2006 Cardinals Worst World Series Team of All Time?
by Asher B. Chancey, BaseballEvolution.com
March 5, 2007

In his 2007 St. Louis Cardinals Team Preview, Keith stated that the 2006 Cardinals “will go down in history as the worst team to have ever won the World Series.” I was immediately skeptical of this claim, as there have been lots of World Series, so I did a little research.

I started with hitting. As a quick and dirty proxy for hitting, I decided to look at the OPS+ of each World Series winner to determine where the Cardinals ranked all time. Although the 2006 Cardinals posted a meager 102 OPS+, it turns out that several teams have won the World Series with an OPS below 100, the worst of these being, not surprisingly, the 1906 Chicago White Sox, who famously hit .230 as a team and yet beat the mighty Chicago Cubs with a pitching staff that had an ERA+ of 119. The 2006 Cardinals ranked near the bottom, nevertheless, finishing 82nd out of 102 World Series winners in team OPS+.

Next, I decided to look at ERA+ as a quick and dirty proxy for team pitching, and I was surprised by what I found. As it turns out, winning the World Series with below-average hitting is a lot easier than winning the World Series with below-average pitching, as the Cardinals were only the second team ever to win the World Series with an ERA+ under 100, with a 97. The 1913 Philadelphia Athletics were the only team worse, with a shocking team ERA+ of 86!

(By the way, the 1913 A's had a team OPS+ of 126, making their gap between ERA+ and OPS+ the second highest of alltime to the 1907 Cubs, who had a team OPS+ of 100 to go with a team ERA+ of 144!)

Having looked at both hitting and pitching, I decided that the best thing to do might be to average the OPS+ and ERA+ of each team, to determine how each team fared overall against their respective leagues. Shockingly, out of 102 World Series winners, the 2006 Cardinals were only the second team ever to have an ERA+ and OPS+ that averaged out to a number which was below 100 => (X+Y)/2 where X is OPS+ and Y is ERA+.

The 2006 Cardinals average of ERA+ and OPS+ was 99.5, while the 1987 Minnesota Twins average was 98 (96 and 100).

Remember, though, that this is a straight up ERA+ and OPS+ average with each stat weighted equally. Recently, over on the BaseballEvolution.com Fan Forum, it was brought to our attention that we had misinterpreted OPS+. While we thought, for example, that an OPS+ of 120 reflected an OPS which was 20% percent better than league average, in actuality an OPS+ reflects an OPS which is only 10% better than league average. ERA+, however, does represent the percent better than the league that a player's ERA was, so the two stats can not be equally weighted when being averaged.

Given what we learned about OPS+, I re-figured the numbers again, using an adjusted OPS+ (the quick math is ((X-100)/2)+100 where X=OPS+). As it turns out, the 1987 Twins and 2006 Cardinals ended up tied when ERA+ was averaged with this new adjusted OPS+, and both teams finished at 99. Again, they were the only two teams ever do finish with a combined ERA+ and OPS+ under 100 and win a World Series.

So, what can we conclude? At least according to this quick and dirty method, when compared with all World Series winners, the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals can probably claim at least a tie with the 1987 Minnesota Twins for Worst Team Ever to Win a World Series.

We can assume this matters little, of course, to the Cardinals, their fans, or the City of St. Louis, who still get to hang a Championship Banner at the beginning of the 2007 season.

Click here to see the full list of World Series winners and their OPS+ and ERA+.


Questions? Concerns? Comments? Asher lives in Philadelphia, PA, and can be reached at asher@baseballevolution.com.