Best 50 — 1938 New York Yankees (#37)
The Yanks become the first franchise to win three consecutive world titles
This newsletter is devoting several months to an examination of past greatness. It’s focusing on history’s top 50 ballclubs — collectively known as the Best 50 — as determined by my new book, Baseball’s Best (and Worst) Teams. We’ve reached No. 37 on the all-time list, the 1938 New York Yankees.
Here’s a quick boilerplate explanation that I’m appending to every story in this series:
I compiled the Best 50 by analyzing 2,544 major-league teams from 1903 to 2024. Those clubs have been ranked by their team scores (TS), which are plotted on a 100-point scale. (A given club’s all-time percentile is the percentage of the other 2,543 teams that it outperformed.)
See my book for an explanation of my TS calculations. The book also offers separate breakdowns of the best and worst clubs for every decade and franchise, comprehensive profiles of the Best 50 (including position-by-position lineups and much more information than you’ll find in this newsletter), and similar summaries of the 10 worst teams of all time.
Now on to today’s profile.
Facts and figures
Team: 1938 New York Yankees
Team score: 85.854 points
All-time rank: 37 of 2,544
All-time percentile: 98.58%
Season record: 99-53 (.651)
Season position: First place in American League
Final status: World champion
Season summary
The Yankees installed Tony Lazzeri as their second baseman in 1926, a job he still held a decade later. Lazzeri batted a solid .297 over the 11-season span through 1936, peaking at .354 in 1929. But he slumped to a career-low .244 in ’37.
The Yanks released Lazzeri a week after the World Series. He hooked on with the Cubs in 1938, and New York manager Joe McCarthy tapped 23-year-old Joe Gordon as his replacement. It was one of two significant lineup changes, the other being the elevation of Tommy Henrich to a starting outfield role, replacing Jake Powell.
The two newcomers showed promise, though the pace was still set by a trio of tried-and-true veterans: Lou Gehrig, Bill Dickey, and Joe DiMaggio. The Yankees collectively blasted 174 home runs in 1938. No other big-league club hit as many as 140.
New York’s third straight American League pennant didn’t come as easily as the previous two. The Yanks floundered 4.5 games behind first-place Cleveland as late as June 24, but went 67-28 (.705) the rest of the way.
Baseball’s Best (and Worst) Teams
Get the complete lowdown on the 50 greatest (and 10 weakest) clubs of all time
Postseason summary
No team had ever won three consecutive World Series. The question in 1938 was whether the Yankees could defy the odds. Sporting News editor Edgar Brands was dubious. He picked the Cubs to win, citing “the law of averages that seldom fails.”
The Yankees paid no attention to his mathematical logic, sweeping the Cubs by a collective score of 22-9. Pitcher Red Ruffing bookended the series with complete-game victories in Games One and Four.
Manager Joe McCarthy took pleasure in trouncing the Cubs, the franchise that had cut him loose eight years earlier. “We outclassed them in power, pitching, steadiness, and everything else,” he said.
Subscribe — free — to Baseball’s Best (and Worst)
A new installment will arrive in your email each Tuesday and Friday morning
Lineup summary
Lou Gehrig had lost a step. He still trotted out to first base every day — extending his consecutive-game streak to 2,122 by the end of 1938 — yet he was no longer a dominant force. Most players would have been happy with Gehrig’s 29 homers and .295 average, but those stats fell short of his exalted standards. He admitted that his hits lacked “the proper zoom.”
Age was an obvious factor. Gehrig turned 35 in June 1938. The Yankees also revealed that their star was suffering from lumbago, an outdated term for back pain. Doctors would later realize that Gehrig had already been afflicted with the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) that would take his life in 1941.
New York fans had momentarily cooled on Gehrig’s heir apparent. Joe DiMaggio demanded a $40,000 contract in 1938. General manager Ed Barrow retorted that Gehrig made only $43,000. “In that case,” DiMaggio replied, “Mr. Gehrig is a very underpaid ballplayer.” The young star staged a holdout in spring training before settling for $25,000. New Yorkers serenaded him with jeers and hate mail. “You would have thought I’d kidnapped the Lindbergh baby,” DiMaggio said wearily.
Red Ruffing had been pitching for the Yankees since 1930, arriving from the Red Sox in a trade. He refused to take the blame for his 39-96 record in Boston. “We had kids just out of college, Class D players,” he said. “Nobody could win with them.”
But he could win in New York. Ruffing averaged 16.6 victories in his first eight seasons with the Yanks, then shot up to 21 in 1938. Historian Bill Deane judged him to be worthy of the year’s hypothetical Cy Young Award.