St. Louis Cardinals: The franchise all-time bracket

A dozen St Louis Cardinals teams have won a World Series; which was the best of them all?

The St Louis Cardinals have one of the gaudiest records in National League history. Since their formation as the St. Louis Browns in 1882, the franchise has won a dozen World Series. That’s more than any franchise except the New York Yankees.

They also have an exceptional .520 franchise winning percentage, with 850 more victories than defeats. Nine different Cardinals teams have won 100 games or more.

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That level of consistent excellence makes selecting teams to fill out an eight-team all-time bracket a challenge; some very good teams must be bypassed. In the case of the Cardinals,, criteria for selection include post-season performance, but that’s not all. We’re also looking for a field that represents the long span of on-field excellence, a span that dates back to the very first St. Louis pennant winner in 1885.

That 1885 team was actually the first of four consecutive St. Louis Browns clubs to win a pennant in the American Association, at the time a recognized major league.

Of those four, the 1886 Browns were probably superior. They won a recognized World Series, from the National League champion Chicago White Stockings, in six games. They also won 93 games against just 46 losses.

The next great Cardinal dynasty emerged in the decade between 1926 and 1935 when St. Louis won three World Series and five pennants. Selecting all three world champions would bias the bracket, but of the three the 1926 and 1931 clubs present the best combination of performance and talent diversity. They’re in.

In the 1940s, St. Louis added three more World Series wins 1942, 1944 and 1946. The clubs are so closely bunched in time that it is only necessary to choose one, and among them, the 1942 team is plainly the most formidable with its franchise-record 106 regular-season wins.

The next two World Series victories came in 1964 and 1967, and the greatness of both teams makes it impossible to imagine a St Louis Cardinals bracket challenge without both.

That leaves two spots, with three World Series winners – 1982, 2006 and 2011 — still available. The obvious call is to add the 1982 club plus the remaining team with the better record, which happens to be 2011. Although that Cardinal team finished six games behind Milwaukee in the NL Central, it eliminated Philadelphia and the Brewers before defeating Texas in a memorable seven-game World Series.

Each matchup in the tournament is decided based on seven criteria. You can think of each as a ‘game,’ the winner of four games advancing. The seven criteria are:

1. Game 1: Regular season winning percentage.
2. Game 2: Post-season winning percentage
3. Game 3: Team OPS+
4. Game 4: Team ERA+
5. Game 5 (if necessary): Team WAR
6. Game 6 (if necessary: Fielding percentage above the league average for the season in question.
7. Game 7 (if necessary): Hall of Famers or likely future Hall of Famers