How Red Sox compare to 1998 New York Yankees, 2001 Seattle Mariners

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.

Lineup

The ’98 Yankees had far and away the most balanced attack with only one hitter batting below league average and seven hitters that were 15% or more above average by OPS+. These Yankees lacked the star power that the other two lineups feature; they didn’t have a single batter topple thirty homers and only Bernie Williams was truly exceptional at the plate. However, almost everyone in that lineup was a threat to do serious damage and the 2018 Red Sox can’t say anything of the sort.

The ’01 Mariners saw the emergence of Ichiro Suzuki in Major League Baseball and it was sensational. He will never get as much love from a stat like OPS+ as bona fide sluggers, but his .350 batting average coupled with off the charts speed – he stole 56 bases – gave the Mariners one of the best spark plugs in recent memory. Also of note are Brett Boone and Edgar Martinez absolutely mashing and John Olerud and Mike Cameron quietly putting together stellar seasons. These Mariners, however, had four players in their lineup with an OPS below .720 and when almost half your lineup lacks teeth you have to take a backseat to the Yankees lineup listed above.

And finally, we have by far the most lopsided lineup. J.D. Martinez and Mookie Betts are having two of the greatest offensive seasons in Red Sox history while Sandy Leon and Eduardo Nunez are looking like black holes at the plate. Jackie Bradley and Rafael Devers aren’t too far removed from black hole status either. Andrew Benintendi and Xander Bogaerts have also been very good and, despite his recent struggles, Moreland still grades out above average. To be fair, Ian Kinsler is the second baseman going forward which removes one hole from the lineup and, when lefties are on the mound, Steve Pearce gives Boston a more formidable presence. But as it stands the Red Sox lineup is very much in the stars and scrubs category with four or five batters generating almost all of the offense every night.

To get a more general picture we should note that the Yankees scored 5.96 runs per game, the Mariners scored 5.72 runs per game, and the Red Sox have scored 5.46 runs per game to date. The Red Sox may have the best offense in baseball this year, but they fall short of these two juggernauts at the plate.

Defense

On the other side of the ball, the Red Sox have strong defenders at just about every position. Betts and JBJ are otherworldy of course. Moreland and Kinsler, upon the second baseman’s return, will make up one of the more formidable duos on the right side of any infield in baseball. Catcher defense is hard to measure, but Baseball Prospectus has Leon 11th in baseball in framing runs and 12th in fielding runs above average for catchers which are very solid placements. Leon also has a great reputation for handling pitchers and it shows in Boston’s 28-3 record in his last 31 starts. Benintendi, Bogaerts, and Devers constitute the weakest portion of their defense and they are all borderline average to average defenders at their positions.

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It’s a lot harder for me to judge the ’98 Yankees and ’01 Mariners defenses. Most defensive metrics don’t go back that far and I’m not old enough to have seen them play with my own eyes so I’ll just default to total zone for the most part here. By these measures, Posada, Brosius, and O’Neill were all great defensively for the Yankees; Jeter and Martinez were above average and everyone else was below average to terrible (Bernie Williams racked up -11 TZ).

The Mariners, on the other hand, were absolutely bonkers good on defense. As a team, they accumulated 101 TZ, which was 37 TZ higher than the next best team. Bell, Boone, Guillen, Suzuki, and Cameron were all particularly stellar but there was not a bad defender in the starting lineup. In fact, according to FanGraphs, this team ranked 5th all-time in TZ (full disclosure: this stat was not calculated on FanGraphs after 2002 so the Mariners rank is among teams between 1871-2001).

Bench

It’s difficult to decide who counts for the bench on these teams. The Yankees, for example, received massive contributions down the stretch from Homer Bush and Shane Spencer, but both of these players had fewer plate appearances than five other members of the Yankees bench and thus could justifiably have been left off had I cut at the five bench players with the most playing time. I decided to include every player that was not listed in the lineup above with 50 or more plate appearances (Tzu-Wei Lin sneaks in at 49 because Boston hasn’t yet played a full slate).

The Red Sox bench clearly leaves something to be desired outside of Steve Pearce. Pearce has mashed at a rate that no one could’ve foreseen in his short time in Boston. Given how bad the team was against lefties early this season, his presence has been indispensable. However, everyone besides Brock Holt and Pearce has been below replacement level. That is not ideal.

The ’98 Yankees and ’01 Mariners, on the other hand, had very deep benches. In the Bomber’s case, the bench was led by Joe Girardi (a surely familiar name to Yankees fans still), HOFer Tim Raines, old friend Chili Davis, and absolutely insane performances by Homer Bush and Shane Spencer. Spencer, in particular, hit 10 homers in 27 games. Everyone besides Luis Sojo was above replacement level and at least a couple of these guys could’ve had everyday jobs on many first division teams. That’s championship level depth.

Tha ’01 Mariners bench surely seems far more anonymous to most baseball fans. The only name that jumps out is Jay Buhner and he was almost a non-factor on the season. However, Mark McLemore and Stan Javier were worth 3.5 bWAR and 2.8 bWAR off the bench respectively. Each of those totals is way more than the entire Red Sox bench combined.

Bullpen

I will start by reiterating that I am assuming Pomeranz is the odd man out when E-Rod returns.

It’s interesting that the narrative around the Red Sox this season has been that their bullpen is their biggest weakness. Craig Kimbrel has not been nearly as good as he was in a historically great campaign last season but he’s still 74% better than league average. Matt Barnes and Hector Velazquez (even if he looks very lucky) have also been elite this season.

Yes, the bullpen did a bad job last night, but Pomeranz just shouldn’t be pitching. They are the only unit here without a below average reliever (from the six we’d expect the Sox to keep in the pen when everyone’s healthy) and their back end looks as solid as those of both of these other pens.

The Yankees bullpen largely revolved around Mariano Rivera with the only other truly great reliever that season being Graeme Lloyd who only tossed 37.2 innings. Their bullpen also featured two pitchers with ERAs over 5.00. The ’98 Yankees were world beaters, but not necessarily because of their relief pitching.

The Mariners had Arthur Rhodes in the midst of an utterly fantastic season, but their pen also featured Jeff Nelson, Norm Charlton, and Kazuhiro Sasaki as true weapons. Ryan Franklin was also very solid and ate up a good amount of innings. The 2001 Mariners topped these two teams in nearly every category listed above and had a solid edge over the 2018 Sox and 1998 Yanks.

Conclusion

It’s hard to say these Red Sox are as good as the 1998 Bombers or the 2001 Mariners. They probably have the best rotation of the bunch and their defense and bullpen hold up okay. However, they are last among the trio in hitting and depth by a significant margin.

The Red Sox may be on pace to almost catch these two teams as it stands; however, these teams clinched early on and were able to rest players for the latter portion of the season and still won at this insane clip. Once the Red Sox begin resting players for the same reason it remains to be seen if they can still play .700 baseball, but it certainly isn’t likely with the bench they possess.

All things considered, the 2018 Red Sox are probably a step or two behind these two clubs. But don’t let that bring you down because that’s as close as any other teams have ever gotten since and they may very well be the best of the rest.