The 10 best MLB teams of the now-concluding 2010s
3. 2019 Houston Astros, 18 points
In the record books, the Washington Nationals are crowned as champions of 2019 by virtue of their four games to three victory this week over the AL champion Astros.
Based purely on the data, however, there’s no doubt that the Astros had the better team – in fact, they had one of the best teams of the decade.
Houston’s failure to win a second World Series in three seasons is largely ascribable to the element of caprice inherent in any seven-game series between relatively even teams. The easiest way to get your arms around that concept is to remember that the visiting team won all seven games. There’s no logical explanation for why that should happen.
In fact, the Astros were the decade’s most dominant non-champion. They had the majors’ best regular-season record (107-55), one game better than the Dodgers, four games better than the Yankees and 14 games better than the Nationals.
They were the only team all decade to possess both the majors’ best offense and best pitching, as determined by their 119 OPS+ and 127 ERA+.
They lacked only a victory in Wednesday’s seventh World Series game to give them a perfect score of 20 points on our “decade’s greatest teams” scale. That single loss drops them into third place for the decade.