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

By Bill Felber

NEW YORK - 1927. (L-R) Babe Ruth, outfielder, Miller Huggins, manager, and Lou Gehrig, first baseman, all of the New York Yankees, take a break at the batting cage before a game in Yankee Stadium before a game in the 1927 season. (Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images)
NEW YORK - 1927. (L-R) Babe Ruth, outfielder, Miller Huggins, manager, and Lou Gehrig, first baseman, all of the New York Yankees, take a break at the batting cage before a game in Yankee Stadium before a game in the 1927 season. (Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images) /
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Pepper Martin scores against A’s catcher Mickey Cochrane during the 1931 World Series. (Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images)
Pepper Martin scores against A’s catcher Mickey Cochrane during the 1931 World Series. (Photo by Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images) /

1931 Philadelphia Athletics, 107-45, .704

.700 Club rank:  T-8

This was Connie Mack’s last great team, and arguably the best of his half-century career as the team’s manager.

It featured four legendary Hall of Famers at the peaks of their game. Catcher Mickey Cochrane batted .349, first baseman Jimmie Foxx hit .291 with 30 home runs, left fielder Al Simmons hit .390, and mound ace Lefty Grove was 31-4.

Grove produced one of the great pitching seasons of all time. In a season when the league average ERA was 4.38, Grove turned in a 2.06 ERA. And he did so while making 30 starts, 11 relief appearances, and turning in 289 innings.

In the early 1930s, nobody had thought up the concept of ERA+, a new statistic that contextualizes a pitcher’s performance against that of his peers. Grove’s ERA+ was 217, meaning he was more than twice as dominant as his average competitor.

In 1931 Grove led he league in wins, ERA, complete games (27), shutouts (4), and strikeouts (175).

The A’s secret was an overwhelming dominance of the league’s weak sisters. Against Boston, Detroit and Chicago — the sixth- through eighth-place teams— Philadelphia compiled a record of 53-11, outscoring those three teams 410-225.

Coming off 1929 and 1930 World Series wins, the A’s built a double-digit lead by July 23 and coasted home 13.5 games ahead of the runner-up Yankees.

But like other dominant teams, they failed in the World Series. The NL champion St. Louis Cardinals, losers to the A’s in five games in 1930, got revenge, winning a seven-game series. That was a series in which Cardinal star Pepper Martin batted .500 and stole five bases.

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