Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics had won their fifth in seven appearances in 1930. The Red Sox were stuck on five in five appearances, the last of which was 1918. With Ruth’s power hitting came the Yankees’ swing in fortunes, and by 1937, baseball’s most successful team as measured by World Series wins became the New York Yankees with six titles in nine appearances. Babe Ruth stepped off the mound, spent more time in the batter’s box. Then they traded the pitcher who won two games in the 1918 World Series to New York. The then-Boston Americans won the first modern World Series in 1903, and the franchise took five of the first 17 titles, including four in seven years from 1912-18. History is one thing, recency is another. Neither of them are named the New York Yankees, who in that time have reached the Fall Classic less frequently than fellow division foes the Tampa Bay Rays. In that time, only two other teams have won it multiple times. What this ultimately means is of the 117 modern World Series, the two AL East rivals have combined to win over 30% and over half of the AL’s 66 crowns.įour of those Boston titles have come in the past 18 seasons. Boston has also won nine of the 13 it’s appeared in, so it turns out the team that for so long sucked at winning the World Series has been historically and comparatively a very prolific and proficient winner of the World Series. But more than a fifth of those remaining belong to the Red Sox – not bad for a team once famous for not winning the World Series. New York’s 27 World Series wins are closer in comparison to the rest of the American League (39) than they are to any single MLB franchise. And of those 40, they’ve won over twice as many as they’ve lost (27-13). The New York Yankees have appeared in more than a third of modern World Series (the first was 1903, though they weren’t in it). 543), but man do they win World Series games nowadays. 584 winning percentage is only bettered by the Miami Marlins (24-14. The Yankees are 241-172 in the playoffs, and that. The longest winning streak in the overall series belongs to Boston (five), but there’s no question of which team historically owns Major League Baseball’s postseason: Mariano Rivera won the first playoff meeting back in 1999 and five years later blew the save in the game that changed the course of perhaps the most memorable playoff series ever. Since, the Red Sox have won eight of nine. 17, 2004 when Boston won its first of five straight (four in this series) after losing the first three games to the Yankees in the ALCS. It started off with the Yankees winning 11 of the first 15, but that changed on Oct. It’s a small sample size, but the Yankees-Red Sox postseason series is even at 12-12. There was no such thing as a postseason rivalry between AL teams until 1969, and for teams in the same division, it wasn’t a thing until the wild-card era. Break that W-L record down further, and you’ve still got all sorts of Yankees’ advantages – even in Boston (though the Red Sox do hold a 505-500 lead at Fenway Park): The big number here is 1,221-1,007 in favor of the Yankees. Yankees-Red Sox first, Giants-Dodgers and Cardinals-Cubs on the way. This baseball season, we’re going to do a series called The Viz, in which we let data visualizations and tables do a bit more of the talking. It may not be the most historically even rivalry, but while some people value the whole book, some only remember the beginning and the end, and the Boston Red Sox bookend baseball history better than anyone right now. It finds itself, as it usually does, in fine form entering 2022, guided by two managers averaging more than 94 wins per 162-game season. The New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox rivalry enters its 120th season this week. Sometimes looking at them without the fabulous detail that puts fat on the objective skeleton gives us a better foundation from which to understand the theatrics. Sometimes just plain old baseball numbers dating back 12 decades. Yankees-Red Sox lore has been told to the point of the lore probably having lore of its own. And of course there was that trade involving that guy who shifted focus from pitching baseballs for one team to hitting baseballs over walls for the other. The 1941 MVP debate can be as hot now as it was in 1942 if you’re talking to the right person. The story of a bloody sock and the image of Pedro Martinez throwing a geriatric dugout lifer to the ground by his head make for interesting enmity-driven discourse. Telling the story comprehensively would take volumes, so we took a crack at showing it with fewer words and more data viz.
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