The 2018 Red Sox have been winning games at a historic clip. How do they compare to the only two modern teams to ever maintain that level of success?
Since baseball adopted the 162 game schedule in 1961, only two teams have topped 110 wins in the regular season. Those two teams were the 1998 New York Yankees with 114 wins and the 2001 Seattle Mariners with 116 wins. The 2018 Boston Red Sox still have a long way to go to reach the same milestone, but their odds look increasingly strong.
This year’s Red Sox currently sit at 86-36 through the season’s first 121 games and are on pace to win roughly 114 games. To reach 110 they’d need to go 24-16 or better through their final 40 games. For context, 24-17 corresponds to a winning percentage of .600 and the lowest winning percentage the Red Sox posted in any month this season was .621. It’s far from a slam dunk, but I’d give them a better than even shot to become the third modern team to join this elite group.
And that got me thinking “how does Boston compare to those two teams?” Both the ’98 Yankees and ’01 Mariners are right in the thick of any discussion surrounding the greatest baseball squads in recent memory and even being mentioned in the same breathe as those juggernauts should be considered an honor for anyone.
But, as mentioned earlier, the Red Sox are on pace to finish right next to those two clubs in wins at 114. It’s getting to be late enough in the ballgame where we can start to actually analyze how these teams stack up and that’s exactly what we are about to do. Let’s break this down into the lineup, bench, rotation, and bullpen.