Best of BP: Now Do You Believe Me About the Dodgers?

Last summer, I wrote an article titled, “The Dodgers May Be The Best Team We’ll See.” No lede burying for me! I made a case for the title. Here, for example, is a table from that article listing the best six-year winning records since the formation of the American League in 1901.

I’m guessing there aren’t many of you who were alive for any of those teams but one. 

The Dodgers, I posited, have posted a record over the past several years that’s among the best in baseball history. But they’ve failed to get the recognition they deserve, largely due to their various disappointments in MLB’s postseason tournament. Having successfully advanced through the quarterfinals and semifinals this year and beating the Yankees in the finals, that complaint has been, if not put to rest, at least mitigated. 

But the data I presented last year ended in 2022. Let’s look at this anew. Here’s those top-20 six-year winning percentages through the end of this season.

A bunch of teams from before color TV, and then the Dodgers. The gap between clubs maintaining a .640 winning percentage ran over 60 years, from the end of the Yankees’ 1949-54 streak to the start of the Dodgers’ 2017-22 streak.

You might complain that part of the Dodgers’ streak fell in 2020. The contemporary Dodgers thus had a short season embedded in there. But the difference in games between the 2019-24 Dodgers and the leaders, the 1905-10 Cubs, is only 46 games, or 7.7 per year. That’s less than the difference between the 162-game season the Dodgers play and the 154-game season every other team on the list played. And almost all the teams on this list didn’t have to face transcontinental travel, sliders, opponents who trained all winter rather than take another job to make ends meet, or nonwhite players. The Dodgers’ records were compiled in a much more challenging environment. 

But maybe that six-year timeframe is cherry-picking. Here are the top five-season winning percentages.

Basically, it’s early 20th century Cubs, prewar Yankees, WWII-era Cardinals, Connie Mack’s greatest hits, and the contemporary Dodgers. (The 2016-21 Dodgers rank 34th.)

One more short timeframe: The best-ever four-year records.

It’s worth noting here that the 2021-24 Dodgers—no pandemic year included—rank 28th. The most recent team preceding those Dodgers are the 23rd-ranked 1953-56 Yankees. The contemporary Dodgers are the best team by this measure since a time when a quarter of American households didn’t have a telephone.

How about longer periods? Here are the best seven-year streaks ever.

The 2018-2024 Dodgers just miss making it. Their 656-377 record, .635, is next on the list.

Finally, here are the best eight-year records. 

To me, this is the mic drop. Over the last eight years, the Dodgers have played 1,195 games. The team with the best-ever record over eight years, the 1903-10 Cubs, played only 12 more, so don’t give me any 60-game noise. No team to compile a better record over eight years than the contemporary Dodgers has any living survivors. This is the best team you’ve ever seen, and maybe the best one you ever will. The 2016-23 Dodgers rank 25th, the 2015-22 Dodgers 35th. The most recent team, other than the Dodgers, you remember is the 1992-99 Braves. They ranked 36th.

And now they’ve got their second piece of metal in five years to show for it. Not that they needed it. They call the 162 games the Championship Season, after all. The Dodgers are the champions of our lifetimes.