This newsletter is devoting several months to an examination of past greatness. It’s focusing on history’s top 50 ballclubs — collectively known as the Best 50 — as determined by my new book, Baseball’s Best (and Worst) Teams. We’ve reached No. 7 on the all-time list, the 1927 New York Yankees.
Here’s a quick boilerplate explanation that I’m appending to every story in this series:
I compiled the Best 50 by analyzing 2,544 major-league teams from 1903 to 2024. Those clubs have been ranked by their team scores (TS), which are plotted on a 100-point scale. (A given club’s all-time percentile is the percentage of the other 2,543 teams that it outperformed.)
See my book for an explanation of my TS calculations. The book also offers separate breakdowns of the best and worst clubs for every decade and franchise, comprehensive profiles of the Best 50 (including position-by-position lineups and much more information than you’ll find in this newsletter), and similar summaries of the 10 worst teams of all time.
Now on to today’s profile.
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Team: 1927 New York Yankees
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Team score: 91.389 points
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All-time rank: 7 of 2,544
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All-time percentile: 99.76%
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Season record: 110-44 (.714)
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Season position: First place in American League
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Final status: World champion
The Yankees had established themselves by 1927 as the American League’s preeminent team — winners of four of the past six pennants — but their postseason record was unimposing. Three of their four World Series had ended in defeat, including the previous year’s matchup with the St. Louis Cardinals.
Critics detected several weaknesses. “Surely a team which has but one reliable pitcher, no reliable shortstop, [and] an inexperienced youth at second base could not be rated as dangerous,” Sporting News columnist John Sheridan wrote dismissively in late 1926.
Yet the Yankees opted to stand pat in 1927, starting the same eight position players and relying on the same three workhorses in their pitching rotation.
Everything clicked. Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig combined for 107 home runs, and pitchers Waite Hoyt and Wilcy Moore respectively led the AL in wins (22) and ERA (2.28). The Yankees rolled to a 10-game lead before the end of June, then coasted to their fifth pennant since 1921.
Get the complete lowdown on the 50 greatest (and 10 weakest) clubs of all time
Recent postseason failures — especially their heartbreaking Game Seven defeat in 1926 — shadowed the Yankees into 1927’s World Series. They expected another tough battle. Their opponents, the Pirates, had won a world title just two years earlier, and the two clubs appeared to be closely matched. Their collective batting averages in 1927 were virtually identical: .307 for New York, .305 for Pittsburgh.
The first and last games of the series were decided by a single run, and the other two games remained close until the late innings. But history would remember one central fact — the Yankees swept the Pirates.
The victory emboldened New York manager Miller Huggins to call his team the dominant force in baseball. “Some fans said that we romped home in the American League because we had no opposition,” he said. “But I feel certain that we could have won the pennant in the National League quite as handily.”
The 1927 Yanks have gone down in baseball mythology as the greatest club of all time, though my rankings put six teams ahead of them.
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Joe Judge, a veteran first baseman for the Washington Nationals, was awed by the Yankees’ batting order in 1927. “Those fellows not only beat you,” Judge said, “but they tear your heart out.”
The lineup’s most destructive force was right fielder Babe Ruth, who had established the single-season record of 59 home runs in 1921. Ruth had been aiming for the nice round number of 60 ever since, a goal he achieved in 1927’s penultimate game. “Will I ever break this again?” he shouted happily. “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
First baseman Lou Gehrig kept pace with Ruth much of the way. Each had 44 homers as of Labor Day, though Gehrig tailed off to a final total of 47. He did lead the American League with 173 runs batted in.
Two lesser-known batters also reached triple digits in RBIs. Left fielder Bob Meusel (103) was the polar opposite of the boisterous Ruth, earning him the nickname of Silent Bob. Second baseman Tony Lazzeri (102) suffered from epilepsy. “There was never a time that I didn’t watch Lazzeri with the greatest apprehension, fearful that he would have a seizure on the ballfield,” said Yankees general manager Ed Barrow. “He never did.”
New York’s mound staff was surprisingly deep. Four pitchers won at least 18 games, and each had an earned run average of 3.00 or better.