Best 50 — 1958 New York Yankees (#24)
The Yanks gain World Series revenge against Milwaukee
Our countdown of baseball’s 50 greatest teams — a list known as the Best 50 — rolls today to No. 24, the 1958 New York Yankees. The rankings come from my new book, Baseball’s Best (and Worst) Teams.
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: 1958 New York Yankees
Team score: 87.098 points
All-time rank: 24 of 2,544
All-time percentile: 99.10%
Season record: 92-62 (.597)
Season position: First place in American League
Final status: World champion
Season summary
No franchise dominated a single decade more thoroughly than the New York Yankees in the 1950s. They won eight American League pennants and six World Series titles between 1950 and 1959, totals untouched by any team in any 10-year period.
Yet their reign was somewhat unimpressive, with five of their six championship squads finishing lower than 60th place in the all-time rankings. New York’s team scores were diminished by the AL’s lack of balance in the 1950s. Yankees co-owner Del Webb scoffed in 1957 that the eight-team league had “about five or six” clubs that were completely uncompetitive.
He couldn’t say the same in 1958. Seven teams won more than 47 percent of their games, creating the AL’s most competitive environment since World War II. The Yankees rose to the challenge. They seized first place in mid-April and led the league the rest of the way, propelled by the slugging of Mickey Mantle and the pitching of Bob Turley and Whitey Ford.
Baseball’s Best (and Worst) Teams
Get the complete lowdown on the 50 greatest (and 10 weakest) clubs of all time
Postseason summary
The Braves had defeated the Yankees in 1957’s World Series, and they seemed likely to repeat the feat in 1958. Milwaukee won three of the first four games. “I wish the Yankees were in the National League,” laughed Braves pitcher Lew Burdette. “They’d be lucky if they finished fifth.”
But the New Yorkers flipped the narrative, sweeping the final three games by a collective score of 17-5. Bob Turley won Games Five and Seven, the latter with a nifty 6.2-inning relief appearance. Right fielder Hank Bauer topped the new champs with four homers and eight RBIs in seven games.
No one enjoyed the turn of events more than Yankees manager Casey Stengel. “I guess we can now play in the National League,” he snorted.
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Lineup summary
Mickey Mantle was ticketed for stardom when he joined the Yankees as a 19-year-old outfielder in 1951. “He has more speed than any slugger I’ve ever seen, and more slug than any other speedster,” raved Casey Stengel. Mantle put up solid numbers in his first five seasons — totaling 121 homers and a .298 batting average — before he shifted into overdrive in 1956, winning the American League’s Triple Crown with 52 homers, 130 runs batted in, and a .353 BA.
Mantle unsurprisingly topped the Yanks in 1958 with 42 homers and 97 RBIs. Additional firepower was supplied by left fielder Norm Siebern (.300), third baseman Andy Carey (.286), first baseman Bill Skowron (73 RBIs in 126 games), and Yogi Berra and Elston Howard, who split the catching duties.
Berra, a 13-year veteran, drove in 90 runs and served informally as Stengel’s assistant manager. “Berra had a helluva lot to do with making decisions about the team, including who played,” said pitcher Ryne Duren. Howard, who batted .314, surmounted front-office prejudice to become the Yankees’ first black player. “I will never allow a black man to wear a Yankee uniform,” general manager George Weiss once pledged. He eventually caved to public pressure.
Whitey Ford was New York’s most famous pitcher, though Bob Turley overshadowed him in 1958. Ford posted the AL’s best ERA (2.01), but Turley topped the league with 21 wins. “Everything came together,” Turley said of the greatest season in his 12-year career. He was rewarded with the Cy Young Award.