The best of the best: Ranking the 12 winningest teams in MLB history

Major League Baseball has its own version of the popular 700 Club. It consists of teams that have compiled a winning percentage of .700 or higher over the course of a full season of at least 130 games.

But the MLB version is a lot more exclusive than the better-known one on TV.

In fact, in MLB history, there are only a dozen members of the .700 Club, only two of which have been admitted in the past half-century.

In a league as competitive as MLB, a .700 winning percentage is a monumental goal. The most recent team to do so was the 2020 Los Angeles Dodgers, whose 43-17 record equated to a .717 winning percentage. The Dodgers, of course, went on to win the World Series in six games over the Tampa Bay Rays.

But for purposes of enrollment in the .700 Club, the 2020 Dodgers had the distinct COVID-induced advantage of only having to play 60 games. That’s 102 fewer than are normally scheduled by a modern MLB club.

Not that carrying a .700 winning percentage is easy at any point, but in the last six seasons alone three teams hit the 60-game mark rolling along at that pace. In addition to the 2020 Dodgers, the 2016 Cubs and 2017 Astros were both 42-18, .700, after 60 games. Like the Dodgers, both, of course, went on to win the World Series, although with percentages that dipped to .640 for the Cubs and .623 for Houston.

Those are very, very lofty … but they are not .700.

In the game’s early days, when what we would now consider short seasons were the norm, .700 winning percentages were relatively common. In fact, 18 times prior to lengthening of the schedule to 132 games in the mid 1880s, a team finished what was recognized as a Major League season with at least a .700 winning percentage.

The all-time record in that department is held by a club known as the Boston Red Stockings, who in the 1875 National Association – a precursor to today’s National League – won 71 of their 79 games. That’s an .899 percentage.

The 1884 St. Louis Maroons of the Union Association and 1872 Boston Red Stockings of the National Association also topped .800 in seasons of 113 and 47 games, respectively.

Not that winning 70 percent of a team’s games guarantees it anything in the way of postseason success. In fact baseball’s most successful teams — as measured by their performance over the course of a full season of at least 130 games — have distinctly underachieved in their post-seasons.

Of the 12 qualifying teams with percentages of .700 or higher, only five went on to win the World Series. Of the remaining seven, five lost their World Series (or, in the case of one, their 19th Century version of that event), one was eliminated prior to reaching the Series, and one compiled its .700 record in a season in which there was no postseason.

Here’s a look at the dozen teams that qualified for membership in baseball’s most exclusive club, the .700 Club.