Everyone knows that the best baseball teams have great results on the basis of deep and storng pitching, timely hitting, good fielding and the strength of the bench. The New York Yankees have fielded a few of the greatest baseball teams of all time and the 1923 team featuring the great Babe Ruth was one of them.
If you question any baseball lover concerning the very best baseball teams over the past 15 years, they are most likely to mention the New York Yankees, Atlanta Braves, Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals. The best baseball teams will almost always be those that have the best pitchers, not the best batters. It is a known fact, great pitching always stops great hitting. Take a look at the New York Yankees teams of the 80's that featured great hitters like Don Mattingly, Rickey Henderson, and Dave Winfield and the likes but they failed to make the playoffs, because of their lousy pitching, they scored lots of runs, but lost games like 9-8 or 12-7. Things turned around for the Yankees when they started focusing on pitching instead of hitting, they wind up winning 4 world series titles since 1996.
Another example is the Atlanta Braves that dominated the National League in the 90's with the likes of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz. Let's not forget about the New York Mets that used to be one of the best baseball teams in major league baseball and one of the most popular ones as well in the mid 80's with pitchers like Dwight Gooden, Ron Darling, and Sid Fernandez. Many great teams have come and gone over the past 140 years of major league baseball, but the ones that left their stamp on the history of the sports are the ones that featured great pitching along with good fielding. It should be noted also that the 1942-44 Cardinals have to be considered one of the best baseball teams in history - they are one of only 4 teams to win at least 100 games three years in a row in all of major league history.
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