Quick: Which Boston Red Sox team is the greatest in franchise history?
If you’re Curt Schilling, you’d most likely say, hands down, the 2004 curse-breaking iteration of the Olde Towne Team, and that’s understandable. That team was absolutely loaded and the fact it delivered the first World Series title to Boston in 86 years earned that club legendary status for as long as baseball is played.
The answer to that original question, though, is the 2018 club — at least according to The Athletic. The 2018 Sox were the highest-ranking Boston club to land on The Athletic’s list of the 25 most dominant teams in baseball history.
The rankings were based on the number of players on a roster with a wins above replacement (WAR) above four, as well as run differential in both the regular season and the playoffs. Unsurprisingly, the top five teams are all New York Yankees clubs (four of them predating World War II).
The 2018 Red Sox check in at No. 16 on the list, just behind the 1950 Yankees and right in front of the 1976 Cincinnati Reds for context. That shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. That Sox team was loaded, winning a franchise-record 108 games before running through the playoffs with relative ease and knocking off two 100-win teams en route to their fourth World Series title since 2004. That club also had five players with a WAR of 4.0 or better. It’s also the most recent team in the sport to make the list and was one of just three teams this century to make the rankings.
The only other Red Sox team on the list has to be the 2004 club, right? Wrong. The 2007 team, which has really become an overlooked team in the modern Boston sports landscape, was the second-to-last club on the list. That team also had five players of 4.0 WAR or better while also tearing through the playoffs. Only the 1928 Yankees had a higher average postseason run differential of any team to make the cut.
As mentioned, the two Red Sox clubs are among the three teams since 2000 on the list. The third is the 2016 Chicago Cubs. Two of those rosters (Cubs, ’07 Red Sox) were built by Theo Epstein, and his fingerprints were still on the 2018 Red Sox team. He’s pretty good at his job.
