler, OF (5.6), Riggs Stephenson, OF (5.1)
Top Pitchers: Pat Malone (5.1), Charley Root (5.0)
Comments: This was a great, great team, at least as far as their Ratings is concerned. It should have been; anytime you take a good team and add a monster like Hornsby you should expect greatness. But their pythag is a little entry level for a list like this, and not winning the World Series hurts, though had they won it would have only bumped them to 6th.
7. 1922 St. Louis Browns
Results: 93-61 (.604), 5.64 r/g vs 4.12 ra/g (.639), 2nd by 1 game
Ratings: Hitting: +1.44, Pitching: +1.80, Fielding: +1.00
Top Batters: George Sisler, 1B (8.3), Ken Williams, OF (7.4), Marty McManus, 2B (3.8), Baby Doll Jacobson, OF (3.4)
Top Pitchers: Urban Shocker (6.9), Elam Vangilder (3.8)
Comments: I’m sure that you can see what I was talking about as far as the Browns being underrated; this is how high they rank *after* being penalized for missing the playoffs. It’s hard to look at the pythag and those Ratings and not appreciate how good this team was.
6. 1923 New York Yankees
Results: 98-54 (.645), 5.42 r/g vs 4.09 ra/g (.625), 1st by 16 games, won AL, won WS 4-2
Ratings: Hitting: +1.28, Pitching +0.04, Fielding: +1.49
Top Batters: Babe Ruth, OF (15.0), Aaron Ward, 2B (4.4), Whitey Witt, OF (3.3)
Top Pitchers: Joe Bush (3.7), Herb Pennock (3.3)
Comments: Hmm, do you think it’s possible that Ruth carried this team? Unrelated, the early decade Yankees had much better fielding than the late decade Yankees, but worse hitting.
5. 1921 New York Yankees
Results: 98-55 (.641), 6.20 r/g vs 4.61 ra/g (.632), 1st by 4.5 games, won AL, lost WS 5-3
Ratings: Hitting: +1.75, Pitching: +0.59, Fielding: +1.10
Top Batters: Babe Ruth, OF (13.9), Bob Meusel, OF (4.4), Wally Schang, C (4.2), Aaron Ward, 2B (3.7), Roger Peckinpaugh, SS (3.1)
Top Pitchers: Waite Hoyt (5.2), Carl Mays (4.6), Bob Shawkey (3.0)
Comments: Ruth in the early 20s was in a class by himself. I mean, this is a good team; good fielding, good pitching, but Ruth contributing 14 WAR makes it all-time great, as opposed to pretty good.
4. 1920 Cleveland Indians
Results: 98-56 (6.36), 5.56 r/g vs 4.18 ra/g (.627), 1st by 2 games, won AL, won WS 5-2
Ratings: Hitting: +1.28, Pitching: +1.56, Fielding: +0.73
Top Batters: Tris Speaker, CF (8.7), Steve O’Neill, C (4.6), Elmer Smith, OF (4.2), Ray Chapman, SS (4.0), Larry Gardner, 3B (3.9)
Top Pitchers: Stan Coveleski (6.8), Jim Bagby (4.8), Ray Caldwell (3.5)
Comments: What an excellent, well-balanced team; and that's with their shortstop being killed two-thirds through the year.
3. 1925 Pittsburgh Pirates
Results: 95-58 (.621), 5.96 r/g vs 4.67 ra/g (.609), 1st by 8.5 games, won NL, won WS 4-3
Ratings: Hitting: +1.64, Pitching: +0.40, Fielding: +0.80
Top Batters: Kiki Cuyler, OF (7.5), Max Carey, CF (4.8), Glenn Wright, SS (4.6), Pie Traynor, 3B (4.0), Eddie Moore, 2B (3.4), Clyde Barnhart, OF (3.1)
Top Pitchers: Lee Meadows (4.1)
Comments: This team ranking this high was a surprise to me. I mean, they’re good obviously, they have 60%+ record and pythag and won the World Series, but to see it ahead of the 1920 Indians is a headscratcher. The cause is how competitive the MLB was in 1925. The NL had no team worse than 68-86 (72 wins in a 162 game season) and no team better than 86-66 (92 wins adjusted) besides the Pirates. This means that the Pirates were never playing against terrible teams; everyone was at least tolerably decent. Compare this with the 1920 AL where the bottom two teams were (adjusted for season length) 51-111 and 64-98. A small part of the reason the Indians had such good results is that 29% of their games were against bottom-feeders like this; this is an advantage that the Pirates of 1925 did not have.
2. 1929 Philadelphia Athletics
Results: 104-46 (.693), 5.97 r/g vs 4.08 ra/g (.667), 1st by 18 games, won AL, won WS 4-1
Ratings: Hitting: +1.36, Pitching: +1.02, Fielding: -0.25
Top Batters: Jimmie Foxx, 1B (8.0), Al Simmons, OF (7.9), Mickey Cochrane, C (4.5), Jimmie Dykes, 2B (3.9), Bing Miller, OF (3.6)
Top Pitchers: Lefty Grove (6.5), George Earnshaw (3.9)
Comments: I’ll be honest, I was expecting a little more from the A’s Ratings. Not that these are bad, but they’re no better than the team they beat in the World Series, the ‘29 Cubs. The difference is that the A’s record and pythag are both excellent (both are 2nd to the ‘27 Yankees for the decade). And it’s hard to fathom a team with 4 Hall-of-Famers on the roster. Having Foxx, Simmons and Cochrane in the same lineup with Grove as your ace is just unfair. And perhaps their greatest achievement is existing in the same league as a Yankees team with Ruth and Gehrig and beating it by 18 games.
1. 1927 New York Yankees
Results: 110-44 (.714), 6.30 r/g vs 3.90 ra/g (.705), 1st by 19 games, won AL, won WS 4-0
Ratings: Hitting: +2.33, Pitching: +1.12, Fielding: +0.85
Top Batters: Babe Ruth, OF (13.0), Lou Gehrig, 1B (12.5), Earle Combs, OF (6.8), Tony Lazzeri, 2B (6.3), Bob Meusel, OF (4.2)
Top Pitchers: Waite Hoyt (4.0), Herb Pennock (3.1), Wilcy Moore (3.0)
Commentary: Speaking of unfair, getting 25 WAR from your two best players is stupid. Having both your win percentage and pythag above .700 is insane. Their pitching was good, their fielding was good, but anytime you’re dealing with a Hitting Rating north of 2 you’re dealing with a profoundly dangerous team. Only two Hall-of-Famers on it but, if you only get two, Ruth and Gehrig are good ones to choose. There were three all-time great hitters in this decade: Ruth, Hornsby and Gehrig. That two were on the same team at the same time . . .
