Which ML baseball team won the most games in a season?

Factual Questions
1

The reason I ask this is because the Seattle Mariners currently have an astonishing 47 - 12 record. If they win today, their winning percentage will be an extraordinary 80%. Surely they will win more than 100 games, but I don’t know where to find the record for most wins in a season or the best winning percentage. (Since the season used to be shorter, these two records may not have been set in the same season. Also, rain-outs are not always played.)

Believe it or not, the following websites had no info: http://www.mlb.com
http://www.espn.go.com
Guinness
http://cnnsi.com/baseball/

2

According to http://baseball-almanac.com/rb_gam3.shtml the records are 116 for the Chicago Cubs in 1906, and (in the AL), 114 for the '98 Yankees.

Of course, I suppose we have to give the '98 Yankees an asterisk, since it took them 162 games to get those victories :slight_smile:

3

The 1906 Cubs were 116-36 for a winning percentage of .763. They tailed off the next year to 107-45 (.704).

The AL record for winning percentage is held by the 1927 Yankees at .727 (110-44). The 1998 Yankees were only .704

The 1902 Pirates were 103-36 (.741) and won the NL by 27 1/2 games.

4

Just a further note.

You can get this information from the http://www.mlb.com site - go to the statstics area, scroll down to the “Historical Team Stats” section, and select

  1. Major League
  2. Pitching
  3. Under the label “Timeframe”, choose the radio button for “Career”, and then choose “Year-by-Year” from the dropdown box under that.

Hit the “Go” button, and then you can click on the “W” column heading to sort by Wins.

The top five seasons are (This table looks lousy - but I don’t know how to make it look much better)

Year Team Wins Losses Pct.
'06 Cubs 116 36 .763
'98 Yankees 114 48 .704
'54 Indians 111 43 .721
'09 Pirates 110 42 .724
'27 Yankees 110 44 .714

The MLB site does not include percentage, so you can’t sort by that - but I am pretty sure that this includes the four highest (I think I saw a few entries further down the list that might have better percentages than the '98 Yankees, but I didn’t check that for sure.)

5

Thanks, dorkbro. I knew the '54 Indians were near the top.

So the 1998 Yankees hold the AL record. How quickly I forgot! Since the most wins is 116, the Mariners have to win 70 more games to break the record. It’s possible, but I bet it’s more likely Barry Bonds will hit 70 home runs this season. (He already has 32!)