 |
Who won the most games over a 35-game period? And which of the teams with "high-performance spans" (as shown in the chart at right) went on to win the World Series?
That's all available at a glance, but let's go through it a bit. The 1906 Cubs, with the best WPCT of any team in any season, make sense as the top dogs here, with their 33-2 run in the heart of the second half. (They managed not to win the World Series, however).
The Cubs also held the second-best "scald" from a different span point in the 1906 season--32-3--a skein that was matched in 2017 by the Cleveland Indians (driven, of course, by their remarkable 22-game winning streak). The 2017 Tribe could not get past the New York Yankees in the post-season, however.
[Note that we are only showing one instance of any number of possible ongoing instances of these "scalds," in order to keep the list relatively manageable.]
In the group of teams with a 31-4 "scald," we have the 2017 Indians again, who were the second team that season to do so--the first being the Los Angeles Dodgers, who got red-hot during June and July. The Dodgers made it to the World Series but lost to the Houston Astros. Other 31-4 skeins belong to the 2001 Oakland A's, the first team we encounter who didn't win their division, and the 1977 Kansas City Royals, who lost in the playoffs to the New York Yankees. We have to go back to 1947 before we find a 31-4 team that also won the World Series--not surprisingly, perhaps, the Yankees, who also did the same in 1941. Rounding out the list are those 1906 Cubs.
The 1912 Giants, who lost the World Series to the Red Sox, show up at 30-4, with one tie in their 35-game stretch. Their skein occurred early in the season, which is relatively rare occurrence amongst these teams: only ten of the teams on the list had a "scald" that began in April or May.
In the 30-5 group, we find the 2017 Indians and Dodgers again, who are supplemented by three other 21st-century teams that got "scald-y": the 2022 Dodgers, en route to 111 wins; the 2013 Dodgers, who were actually under .500 when their "scald" began; and the 2002 Oakland A's, with their hot spell centered around a 20-game winning streak. None of these teams made it to the World Series.
Hotted-up teams in our inverted look at the twentieth century are dominated by the presence of the New York Yankees, who have 30-5 "scalds" in 1998, 1953, 1947, 1941, 1939, and 1928--and winning the World Series in all of those seasons. The Giants and the Cardinals are also on the list when we travel back to WWII and beyond, each with three appearances: only St. Louis actually won a World Series in any of those years, however (1942 and 1944).
In more recent times (but still nearly forty years ago at this point), we have the Detroit Tigers in 1984, with their singular start (30-5 here, but extending out to 35-5) bookended by a smashing World Series win.
So we'll see how it goes for the Rays as 2023 progresses. Their 28-7 start puts them just inside the top 100 of "scalds," with many more teams that either missed the World Series (or missed the post-season entirely: that includes teams such as the 2005 Indians, the 2005 A's, and the 1978 Pirates--such misses are rare, but they do occur.) With the World Series much harder to reach in post-expansion times, we should note that of the eight "scald" teams (30-5 or better...) that have appeared since divisional play started in 1969, only three of them have made it all the way to the Fall Classic ('84 DET, '98 NYY, 2017 LAD), with two of them (Tigers and Yankees) winning. Stay tuned...