Whew, that was a lot of history. I feel restored; back to Honorable Mention Starting Pitchers!
In an effort to increase the number of runs per game the league introduced the “live ball” with a cork center, but in 1910 and not in 1920 as is often asserted. For three years hitting spiked until something curious was discovered; that if the baseball were scuffed (say against concrete or emery boards) it would lead to unpredictable breaks on the ball when pitched. Pitchers relied on this and the spitter more and more and the hitters went back to the 1900s-levels of offense. It became the job of the pitcher and every other fielder to scuff up the ball as much as possible. Compounding this problem is that, as a cost-saving measure, the ball that the game was started with was used until the stitching had started to unravel; even home runs were thrown back into play to be used. This meant that before long into the game the ball became a "misshapen, earth-colored ball that traveled through the air erratically, tended to soften in the later innings, and, as it came over the plate, was very hard to see."
Going into the 1920 season the league decided to crack down on the defacing of the ball. Doctoring the ball in any way became illegal, including throwing a spitball. Pitchers that already threw the pitch were grandfathered in (as the league didn’t want to effectively end the career of those depending on its use) but no pitchers debuting after 1920 could (legally) throw that pitch. This change was massive in effect. Observe these differences:
1919 (defacing ball legal): 3.88 R/G, 263/322/348 line, 28 home runs per team
1920 (defacing ball illegal): 4.36 R/G, 276/335/372 line, 39 home runs per team
That, my friends, is a big difference. Taking away the pitchers’ ability to doctor the ball was worth half a run per game, 13 points of average, 24 points of slugging and 11 home runs per team.
Doctoring the ball was illegal, but the league still used the same ball for as long as it could, making it harder to see and therefor hit.
On August 16, 1920, the above came to a head. In a game between the Yankees and Indians, submariner pitcher Carl Mays (known for challenging hitters crowding the plate) threw a fastball high and inside against Indians’ shortstop Ben Chapman. Chapman, apparently not able to see the pitch come in, did not move out of the way. The ball hit Chapman’s head hard and rebounded into play. The impact was so loud that Mays assumed that the ball had bounced off the end of Chapman’s bat, fielded the ball and threw to first. Chapman, dazed and stumbling, tried to take his base but fell. He rose doggedly, stumbled another few steps, fell again and did not rise. He was carted off the field and taken to a hospital where he died of his injuries at 4:30 am the next day.
Chapman’s death was a tragic accident. But it contained within it massive policy implications for the league. After all, pitchers were throwing balls that were very hard to pick up visually as they approached the batter. It took little imagination to realize that this was a dangerous set of conditions to play in, and Chapman’s death was the natural consequence of this fact.
The league moved quickly implemented a new policy, that balls be replaced as soon as any sign of wear became visible.
Between these two changes pitchers had lost one of their most effective tools and batters gained a more visible, more lively ball (not by virtue of its construction but by the absence of wear). And the changes would give hitters dominance over the game for the next two decades; only in the steroid era was the balance of power so in favor of the hitters.
1919 (defacing ball legal, old balls): 3.88 R/G, 263/322/348 line, 28 home runs per team
1920 (scuffed ball illegal, old balls): 4.36 R/G, 276/335/372 line, 39 home runs per team
1921 (only new balls, no scuffing): 4.85 R/G, 291/348/403 line, 59 home runs per team
These two changes were worth a run per game, 28 points of average and 55 points of slugging. The changes suggest that the difference was worth 31 home runs per team as well, but the difference was actually greater. After all, these batters had built their swings for the deadball era and it took some time to adjust to swinging for the fences more; by 1930 teams were hitting almost 100 home runs a season.
Transition points are curious things. The things that made a great deadball era player (great contact, speed and fielding) were still useful in the liveball era, but not as useful. Conversely, players with uppercut swings simply weren’t that great in the deadball era, even if they occasionally had value (Gavvy Cravath, Socks Seybold, etc). Transition points are always ripe for exploitation by either 1) people that are savvy enough to detect the change in trend and adjust accordingly, and 2) people that by their nature are already engaged in the optimal behavior for the new environment.
Enter Babe Ruth: “How to hit home runs: I swing as hard as I can, and I try to swing right through the ball... The harder you grip the bat, the more you can swing it through the ball, and the farther the ball will go. I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.”
Ruth swung as hard as he could every time, though he was willing to wait for that right pitch. He struck out a ton (leading the league in strikeouts his first season as a batter, even though he only hit in 95 games, and finishing in the top two of strikeouts from 1918 to 1928) but his incredible reflexes, eyesight and strength meant that when he did make contact it went quite a ways (and that he played in a league where 3-4 K/9 was the average meant his aggression was not penalized too much). His lines for 1919-1920:
1919: 322 / 456 / 657, 29 home runs, 217 OPS+, 128 runs created (#2 was 109)
1920: 376 / 532 / 847, 54 home runs, 255 OPS+, 200 runs created (#2 was 178)
Ruth was already great. But the liveball era was *perfect* for Ruth. And it transformed him from a great hitter into arguably the greatest hitter ever.
