So the thing about baseball is that the sport has so much built-in parity, such a gift for randomness, so much built upon a foundation of unpredictability that the short run gives us some bizarre outcomes. For instance, the 2017 Dodgers -- en route to winning 104 games and pennant -- lose 16 of 17 at one point. The 2006 Cardinals eke out 83 wins in the regular season but then barge to the championship in October. The '88 Mets go 10-1 against the Dodgers in the regular season but then fall to them in seven games in the NLCS. And so on. 

The upshot of this is that the best team in the regular season doesn't wind up hoisting the trophy all that often, especially relative to the NBA and NFL. As such, it says there that the teams who do pair regular season dominance with the belt and the title are deserving of special recognition. This brings us to the concept of the "Ultimate Champion." Here are the inviolable precepts that must be satisfied in order to be declared an Ultimate Champion ... 

  1. The Ultimate Champion must win the World Series for the season in question.
  2. The Ultimate Champion must have the best record in all MLB during the regular season in question. No ties permitted. 
  3. The Ultimate Champion must have the best run differential (i.e. runs scored minus runs allowed) during the regular season in question. No ties permitted. 

As for the run differential component, it flows from the principle that great teams should generally beat the innards out of the opposition as opposed to squeezing out tight wins thanks to a blend of skill and good fortune. The '87 Twins, for instance, won the World Series despite being outscored by the opposition during the regular season. No one will ever take their trophy away, but they have no place among the Ultimate Champions. Ultimate Champions win the most games, yes, and they also dominate all comers like no other. As noted above, if an aspiring Ultimate Champion winds up tying another team in record or run differential, then they don't pass muster. 

As shorthand for run differential, we used the "pythagorean records" available at the inestimable Baseball-Reference. The name is off-putting and evocative of forced marches through geometry, but it's nothing more than a simple formula that tells you what a team's record should've been based on runs scored and runs allowed. 

In the early days of MLB, you saw teams occasionally play widely differing numbers of games. To account for this, an Ultimate Champion must have ensured a better record and better pythagorean record even if a trailing team matched their game total with all wins. For instance, if the eventual champion finished the regular season with a 100-54 record but a trailing team went 97-54, then no Ultimate Championship would be rewarded because a tying record would've been possible given an equal number of games. The same principle applies to pythagorean marks (which, again, are just hypothetical records based on runs scored and runs allowed). I hereby declare the throat-clearing concluded. 

So we've had 113 World Series to date, but just 29 of those 113 World Series champions have been Ultimate Champions. Stated another way, a mere quarter or so of World Series champions have also had the best record and best run differential. Now let's run down the ledger of Ultimate MLB Champions ... 


MLB's Ultimate Champions

Team

Record

Pythagorean Record

2016 Chicago Cubs

103-58

107-54

1998 New York Yankees

114-48

108-54

1989 Oakland Athletics

99-63

97-65

1986 New York Mets

108-54

103-59

1984 Detroit Tigers

104-58

99-63

1975 Cincinnati Reds

108-54

107-55

1970 Baltimore Orioles

108-54

104-58

1968 Detroit Tigers

103-59

103-59

1967 St. Louis Cardinals

101-60

97-64

1961 New York Yankees

109-53

103-59

1956 New York Yankees

97-57

98-56

1950 New York Yankees

98-56

96-58

1948 Cleveland Indians

97-58

104-51

1947 New York Yankees

97-57

100-54

1944 St. Louis Cardinals

105-49

107-47

1940 Cincinnati Reds

100-53

96-57

1939 New York Yankees

106-45

111-40

1938 New York Yankees

99-53

97-55

1937 New York Yankees

102-52

103-51

1936 New York Yankees

102-51

102-51

1932 New York Yankees

107-47

99-55

1929 Philadelphia Athletics

104-46

100-50

1927 New York Yankees

110-44

109-45

1923 New York Yankees

98-54

95-57

1919 Cincinnati Reds

96-44

92-48

1917 Chicago White Sox

100-54

100-54

1912 Boston Red Sox

105-47

102-50

1907 Chicago Cubs

107-45

102-50

1905 New York Giants

105-48

105-48


Some takeways: As you would expect, the Yankees have easily the most Ultimate Championships with 12 (out of 27 championships overall). Winning four UC's in a row back in the 1930s is particularly impressive. The big losers? Give it to the Dodgers. They've won the World Series a respectable six times, but none of those teams qualified for an Ultimate Championship. The 1955 Dodgers team came the closest, as they had the best record and famously won their only title in Brooklyn, but the Yankees edged them in run differential. 

Also, as you can tell it's much harder to win the Ultimate Championship these days. We're deep into the expansion era, obviously, and since 1995 there's that third layer of the playoffs that the best teams must fight through. That's why just two squadrons -- the '98 Yankees and the 2016 Cubs -- stand as Ultimate Champions since the Division Series was instituted. It's really, really hard to pull it off these days. 

All hail the Ultimate Champions, people. Outfit them in laurel wreaths and hail them.