Red Sox Hall of Famer, 1975 AL MVP, and Rookie of the Year Fred Lynn took to X on Feb. 25 to shine some light on the 1977 Sox team. Responding to a picture of the Red Sox's seven All-Stars that year, he claimed that the '77 team is "Probably the Red Sox best team no one talks about."
Lynn certainly has a case here. All of the World Series-winning teams in the 21st century are front of mind for Red Sox fans, as are the pennant-winning teams of 1975 and 1986, but the 1977 squad remains underrated because they didn't make the playoffs — despite winning 97 games.
This was the ‘77 ASG. Probably the @RedSox best team no one talks about. https://t.co/1Z9VIDTArd
— Fred Lynn (@19fredlynn) February 25, 2025
Red Sox Hall of Famer Fred Lynn calls the 1977 Sox "the best team no one talks about"
Not only did the Red Sox have seven All-Stars in 1977, but their roster also featured four Hall of Famers — Carlton Fisk, Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice and Fergie Jenkins - as well as Dwight Evans and Luis Tiant, borderline Hall of Famers who got massively snubbed. Rice led the American League in home runs (39) and slugging percentage (.593), finishing fourth in AL MVP voting. As a team, the Red Sox led the majors with an .810 OPS and 213 home runs. Closer Bill Campbell, known as "Soup," led the American League in games finished and saves, and finished fifth in AL Cy Young voting.
However, the '77 Red Sox finished two and a half games behind the Yankees, the eventual World Series winners, in the AL East. Because there was no Wild Card at the time, that meant that despite winning almost 100 games, the Red Sox missed the playoffs. In that era, only four teams made the postseason each year, a format which wouldn't change until 1995 in the aftermath of a players' strike.
That leaves the '77 Red Sox as one of the ultimate "what if" teams of baseball's pre-Wild Card era. They were a team with substantial talent that would have been a World Series frontrunner if the playoff format was the same back then as it is now. Unfortunately, we'll never know who would have come out on top if the Sox and Yankees had met in the playoffs, and the two historic franchises wouldn't meet in the postseason until the 1999 ALCS.