Breakdown by Year:
1920: 276/335/372, 4.36 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.5 home runs, 1.4 steals, 5.9 K’s
Pennant Winners: Cleveland Indians (98-56), Brooklyn Robins (93-61)
World Series: Cleveland Indians defeat Brooklyn Robins 5 - 2
Best Hitters: Babe Ruth, 2 (NYA), Rogers Hornsby, 4 (STL)
Best Pitchers: Stan Coveleski (CLE), Pete Alexander, 7 (CHN)
1921: 291/348/403, 4.85 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.8 home runs, 1.2 steals, 5.7 K’s
Pennant Winners: New York Yankees (98-55), New York Giants (94-59)
World Series: New York Giants defeat New York Yankees 5 - 3
Best Hitters: Babe Ruth, 3 (NYA), Rogers Hornsby, 5 (STL)
Best Pitchers: Stan Coveleski, 2 (CLE), Burleigh Grimes (BRO)
1922: 288/348/401, 4.87 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.9 home runs, 1.2 steals, 5.6 K’s
Pennant Winners: New York Yankees (94-60), New York Giants (93-61)
World Series: New York Giants defeat New York Yankees 4 - 0 - 1
Best Hitters: George Sisler (SLA), Rogers Hornsby, 6 (STL)
Best Pitchers: Urban Shocker (SLA), Wilbur Cooper (PIT)
1923: 287/347/391, 4.81 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.8 home runs, 1.3 steals, 5.7 K’s
Pennant Winners: New York Yankees (98-54), New York Giants (95-58)
World Series: New York Yankees defeat New York Giants 4 - 2
Best Hitters: Babe Ruth, 4 (NYA), Frankie Frisch (NYG)
Best Pitchers: Urban Shocker, 2 (SLA), Dolf Luque (CIN)
1924: 287/348/394, 4.76 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.7 home runs, 1.2 steals, 5.4 K’s
Pennant Winners: Washington Senators (92-62), New York Giants (93-60)
World Series: Washington Senators defeat New York Giants 4 - 3
Best Hitters: Babe Ruth, 5 (NYA), Rogers Hornsby, 7 (STL)
Best Pitchers: Howard Ehmke (BOS), Dazzy Vance (BRO)
1925: 292/354/411, 5.13 r/g/tm, the average game had 1.0 home runs, 1.1 steals, 5.4 K’s
Pennant Winners: Washington Senators (96-55), Pittsburgh Pirates (95-58)
World Series: Pittsburgh Pirates defeat Washington Senators 4 - 3
Best Hitters: Al Simmons (PHA), Rogers Hornsby, 8 (STL)
Best Pitchers: Howard Ehmke, 2 (BOS), Dazzy Vance, 2 (BRO)
1926: 281/345/389, 4.64 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.7 home runs, 1.0 steals, 5.5 K’s
Pennant Winners: New York Yankees (91-63), St. Louis Cardinals (89-65)
World Series: St. Louis Cardinals defeat New York Yankees 4 - 3
Best Hitters: Babe Ruth, 6 (NYA), Hack Wilson (CHN)
Best Pitchers: Lefty Grove (PHA), Hal Carlson (PHI)
1927: 284/345/393, 4.75 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.7 home runs, 1.2 steals, 5.6 K’s
Pennant Winners: New York Yankees (110-44), Pittsburgh Pirates (94-60)
World Series: New York Yankees sweep Pittsburgh Pirates 4 - 0
Best Hitters: Babe Ruth, 7 (NYA), Rogers Hornsby, 9 (STL)
Best Pitchers: Lefty Grove, 2 (PHA), Dazzy Vance, 2 (BRO)
1928: 281/344/397, 4.73 r/g/tm, the average game had 0.9 home runs, 1.0 steals, 5.8 K’s
Pennant Winners: New York Yankees (101-53), St. Louis Cardinals (95-59)
World Series: New York Yankees sweep St. Louis Cardinals 4 - 0
Best Hitters: Babe Ruth, 8 (NYA), Rogers Hornsby, 10 (NYG)
Best Pitchers: Lefty Grove, 3 (PHA), Dazzy Vance, 3 (BRO)
1929: 289/353/417, 5.19 r/g/tm, the average game had 1.1 home runs, 1.1 steals, 5.7 K’s
Pennant Winners: Philadelphia Athletics (104-46), Chicago Cubs (98-54)
World Series: Philadelphia Athletics defeat Chicago Cubs 4 - 1
Best Hitters: Jimmie Foxx (PHA), Rogers Hornsby, 11 (CHN)
Best Pitchers: Lefty Grove, 4 (PHA), Dazzy Vance, 4 (BRO)
Just an aside on the ‘Best Hitters’. You could be accused of getting a skewed impression with how many ‘Best Hitters’ Rogers Hornsby won. Don’t get it twisted, Hornsby was a monster. But (as with the AL in the prior decade) the AL’s second best hitter was better than Hornsby half the time; you’ll note, for example, that Lou Gehrig features here not at all.
Team of the Decade:
C: Wally Schang (BOS, NYA, SLA)
1B: Lou Gehrig (NYA)
2B: Rogers Hornsby (STL, NYG, CHN)
3B: Frankie Frisch (NYG, STL)
- Frisch was a 2B by trade, but he played a decent third and is good enough to merit inclusion here
SS: Joe Sewell (CLE)
OF: Babe Ruth (NYA)
CF: Tris Speaker (CLE, WAS)
OF: Harry Heilmann (DET)
SP: Dazzy Vance (BRO)
SP: Eppa Rixey (PHI, CIN)
SP: Pete Alexander (CHN, STL)
SP: Burleigh Grimes (BRO, NYG, PIT)
SP: George Uhle (CLE, DET)
Boston Braves: 0.394 win percentage, 0 Pennants, 0 Championships
Best Team: 1921, when they went 79-74, finishing 4th
Best Players: literally, none.
The Braves were terrible. They had the one winning season in 1921, somehow, but were catastrophic besides that. They had five separate seasons where they won 56 games or fewer.
Boston Red Sox: 0.388 win percentage, 0 Pennants, 0 Championships
Best Team: 1920, when they still had the leftovers of their strong teams in the teens, going 72-81 and finishing 5th. That was their *best* team.
Best Players: Howard Ehmke (SP), worth 12 WAR on the decade. Setting the bar low.
The Red Sox were merely bad from ‘20-24, winning between 71 and 75 games. But by 1925 the became full-on terrible, finishing dead last every single year.
Brooklyn Robins: 0.499 win percentage, 1 Pennant, 0 Championships
Best Team: 1920, when they went 93-61, won the NL by seven games and lost the World Series to Tris Speaker’s Indians
Best Player: Dazzy Vance (SP) by far, worth 45 WAR.
The Robins had a very curious decade. They had eight mediocre/bad seasons with two good ones. It’s the configuration that’s weird. In 1920 they won the NL, but on either side of that season they were 500. In 1924 they went 92-62, finishing 1.5 games out of first. But they had losing seasons on either side of that one. So what gives; what heavens aligned to make Brooklyn good for those two years in isolation? As far as we can tell, mostly luck. The 1920 team had a good record and pythag, but their WAR was only pretty good; it just happened to be a really weak year for the top half of the NL. And in 1924 their record was good, but their pythag and team WAR were just above average. Looking in the aggregate, the Robins just seem to be an average team that, in the random variation of chance had two unusually good years that happened to align with when the Giants and Cardinals were slightly off their game.
Chicago Cubs: 0.526 win percentage, 1 Pennant, 0 Championships
Best Team: Easily the 1929 Cubs, who went 98-54, won the league by 10.5 games and lost in the World Series to the murderous 1929 Athletics.
Best Player: Pete Alexander (SP), worth 27.6 WAR in the late part of his career, though Hack Wilson (OF) is a respectable second with 24.4 WAR.
The Cubs had been decent at the end of the teens and they continued to be at least average starting the 20s. They still had Pete Alexander, but Alexander in his 30s was merely a very good pitcher, not the world-beater he’d been in his 20s. Dancing around 500 for the first half of the decade, the Cubs owner ended up being bought out by Harry Wrigley, the chewing gum magnate, who renamed the Cubs’ stadium after himself to bring more attention to his gum. Ironic of course that Wrigley Field is known by many who are ignorant of baseball, but Wrigley gum is known far less. As part of the purchase Wrigley brought in Bill Veeck to GM the team.
