Thursday, October 22, 2009
Most recent consecutive pennants for all franchises
Posted by Chris JaffeCongrats to the Philadelphia Phillies, who just won consecutive pennants for the first time in their history. That brings up the question: what are the most recent back-to-back pennants for all 30 teams? Well, obviously not all 30 teams have done it, but which ones have?
Before checking, can you name:
- The only two pre-expansion teams who haven't won consecutive pennants?
- The only expansion team to have ever done it?
Here they are: most recent repeat pennants from all the franchises who have done so, ordered from the present on backwards, broken up in groups of five to make it easier to read:
PHI 2008-2009
NYY 1998-2001
ATL 1995-1996
TOR 1992-1993
OAK 1988-1990
LAD 1977-1978
CIN 1975-1976
BAL 1969-1971
STL 1967-1968
NYG 1937-1938 (now SFG)
DET 1934-1935
WAS 1924-1925 (now MIN)
BOX 1915-1916
CHC 1906-1908
PIT 1901-1903
If you really want to go back, some now dormant teams like the 1890s Baltimore Orioles also won consecutive pennants, but how cares - they're dormant now.
Cleveland and the White Sox have never done it. Blame the Yankees - both teams tallied up a slew of second place finishes during New York's most dominant stretch, 1949-1964.
The Phillies were thus the last pre-expansion NL team to do it. Kudos to them.
History instructor by day, statnerd by night, Chris Jaffe leads one of the most exciting double lives imaginable; with the exception of every other double life possible to imagine. Despite his lack of comic-book-hero-worthiness, Chris enjoys farting around with this stuff. His new book, Evaluating Baseball's Managers is available for order. Chris welcomes responses to his articles via e-mail.
The Cubs won the ‘38 pennant (Homer in the Gloaming). The Giants’ consecutive wins were in ‘36 and ‘37.