Teams at the top (and bottom)

The Rangers emerged with 2023’s best team score, though it wasn’t exceptional

The Texas Rangers reigned supreme in 2023.

But you already knew that. The Rangers, of course, won last season’s World Series, the first championship in the 63-year history of a franchise that came to life as the Washington Senators in 1961.

But I’m not talking about World Series rings. I’m talking about team scores.

You might remember my TS ratings, which allow direct comparisons of clubs from different years.

I’ve calculated team scores for all 1,686 big-league clubs in the Modern Era, encompassing the seasons from 1961 through 2023.

The TS formula is powered by four factors: winning percentage, the differential between runs scored and allowed per game, the differential between bases per out (BPO) attained by batters and allowed by pitchers, and postseason success.

It generates a score for each club on a 100-point scale, which is equalized from year to year. That means it’s possible to say that a 1985 club with a TS of 65 was better than a 2023 team with a score of 63. (Not much better, but a bit.)

The Rangers finished 2023 with a team score of 75.991 points, which was a decent mark, though hardly outstanding. It put them in 78th place in the Modern Era’s standings, indicating that they outperformed 95.4 percent of all other big-league clubs between 1961 and 2023. (The 1984 Detroit Tigers rank as the era’s overall champion with a TS of 97.109 points.)

This year’s runner-up, the Atlanta Braves, were right on the Rangers’ heels with a TS of 75.472. They outdistanced 94.9 percent of all Modern Era clubs. Texas’s opponent in the World Series, the Arizona Diamondbacks, finished a distant seventh for the year at 57.676 points, outranking 75.1 percent of all clubs in the 1961-2023 span.

Scroll down to see the team scores for all 30 clubs that took the field last year. Each team is preceded by its rank among all 1,686 Modern Era clubs. Its win-loss record and TS are shown in parentheses, followed by the percentage of 1961-2023 teams that it outperformed.

I have divided this year’s teams into five brackets of 20 percentage points apiece, appending a few notes to each.

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Excellent

• 78. Texas Rangers (90-72, 75.991 points), 95.4%

• 87. Atlanta Braves (104-58, 75.472 points), 94.9%

• 145. Los Angeles Dodgers (100-62, 70.809 points), 91.5%

• 174. Tampa Bay Rays (99-63, 68.167 points), 89.7%

• 265. Baltimore Orioles (101-61, 63.348 points), 84.3%

• Notes: All five of these clubs qualified for the playoffs, though three failed to perform up to expectations in the postseason. The Braves, Dodgers, and Rays were eliminated with surprising ease by supposedly inferior opponents. The Orioles also played poorly in the playoffs, but they could take solace in their recent rise to the top echelon. Baltimore’s TS just two seasons earlier was a miserable 11.059.

Above average

• 413. Philadelphia Phillies (90-72, 58.041 points), 75.5%

• 420. Arizona Diamondbacks (84-78, 57.676 points), 75.1%

• 442. Houston Astros (90-72, 57.071 points), 73.8%

• 445. Minnesota Twins (87-75, 56.956 points), 73.6%

• 464. Seattle Mariners (88-74, 56.499 points), 72.5%

• 478. Milwaukee Brewers (92-70, 56.023 points), 71.7%

• 557. Toronto Blue Jays (89-73, 54.188 points), 67.0%

• 606. Chicago Cubs (83-79, 52.698 points), 64.1%

• 613. San Diego Padres (82-80, 52.545 points), 63.7%

• Notes: This is the most crowded group, with nine clubs landing between 60.0 percent and 79.9 percent. Six of these teams made the playoffs, and the Diamondbacks actually went all the way to the World Series. The Brewers paced the group with 92 wins, but their TS was depressed by an anemic offense.

Average

• 856. New York Yankees (82-80, 45.611 points), 49.3%

• 923. Boston Red Sox (78-84, 43.579 points), 45.3%

• 956. Miami Marlins (84-78, 42.732 points), 43.3%

• 959. Cincinnati Reds (82-80, 42.584 points), 43.1%

• 1,007. Detroit Tigers (78-84, 41.287 points), 40.3%

• Notes: You don’t expect to find a postseason qualifier this far down the standings, but the Marlins emerged as an exception to the rule. Miami’s 84 regular-season wins were the most for any team in the average group, yet the Marlins still gave up more runs than they scored. Hence their relatively poor rank.

Below average

• 1,021. San Francisco Giants (79-83, 41.103 points), 39.5%

• 1,047. Cleveland Guardians (76-86, 40.374 points), 37.9%

• 1,074. New York Mets (75-87, 39.731 points), 36.3%

• 1,157. Los Angeles Angels (73-89, 37.255 points), 31.4%

• 1,206. Pittsburgh Pirates (76-86, 35.824 points), 28.5%

• 1,320. St. Louis Cardinals (71-91, 32.299 points), 21.7%

• Notes: All of these clubs lost more games than they won, and all finished outside the top 1,000 among all Modern Era teams. St. Louis was the biggest surprise. The Cardinals hadn’t done so poorly in team score in 28 years — since 1995 — and had only posted three TS readings worse than 2023’s in the entire Modern Era.

Poor

• 1,469. Washington Nationals (71-91, 26.677 points), 12.9%

• 1,555. Kansas City Royals (56-106, 22.708 points), 7.8%

• 1,575. Chicago White Sox (61-101, 21.564 points), 6.6%

• 1,657. Colorado Rockies (59-103, 13.768 points), 1.7%

• 1,674. Oakland Athletics (50-112, 10.433 points), 0.7%

• Notes: We’ve reached the end of the line. Each of these five clubs ranked among the worst 13 percent of the Modern Era. Four also finished in the same group a year ago. The newcomer was the White Sox, who slipped from a 2022 reading of 43.0 percent to 2023’s mark of 6.6 percent.