In a few years Hack Wilson, who had struggled with the Giants, had been brought in and transformed into an All-Star. Along with Wilson, Veeck hired Joe McCarthy to run the team on the field. McCarthy was a relative unknown, but quickly proved more than up to the task, leading the Cubs to a 14-game jump in quality from ‘25 to ‘26, several winning seasons and a pennant. (It may seem weird that I’m pitching McCarthy’s role in this, but McCarthy may have been the best manager ever. McCarthy retired in 1950, having managed for 24 years. His resume: 9 Pennants, 7 Rings, 0 losing seasons. Record jump the year he signed on: +14, +8, +7. No joke, McCarthy was the real deal.)
From ‘26 to ‘28 the Cubs went 82-72, 85-68 and 91-62 but finished 4th, 4th and 3rd respectively. After the 1927 season Hall-of-Famer Rogers Hornsby had strained his relationship with new Cardinals GM Branch Rickey and was traded to the Giants. While the Giants improved with Hornsby, the “Rajah” clashed with John McGraw (unsurprisingly) and was known to be on the outs. The Cubs swung in and offered to take Hornsby off the Giants’ hands. For a negligible offer of prospects, the Cubs got the best second basemen of the decade (perhaps ever). And with Hornsby the club went 98-54 and won the league going away.
There’s a certain tragedy when a team has its best year when somebody else is having a better one. The 1906 Giants were great, but they happened to exist in the same league as the 1906 Cubs. The 1912 Pirates were great, but they happened to exist in the same league as the 1912 Giants. The 1998 Astros happened to be in the same league as the 1998 Braves, who happened to be in the same year as the 1998 Yankees. And the 1929 Cubs, the best Cubs team for a decade just happened to exist in the same season as the 1929 Athletics, one of the best teams ever. It happens.
Chicago White Sox: 0.476 win percentage, 0 Pennants, 0 Championships
Best Team: The 1920 White Sox, who went 96-58, finishing a close second to the Indians who would go on to win the World Series.
Best Player: A pair of veterans. Red Faber (SP) was 32 at the beginning the decade but he would pitch through it and into the 1930s, good for 36.3 WAR. Eddie Collins was 33 in 1920 and played for the Sox until 1926 (age 39). In those seven years he put up 35.2 WAR. From ages 33-39. Did I mention that Eddie Collins was good?
The more discerning of you may be confused. Wasn’t the Black Sox scandal in 1919; weren’t a bunch of players banned from baseball? How did they follow up a great year without those players? That’s a great question. The answer is that the commissioner only banned those players after the jury exonerated them, and the court system takes a long time. So even though the scandal happened in 1919, the ban didn’t happen until after the 1920 season. So 1920 was the final ride of the 1919 team, falling just short. That can’t have been a comfortable clubhouse . . .
The White Sox struggled a bit after the ban, rebuilt themselves to be slightly above average in ‘25 and ‘26 and then collapsed, culminating in a 59-93 1929 season. Not an embarrassing decade, but not much to brag about either.
Cincinnati Reds: 0.521 win percentage, 0 Pennants, 0 Championships
Best Team: The 1926 Reds were one of the least remarkable really good teams ever. They only went 87-67, finishing 2nd behind the Cardinals by two games, but had the most Team WAR by a respectable margin. But the team had absolutely zero stars; it was just an incredibly solid all-around performance from everyone.
Best Player: The pitching trio of Eppa Rixey, Dolf Luque and Pete Donohue contributed 36.3, 34.8 and 29.6 WAR for the decade.
The Reds had the best pitching of the decade. They had the best pitching season (1925) and five of the top 17 pitching WAR seasons. The unfortunate bit is that in this era pitching wasn’t anywhere near as important as hitting+fielding (remember that batter WAR includes both); the standard deviation on batter WAR for the decade is 10, and for pitching WAR is about 3.5; suggesting that a truly dominant team of hitters gains about 20 wins from it, while a truly dominant pitching team gained perhaps 7. Heck, the Giants of the early 20s had below average pitching every year and still won a slew of pennants and a few rings. The number of teams that won their league in the 20s with below average batter WAR is . . . wait, it never happened. The lowest (1920 Robins) were still above average, and they had a lot of pitching help. The top five batter WARs of the decade all won their league; of the top sixteen batter WARs of the decade, thirteen won their league and eight won the World Series. Of the top five pitcher WARs of the decade, none won their league (though all had a winning record) and of the top 25, only three won their league.
This is all a long way of saying that Cincinnati probably had the best pitching of the decade, but you shouldn’t get too excited about that fact. Furthermore they didn’t have the best pitching by virtue of having dominant aces (this decade didn’t really have those aside from Lefty Grove and perhaps Dazzy Vance); they simply had a deep rotation of very good pitchers. The team was consistently good, finishing 2nd three times and 3rd twice. And it’s not like they had bad hitters; they were above average most years. But their bats were never great even for a year, and they never had the luck to overperform their WAR at the same time that their league was weak (like the 1920 Robins). Still. A good team with a solid decade.
Cleveland Indians: 0.512 win percentage, 1 Pennant, 1 Championship
Best Team: 1920 when they went 98-56, beating the White Sox by 2 games and winning the World Series over the Robins.
Best Player: Tris Speaker only played with them until 1926 but in those 7 years put up 46.2 WAR. Joe Sewell (Honorable Mention) played the whole decade with them and fell just barely short of 40 WAR.
The late teen early 20s Indians were fantastic. From 1919-1921 they won 60% of their games each year. In 1919 they fell just short of the White Sox, in 1921 they fell just short of the Yankees, but in 1920 they won it all. The success of the early 20s Indians more or less depended on the supporting cast of hitters. Speaker was going to put up 6-10 WAR no matter what, and Stan Coveleski and George Uhle would both be strong. In 1922 the rest of the team struggled and the Indians were just above average. In 1923 the Indians played their butts off but never saw it in the win column, finishing 17 games behind the ‘23 Yankees (despite the fact that the teams were very evenly matched in WAR). They suffered two down years, then one last hurrah in ‘26 when they finished only three games behind the Yankees (88-66), even though the 38 year-old Tris Speaker could only contribute a paltry (for him) 5.4 WAR in his last year with the team. The rest of the decade was a bit underwhelming, though they perked up in 1929 going 81-71. That team had a lot of the core of their next decade, rookie Earl Averill, 21 year old Wes Ferrell and 20 year old Mel Harder.
The Tris Speaker teams of the early 20s were really good. They had excellent pitching, a decent supporting cast and, of course, Speaker, and it was enough to win the Indians one of their two Championships in the century.
