In the fifth tier list on The Rubber Match, I take a look at the World Series champions since 2000, singling out the teams that stand out the most.
It may still just be LDS play, but myself and plenty of other baseball fans are already thinking about the World Series.
A pinnacle of American sports, the Fall Classic is an unpredictable beauty each season, pitting two teams that have most effectively withstood the trials and tribulations of October for a chance at the Commissioner’s Trophy.
While every World Series title is incredibly impressive, a variety of factors play a role into which clubs stand out more than others as the years go by – whether that be a regular season record, roster strength, strength of opponent or level of experience.
I aimed to factor in as much as I could when considering which teams stood out the most, while not completely disregarding the unreal playoff runs of more underwhelming regular season teams like the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals and 2021 Atlanta Braves.
With that said, there are two teams that do not receive a definitive ranking in my tier list: the 2017 Houston Astros and 2020 Los Angeles Dodgers, for obvious but different reasons.
With the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal casting a permanent shadow over the club’s legacy, it felt difficult to rank it on the same scale as teams that did not have such a controversy. This felt particularly imperative when considering the advantage Houston’s sign-stealing gave them in their home ballpark, where they took home all four of their ALCS victories over the New York Yankees in a seven-game series.
While I don’t believe the Astros’ championship deserves to be erased from history, I also don’t think it deserves to be placed on the same scale as teams that did not have as discernible of an advantage.
As for the 2020 Dodgers, the 60-game sprint-to-the-finish regular season gave the playoffs a significantly different feeling. While the NBA and NHL playoff bubbles happened following what was almost a full regular season, it’s impossible to predict how a 162-game season in 2020 would have played out and affected the Dodgers in a playoff run.
Though the Dodgers’ 3-1 comeback over the Atlanta Braves in the 2020 NLCS was sensational, it feels uneven to place a team that played in irreplicable circumstances next to clubs that won it all after standard MLB seasons.
Below is a video of my tier list, with an image of the completed list found after that for those who don’t want to listen to me talk for an hour:
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