Last season’s Los Angeles Dodgers posted the highest win percentage of any team since 1954. It was the third-highest win percentage since the World Series came into existence, better than even those of the 116-win 2001 Mariners and the 1927 Murderers’ Row Yankees.
This isn’t getting a ton of attention, and that’s both fair and unfair. The Dodgers played only 60 games, and a small sample size introduces more randomness into the equation. They also played against only the West Divisions, and while the Padres were fiercely competitive, the A’s were a good team, and the Astros had talent despite managing few regular season wins, arguments could be made that they benefited from playing such a high percentage of games against the Giants, Rockies, and Diamondbacks.
At the same time, though, randomness can work in either direction. The Dodgers may have been helped by it. They also may have been hurt. And as far as divisions…the Central Divisions—home to seven of the 16 playoff teams—sent zero teams to the Division Series (the playoffs aren’t a great sample, but they’re the only cross-division sample we have from 2020). The Marlins made the playoffs out of the NL East (this, I’ll admit, does demonstrate the strength of the sample-size argument). As strong as the arguments may be against the historic greatness of the 2020 Los Angeles Dodgers, there are compelling counterpoints to be made.
This year, the Dodgers figure to be back. They let some role players walk. They signed the Cy Young winner. They are again projected to be the best team in Major League Baseball.
Could they be the best team ever?
This is a complicated question, because it’s difficult to define the word “best” in this context. The two logical choices are 1) the best team in the context of their time and 2) the best team if dropped into any time. If the route is 2), then the answer is more likely yes, because the Dodgers are poised to be this year’s best team and baseball teams are always getting better (though how quickly they’re getting better impacts the answer). If the route is 1), the answer is more likely no. But there’s 1.1), also, which is probably the most common one, an iteration of 1) that’s limited to the live-ball era, with a special weight on championships.
Under that definition, it’s unlikely the Dodgers will be the best team of all time. FanGraphs’s Playoff Odds peg Los Angeles to win 99.4 games, and while I’m of the impression that might understate the impact of the trade deadline—when the Dodgers figure to buy and some of their post-deadline opponents figure to sell—it would take a grand overperformance to get into the 116-win territory necessary to be compared to those Yankees from 94 years back. There’s also that championship weight, and the Dodgers are only 21.3% likely, per those Playoff Odds, to win the World Series. That’s enough to make them the likeliest champion in baseball. It’s also only 21.3%, comparable to the chances the Orioles would get a win with their fifth starter in a hypothetical matchup with Gerrit Cole.
The Dodgers have a chance to be the best team ever, in the most common definition, the same way every preseason favorite does these days. The chance is low. But it’s there.