Detroit Tigers: 0.494 win percentage, 0 Pennants, 0 Championships
Best Team: Probably 1923, when they went 83-71 and finished a mere 16 games behind the Yankees.
Best Player: You may be expecting it to be Ty Cobb, but the Georgia Peach was already 34 in 1920 and only played with the Tigers until 1926 (he still contributed 33.3 WAR in those years). The best player was Harry Heilmann (OF), good for an impressive 54.1 WAR over the decade.
The Tigers, honestly since 1901, did a consistently poor job of developing talent around their stars. In the teens the Tigers had two stars, one old one young (Sam Crawford and Ty Cobb) but never assembled the pieces necessary to support them. In the 20s there was a similar pair in Cobb and Heilmann and they had the exact same problem. Some of this problem can obviously be laid at Cobb’s feet; he was the manager from ‘21-’26 (managers in this part of the century were generally also the team’s GM; every team having a specialist who managed the administrative side of personnel and payroll would not happen for some time). But yeah, the Tigers had consistently average or below average pitching, and if you took out Cobb and Heilmann the team contributed only 25.5 WAR a year, or what you would expect from a 73-win team.
The Tigers had a decent team all decade but never really threatened. Toward the end of the decade though there was at least one bright spot. A young second baseman named Charlie Gehringer was picked up and by 1929 (age 26) he was starting to be very good. But no Tigers fans would have reason to be particularly optimistic about the team’s future.
New York Giants: 0.582 win percentage, 4 Pennants, 2 Championships
Best Team: The teams from ‘21-’24 were really good, but I’d pick the ‘22 team as the best. They went 94-60, won the Pennant and beat the Yankees in the World Series.
Best Player: Frankie Frisch (2B), with 38.8 WAR over the 1920-1926 seasons.
Talking about John McGraw’s Giants is weird as hell, because they’re so unremarkable. From 1920 to 1924 they were great, winning the Pennant four times and the World Series twice. They had two down years where they were about average, then bounced back from ‘27-29, finishing 2nd once and 3rd twice. It was a heck of a decade.
The team had little pitching but it had hitting in abundance. Frankie Frisch was a future Hall of Famer who played for them until he was traded for Rogers Hornsby (who was better). Ross Youngs put up 33.7 WAR over 7 seasons between 1918 and 1924 before sudden illness sapped his strength and eventually killed him at 30. The problem with McGraw teams is that he had such a reputation for identifying and developing hitters that they seemed interchangeable. Travis Jackson? Put up 29 WAR in seven years at shortstop in the decade, solid hitter, great fielder. Which makes him identical to Dave Bancroft (the shortstop he replaced) or Art Fletcher (the shortstop that Bancroft replaced). McGraw just had a gift for getting the most out of everybody; it’s rare to see a McGraw team without an above-average player at every position on the field.
New York Yankees: 0.608 win percentage, 6 Pennants, 3 Championships
Best Team: The Yankees had many excellent teams in the decade, with ‘21, ‘23 and ‘28 leaping to mind. But anyone that doesn’t pick the 1927 Yankees as the best of the decade is suffering from a cognitive impairment. They went 110-44, won the AL by 16 games and were in second for no day of the season. They had more batter WAR than any team in 1927 had *total WAR*, which is to say, if the Yankees that year had only had replacement level, AAA-quality pitching they’d still have been the best team in the MLB. The 1927 Yankees are often picked as the best team of all-time and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see why.
Best Player: Lou Gehrig put up 40 WAR starting in 1925 (averaging 8 WAR a season) but the Babe put up 108 WAR in the decade. Legit, a 10-WAR season for Ruth in the 20s was a down year.
The story of the Yankees in the 20s is invariably the story of Ruth. And for good reason; from 1920 to 1924 the Babe was a full 42% of the team’s batting + fielding contribution. While the team in the first half of the decade had its share of good players (Roger Peckinpaugh and Wally Pipp leap to mind) none would break 5 WAR in a season and most years the team had a number of below average contributors. It’s just that when you need 30 WAR from your batters to contend, and you have a guy who can put up 10 a year, well, getting 20 WAR from seven other starters plus your bunch just isn’t that hard. The Yankees had respectable pitching the whole decade but they lived and died with their bats, and for the early 20s Ruth was so good that little else mattered. In fact, here’s the Yankees’ 1920-1924 assuming Ruth were replaced with an average outfielder:
1920: 85-69, 3rd
1921: 87-66, 2nd
1922: 90-64, 2nd
1923: 86-66, 1st (it was a weak year)
1924: 79-73, 3rd
The early 20s Yankees was no juggernaut without Ruth; even with Ruth they were mortal. In the first two World Series’ against the Giants, John McGraw called every pitch from the dugout (feeding him mostly slow curves and off-speed pitches) and Ruth batted 220/363/338 for those losses to the Giants. Of course in 1923, when the teams met again, Ruth hit 368/556/1000 and led the Yankees to victory.
The Yankees struggled to separate themselves from the shadow of the Giants (at that point, perhaps the best franchise in the game). Compounding matters, the Yankees played at the Polo Grounds, the Giants’ stadium. The two teams feuded and ultimately the Yankees constructed an enormous new park, Yankee Stadium, that at the time was considered the greatest stadium ever built. For this and many reasons, the time the Yankees remained in the Giants’ shadow was at an end.
In 1925 Ruth missed time and played badly (for him) hitting 290/393/543 and contributing only 3.5 WAR. The Yankees finished 7th. But good things were on the horizon. Earle Combs started in the outfield in 1925. And a bright-eyed youngster with incredible talent had been sitting on the bench behind stalwart Wally Pipp, but when Pipp was struggling Miller Huggins benched him in favor of the youngster. On June 2, 1925, Lou Gehrig started, went 3 for 5 with a double and didn’t miss a game until 1939, setting a consecutive-games-played record that would stand for fifty-plus years. In 1926 Tony Lazzeri gained the starting job at second.
In 1927 it all came together. Gehrig (who would have been the most feared slugger in the era if not for Ruth) contributed 11.8 WAR, Ruth 12.4 WAR, Combs 6.9 and Lazzeri 6.3. In those four players contributed more WAR that season than *any team* received from *all their batters* for the entire decade. They stomped everyone through the season and swept the World Series. In 1928 they regressed horribly (almost 20 WAR worse) and they still won the AL and swept the World Series, plus added an excellent young catcher in Bill Dickey. In 1929 the Yankees were honestly about as good as they had been in ‘28, except that the 1929 Athletics were ridiculously good and won the league by 18 games.
