Cal Ripken Jr. once addressed what lies at the heart of baseball, the nation’s oldest and most enduring sport: failure. Or, more specifically, the ability to deal with failure and move onto success. It’s something even the most successful baseball teams of all time must handle.
“Baseball is a game of frustration and failure in many ways,” Ripken told CNBC. “As a hitter, you fail 7 out of 10 times, so you have to figure out how to deal with failure quite a bit, and that’s one of the keys to having longer term success.”
That’s a great lesson for everyone, especially young sports fans. And even when looking at all-time team records, not just individuals, it quickly becomes apparent that failure is something every team (and their fans) must learn to handle Because outside of a dozen teams, every team has lost more than it has won over the years. It’s the nature of the game.
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The Most Successful Teams of All Time
It will surprise no one that the New York Yankees have experienced less failure than any other team, and thus have caused less pain for their fans. Through 2019, the Yankees had won 57% of their games since the team was founded in 1901, a total of 10,378 wins, making them the most successful baseball team of all time. Still, they have lost 7,840 games. (All the numbers in this article are through 2019, unless otherwise noted).
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After the Yankees, only three other teams have won even 52% of their games all-time. They are:
- San Francisco Giants – 53.5%
- Los Angeles Dodgers – 52.8%
- St. Louis Cardinals – 52%
Compare that to the NFL, where 14 teams have won 52% or more of their games since inception. The clear lesson is this: if you’re going to be a baseball player, team owner or fan, you need to understand that failure is not the end of the world, but it’s going to happen. The key is work hard, keep trying and eventually you will get on a winning streak.
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The Rest of the Best
There are three other teams that have won at 51% of their games, placing them just behind the Yankees, Giants, Dodgers and Cardinals in terms of long-term success and winning more games than they’ve lost. They are:
- Boston Red Sox – 51.9%
- Chicago Cubs – 51.4%
- Cleveland Indians – 51.2%
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The Even Stevens
Interestingly, over time some franchises have landed just about exactly at the 50% win, 50% lose mark. The team that is the most Even Steven of all these teams is the Atlanta Braves, which through 2019 had won 10,722 games and lost 10,684, winning 50.1% of the time. That’s incredible when you consider that the numbers go all the way back to 1876, when the Braves started play in Boston.
Other teams at a 50% winning percentage include:
- Cincinnati Reds – 50.5%
- Detroit Tigers – 50.4%
- Pittsburgh Pirates – 50.3%
- Chicago White Sox – 50.2%
And that’s it. Of the 30 teams currently playing in Major League Baseball, only 12 have won more than the half of their games.
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What Teams Have Lost the Most?
Some teams, and their fans, suffer more than others. Statistically speaking, the four teams with the worst winning percentage in baseball history are as follows.
- San Diego Padres – 46.1%
- Miami Marlins – 46.2%
- Seattle Mariners – 47.1%
- Colorado Rockies – 47.1%
A Long History of (Mostly) Pain
If losing and failure is an opportunity to grow stronger, then no fans are stronger than those in Philadelphia for the past 135 years or so. The Phillies started play in 1883, the same year at the Giants and Dodgers, and just a year after the Reds and Pirates started.
Over that long of a time, you expect teams to go through long periods of winning that more than balance out the bad years. That’s the case with all the other, older teams. All the teams mentioned above have at least 10,545 wins, but the Phillies have yet to reach 10,000 (they had 9,825 at the end of 2019). The Phillies also have the 26th worst win percentage of all time at 47.2%, just slightly ahead of the Rockies and Mariners.
The Strange Case of the Miami Marlins
No conversation of all-time win percentages in MLB should go by without mention of the Miami Marlins, who played as the Florida Marlins until the 2012 season. They have the distinction of providing one of the biggest lessons in failure and success.
As noted above, only the Padres have a worse all-time win percentage than the Marlins. And yet the Marlins have won two World Series. And there’s also this: Through 2020, the Marlins have the highest playoff win percentage of any team, ever, in baseball history, winning an astounding 62.3% of their playoff games. The next closest are the Yankees at 58.5%.
In a game where failure is the rule, the Marlins have shown that failing in one area (regular season wins) does not mean overall failure when the games count the most.
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