It had been a good decade. They’d won the AL six of ten years, won three championships, and had put the Yankees on the map. But the A’s were an unstoppable force and Ruth was about to be 35. If you took the odds on the 30s being even better for the Yankees than the 20s in the offseason of 1929, I’d say they’d have been long. Of course, if you took odds on whether the roaring 20s would be followed by the worst depression the country had ever seen, you'd have gotten long odds too. Interestingly, the two had a lot to do with each other.
Philadelphia Athletics: 0.505 win percentage, 1 Pennant, 1 Championship
Best Team: Obviously the 1929 team, going 104-46 and beating the Yankees (who still had Ruth and Gehrig) by 16 games and beating the Cubs in 5 games. Ironically this may have helped the Yankees, as the Cubs would ultimately fire manager Joe McCarthy for losing the series, which eventually led McCarthy to managing the Yankees to great success in the 30s and 40s.
Best Player: Al Simmons (OF) put up 31.5 WAR over six seasons (1924-1929), while Lefty Grove (SP) put up 28.6 WAR over five.
When last we were with our heroes, the Athletics were catastrophically bad for the second half of the teens, thanks to Connie Mack selling off his stars in response to financial pressure from the Federal League. Well, that trend just kept right on, with the A’s winning 48 and 53 games in ‘20 and ‘21, but was gradually offset by Mack finding and developing what became an avalanche of talent that would soon crush even the mighty Yankees.
The next two years (‘22 and ‘23) they won 65 and 69, finishing 7th and 6th. In ‘24 they went 71-81, finishing 5th, but added two young players, outfielder Al Simmons (22) and second baseman Max Bishop (24). In ‘25 those two combined for 9 WAR and the team went 88-64, finishing 2nd. But they also added pitcher Lefty Grove (25) and catcher Mickey Cochrane (22). In ‘26 and ‘27 the team played well, going 83-67 (3rd) and 91-63 (2nd), with Grove establishing himself as the best pitcher in the American League. In 1928 they went 98-55, still finishing second, with a problem. They had a 20-year-old phenom, but no room for him. He was a first basemen but Joe Houser was holding that spot down fine, he could play a little third but Sammy Hale was decent and he could even catch, though Mickey Cochrane made that unnecessary. But Jimmie Foxx hit 328/416/548, better than anyone on the team, while playing for only 70% of the season.
In 1929 Mack promoted Foxx to the starting job. Simmons and Foxx each threw up 7.9 WAR and the A’s crushed the Yankees by 18 games. With a star-studded lineup and Lefty Grove on the mound, the A’s rightly looked like the team to beat going into the 30s.
Philadelphia Phillies: 0.370 win percentage, 0 Pennants, 0 Championships
Best Team: The ‘29 Phillies were not terrible going 71-82 and finishing 5th.
Best Player: Cy Williams (OF) put up 25.5 WAR over ten seasons for the franchise.
The Phillies were a smoldering garbage fire this decade. Let us not dwell.
Pittsburgh Pirates: 0.572 win percentage, 2 Pennants, 1 Championship
Best Team: The 1925 Pirates went 95-58, winning the NL by 8.5 games and the World Series in 7.
Best Player: The Pirates had four players contribute almost equally: Max Carey (OF) contributed 26.1 WAR in 6.5 years, Paul Waner (OF) contributed 25.5 WAR in 4 years, Pie Traynor (3B) contributed 24.7 WAR in 10 seasons and Wilbur Cooper (SP) contributed 24.4 WAR in 5 years.
The Pirates were consistently good for the decade. From 1920-1929 they had no losing seasons and never finished below 4th. Like the Giants they had a deep core of solid players that often intersected. Even as Wilbur Cooper aged and left the team, spitballer Burleigh Grimes came on. Even as Max Carey was leaving Paul Waner came on. Reliable stalwarts like Kiki Cuyler and Pie Traynor were never dominant but were always consistently good, making Pittsburgh’s excellence a matter of routine. Their two best years were 1925 and 1927, the two years they won the NL. In 1925 they won a very competitive NL (no team finished worse than 68-86) by 8.5 games and overcame the Senators in 7, overcoming a 3-1 deficit. In 1927 they barely won the NL by 1.5 games over the Cardinals, earning the dubious privilege of facing the ‘27 Yankees in the World Series. It went about like you’d expect.
St. Louis Browns: 0.498 win percentage, 0 Pennants, 0 Championships
Best Team: The 1922 went 93-61, finishing 2nd, 1 game behind the Yankees. The Browns were the better team that year.
Best Player: You might have guessed George Sisler (1B), but actually Ken Williams (OF) put up 36.7 WAR over 8 seasons. Much of Sisler’s peak was in the late teens and he was fairly washed up by the mid 20s.
The Browns were actually decent for this decade, with 7 average years, 2 bad years (‘26-’27) and 1 great year, 1922. About that 1922 year: it was a fluke but a powerful one. It was a 93-61 season with an 81-73 before it, and a 74-78 after it. And yet that team was far better than the its record. They won only 1 less game than the Yankees but had a pythag seven wins better and a team WAR twelve wins better. The underlying numbers don’t suggest that the ‘22 Browns were as good as the ‘22 Yankees; they suggest that the Browns were much better. It was the perfect storm: George Sisler had his second best year ever (420/467/594, OPS+ 170, 8.7 WAR), Ken Williams had his best year ever (332/413/627, OPS+ 164, 7.9 WAR) and Urban Shocker had his best year ever (3.9 K/9, 1.5 BB/9, 0.6 HRA/9, FIP- 81, ERA- 70, 6.9 WAR, 8.9 rWAR). Add on to that all the supporting players played well; the team had almost no below replacement level performances and plenty of ordinarily average players post 3 and 4 WAR seasons. The whole team came together and, individually and collectively, had their best season to date. And yet, in what can only be described as an unfortunate imperfection of reality, the Browns still finished second to a worse team.
The Browns would wait another two decades for their first pennant, and even that was in the distorted environment of World War II. The franchise’s first peacetime pennant would take did not occur until the 60s, so long in fact that they would no longer go by the same name. The 1922 edition was almost certainly the best team to wear the name ‘St. Louis Browns’.
St. Louis Cardinals: 0.536 win percentage, 2 Pennants, 1 Championship
Best Team: The 1926 Cardinals went 89-65, winning the NL by two games and beating the Yankees in 7.
Best Player: Rogers Hornsby (2B) contributed 66.5 WAR over 7 seasons.
The Cardinals in the first two decades of the century had been terrible. In those first nineteen years they had four winning seasons, never finished in the top two, and only finished in the first division three times.
The Cardinals in the 20s were a story of two men: Rogers Hornsby and Branch Rickey. Hornsby was the National League’s best player eight times that decade, five of them with St. Louis. In fact, from 1920-1925 Hornsby led the NL in AVG, OBP, SLG and OPS+ every season. Despite these contributions, the Cardinals were merely just above average, finishing 3rd twice and 4th once in those six years. In the offseason after 1925 the manager, Branch Rickey, was fired and Hornsby made the player-manager. That year the Cardinals, not appreciably better than the year prior except in wins and in the acquisition of an aged Pete Alexander, won the NL and the World Series.
Branch Rickey was hurt by his termination, but the Cardinals’ owner Sam Breadon wanted to keep him on in a more administrative capacity. While Rickey seemed to struggle to manage a ballclub, his gifts for player development were not lost on Breadon. Rickey became the business manager of the team (the term General Manager was not then used) and began rigorously investing in minor league talent. Remember, at this point, the minor leagues were separate but smaller than the MLB. Rickey used the Cardinals’ funds to buy several of these minor league teams and convert them to use as scouting and development teams for the Cardinals, farms to grow players. The Commissioner of baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, worried that this move would eventually lead to the death of the minors, forcibly released the players of Rickey’s farm system twice, but Rickey continued undaunted.
While it would help little in the 20s, by the 30s the Cardinals would reap what Rickey had sown, and other teams would either follow suit or be left behind. There have been four major paradigm shifts in MLB history and in each one the early adopters quickly gained a massive advantage over the competitors who failed to do so. These four great shifts are: 1) the development of farm systems; 2) the use of players of color; 3) the development of talent development and acquisition of hispanic players abroad; and 4) the integration of statistical analysis into the making of baseball decisions. Rickey was the first to utilize each of these and his teams benefited greatly (while he died long before the ‘Moneyball’ revolution, he was the first GM to employ a statistician and determine that OBP was better than AVG, but this didn’t happen until the 40s with the Dodgers). The Cardinals would only benefit from the first.
Anyhow. Rickey and Hornsby did not get along terribly well and Hornsby tried to use his success in 1926 as leverage to win himself a new 3 year, $50k per year deal (about $722k annually in modern money; Ruth at the time was earning $52k per year though he would shortly get a new deal worth $70k annually). Rickey ultimately traded Hornsby to the Giants for the younger (by two years), less skilled and less belligerent Frankie Frisch who was on the outs with John McGraw. Frisch played well for the Cardinals (if not as well as Hornsby) and the team did not miss a beat, finishing 2nd and 1st (losing to the Yankees in the WS) in ‘27 and ‘28 before finishing 4th in 1929. But thanks to Rickey’s farm system, the future for the Cardinals was very bright indeed.
Washington Senators: 0.519 win percentage, 2 Pennants, 1 Championship
Best Team: The ‘24 Senators won the Championship but the ‘25 Senators were slightly better, finishing 96-55 and taking the Pirates to 7 games.
Best Player: Goose Goslin (OF), 38.7 WAR over 8 seasons
The 20s were a great decade for change. Four of the franchises that had struggled for the past 20 years (the Cardinals, Senators, Browns and to some extent, the Highlanders/Yankees) turned their fortunes around for the decade. Walter Johnson, who had been dominant for over a decade was finally able to be on a winner. In 1924 it all came together for Washington. 23 year-old outfielder Goose Goslin had a breakout year with 6+ WAR, Roger Peckinpaugh (SS) hit decently and played Gold Glove defense and Walter Johnson (36 years old) led the league in Wins, ERA, shutouts, strikeouts, FIP and WHIP (I know we didn’t give Johnson the Cy Young for that year; the defense supporting him made him look better than he was). Then in 1925 the team did it all over again, except the hitters were slightly better and Johnson regressed. The Senators bounced between 3rd and 5th the rest of the decade, good but not great. And in 1929 Joe Cronin (22 years old) got the starting job at shortstop and would help lead the Senators to an excellent first several years in the 30s.
I’m just happy that Walter Johnson finally got his ring.
Franchises that Dominated the Most this Decade:
1. New York Yankees
2. New York Giants
3. Pittsburgh Pirates
4. St. Louis Cardinals
5. Philadelphia Athletics
Franchises that Dominated the Least this Decade:
1. Philadelphia Phillies
2. Boston Red Sox
3. Boston Braves
4. Chicago White Sox
5. Detroit Tigers
Franchises that Stunk the Most this Decade:
1. Philadelphia Phillies
2. Boston Red Sox
3. Boston Braves
4. Chicago White Sox
5. Philadelphia Athletics
Franchises that Stunk the Least this Decade:
1. Pittsburgh Pirates
2. New York Giants
3. New York Yankees
4. Cincinnati Reds
5. St. Louis Cardinals
Best Teams of the Decade:
10. 1928 New York Yankees
Results: 101-53 (.656), 5.81 r/g vs 4.45 ra/g (.619), 1st by 2.5 games, won AL, won WS 4-0
Ratings: Hitting: +1.74, Pitching: -0.18, Fielding: -0.69
Top Batters: Babe Ruth, OF (10.6), Lou Gehrig, 1B (9.7), Tony Lazzeri, 4.6 (2B), Earle Combs, OF (4.5)
Top Pitchers: George Pipgras (5.0), Herb Pennock (3.9)
Comments: Look how freaking lopsided that team is. Below average pitching, bad fielding but the lineup was so strong that they could still win the championship. It also goes to show how aberrant the ‘27 season was. Not that it wasn’t a great team, but the ‘28 team is almost the exact same roster. It’s so interesting to see how big a swing between an on-year and an off-year can be with the same set of players.
9. 1922 New York Giants
Results: 93-61 (.604), 5.46 r/g vs 4.22 ra/g (.615), 1st by 7 games, won NL, won WS 4-0-1
Ratings: Hitting: +1.75, Pitching: -0.56, Fielding: +1.68
Top Batters: Dave Bancroft, SS (6.9), Frankie Frisch, 2B (4.9), George Kelly, 1B (4.6), Ross Youngs, OF (4.5), Irish Meusel, OF (4.0), Casey Stengel, OF (3.3)
Top Pitchers: none worth mentioning
Comments: Every single Giants team this decade (especially early in the decade) looks exactly like this. Fantastic fielding (the Giants were the best almost every year in Fielding), great hitting and no pitching.
8. 1929 Chicago Cubs
Results: 98-54 (.645), 6.29 r/g vs 4.87 ra/g (.614), 1st by 10.5 games, won NL, lost WS 4-1
Ratings: Hitting: +1.58, Pitching: +1.02, Fielding: +1.30
Top Batters: Rogers Hornsby, 2B (11.1), Hack Wilson, OF (6.6), Kiki Cuyler, OF (5.6), Riggs Stephenson, OF (5.1)
Top Pitchers: Pat Malone (5.1), Charley Root (5.0)
Comments: This was a great, great team, at least as far as their Ratings is concerned. It should have been; anytime you take a good team and add a monster like Hornsby you should expect greatness. But their pythag is a little entry level for a list like this, and not winning the World Series hurts, though had they won it would have only bumped them to 6th.
7. 1922 St. Louis Browns
Results: 93-61 (.604), 5.64 r/g vs 4.12 ra/g (.639), 2nd by 1 game
Ratings: Hitting: +1.44, Pitching: +1.80, Fielding: +1.00
Top Batters: George Sisler, 1B (8.3), Ken Williams, OF (7.4), Marty McManus, 2B (3.8), Baby Doll Jacobson, OF (3.4)
Top Pitchers: Urban Shocker (6.9), Elam Vangilder (3.8)
Comments: I’m sure that you can see what I was talking about as far as the Browns being underrated; this is how high they rank *after* being penalized for missing the playoffs. It’s hard to look at the pythag and those Ratings and not appreciate how good this team was.
6. 1923 New York Yankees
Results: 98-54 (.645), 5.42 r/g vs 4.09 ra/g (.625), 1st by 16 games, won AL, won WS 4-2
Ratings: Hitting: +1.28, Pitching +0.04, Fielding: +1.49
Top Batters: Babe Ruth, OF (15.0), Aaron Ward, 2B (4.4), Whitey Witt, OF (3.3)
Top Pitchers: Joe Bush (3.7), Herb Pennock (3.3)
Comments: Hmm, do you think it’s possible that Ruth carried this team? Unrelated, the early decade Yankees had much better fielding than the late decade Yankees, but worse hitting.
5. 1921 New York Yankees
Results: 98-55 (.641), 6.20 r/g vs 4.61 ra/g (.632), 1st by 4.5 games, won AL, lost WS 5-3
Ratings: Hitting: +1.75, Pitching: +0.59, Fielding: +1.10
Top Batters: Babe Ruth, OF (13.9), Bob Meusel, OF (4.4), Wally Schang, C (4.2), Aaron Ward, 2B (3.7), Roger Peckinpaugh, SS (3.1)
Top Pitchers: Waite Hoyt (5.2), Carl Mays (4.6), Bob Shawkey (3.0)
Comments: Ruth in the early 20s was in a class by himself. I mean, this is a good team; good fielding, good pitching, but Ruth contributing 14 WAR makes it all-time great, as opposed to pretty good.
4. 1920 Cleveland Indians
Results: 98-56 (6.36), 5.56 r/g vs 4.18 ra/g (.627), 1st by 2 games, won AL, won WS 5-2
Ratings: Hitting: +1.28, Pitching: +1.56, Fielding: +0.73
Top Batters: Tris Speaker, CF (8.7), Steve O’Neill, C (4.6), Elmer Smith, OF (4.2), Ray Chapman, SS (4.0), Larry Gardner, 3B (3.9)
Top Pitchers: Stan Coveleski (6.8), Jim Bagby (4.8), Ray Caldwell (3.5)
Comments: What an excellent, well-balanced team; and that's with their shortstop being killed two-thirds through the year.
3. 1925 Pittsburgh Pirates
Results: 95-58 (.621), 5.96 r/g vs 4.67 ra/g (.609), 1st by 8.5 games, won NL, won WS 4-3
Ratings: Hitting: +1.64, Pitching: +0.40, Fielding: +0.80
Top Batters: Kiki Cuyler, OF (7.5), Max Carey, CF (4.8), Glenn Wright, SS (4.6), Pie Traynor, 3B (4.0), Eddie Moore, 2B (3.4), Clyde Barnhart, OF (3.1)
Top Pitchers: Lee Meadows (4.1)
Comments: This team ranking this high was a surprise to me. I mean, they’re good obviously, they have 60%+ record and pythag and won the World Series, but to see it ahead of the 1920 Indians is a headscratcher. The cause is how competitive the MLB was in 1925. The NL had no team worse than 68-86 (72 wins in a 162 game season) and no team better than 86-66 (92 wins adjusted) besides the Pirates. This means that the Pirates were never playing against terrible teams; everyone was at least tolerably decent. Compare this with the 1920 AL where the bottom two teams were (adjusted for season length) 51-111 and 64-98. A small part of the reason the Indians had such good results is that 29% of their games were against bottom-feeders like this; this is an advantage that the Pirates of 1925 did not have.
2. 1929 Philadelphia Athletics
Results: 104-46 (.693), 5.97 r/g vs 4.08 ra/g (.667), 1st by 18 games, won AL, won WS 4-1
Ratings: Hitting: +1.36, Pitching: +1.02, Fielding: -0.25
Top Batters: Jimmie Foxx, 1B (8.0), Al Simmons, OF (7.9), Mickey Cochrane, C (4.5), Jimmie Dykes, 2B (3.9), Bing Miller, OF (3.6)
Top Pitchers: Lefty Grove (6.5), George Earnshaw (3.9)
Comments: I’ll be honest, I was expecting a little more from the A’s Ratings. Not that these are bad, but they’re no better than the team they beat in the World Series, the ‘29 Cubs. The difference is that the A’s record and pythag are both excellent (both are 2nd to the ‘27 Yankees for the decade). And it’s hard to fathom a team with 4 Hall-of-Famers on the roster. Having Foxx, Simmons and Cochrane in the same lineup with Grove as your ace is just unfair. And perhaps their greatest achievement is existing in the same league as a Yankees team with Ruth and Gehrig and beating it by 18 games.
1. 1927 New York Yankees
Results: 110-44 (.714), 6.30 r/g vs 3.90 ra/g (.705), 1st by 19 games, won AL, won WS 4-0
Ratings: Hitting: +2.33, Pitching: +1.12, Fielding: +0.85
Top Batters: Babe Ruth, OF (13.0), Lou Gehrig, 1B (12.5), Earle Combs, OF (6.8), Tony Lazzeri, 2B (6.3), Bob Meusel, OF (4.2)
Top Pitchers: Waite Hoyt (4.0), Herb Pennock (3.1), Wilcy Moore (3.0)
Commentary: Speaking of unfair, getting 25 WAR from your two best players is stupid. Having both your win percentage and pythag above .700 is insane. Their pitching was good, their fielding was good, but anytime you’re dealing with a Hitting Rating north of 2 you’re dealing with a profoundly dangerous team. Only two Hall-of-Famers on it but, if you only get two, Ruth and Gehrig are good ones to choose. There were three all-time great hitters in this decade: Ruth, Hornsby and Gehrig. That two were on the same team at the same time . . .
Whew, that was a lot of history. I feel restored; back to Honorable Mention Starting Pitchers!