Most Dominant/Most Dominated Single Season Teams In Japanese Baseball History

Our webmaster, Craig Tomarkin, suggested after I submitted my article on Japanese baseball’s dynasties that I consider doing an article on Japan’s best single season teams. He further suggested I look at his articles on the greatest teams in major league history since 1893. It’s four articles: Part I   Part II   Part III   Part IV  .

I read the articles and while just like with every rating system (including my own), I wouldn’t agree with all the conclusions it reached, it looked like Craig’s suggestions were a very promising idea. I’ve also been working on assessing sustained success and failure of Japanese teams, so the thought of using Craig’s system or a mirror image of it to determine the worst teams appaealed to me. One thing I liked about Craig’s last formula to do his ratings was the use of the ratio of runs scored to runs allowed. Those of you familiar with Bill James’ work realize there is a predictable relationship between winning percentage and this ratio. Thus, unless a team is unusually lucky or unlucky, Craig’s adjustment merely reinforced the team’s position. However, if it was unusually lucky or unlucky, this adjustment helped address this factor and thus more accurately assess how a team did. In fact, I believe the system does a fine job of assessing the dominance of a team.

When I tried to apply Craig’s approach to Japanese baseball, I eventually learned a hard lesson. Namely, assessing a team’s dominance is not quite the same thing as assessing its greatness. True, all great teams are, by definition, dominant. However, my experience in doing this article convinces me that not all dominant teams are great ones. Craig certainly understood much of what I will write below when he wrote his own articles. He acknowledges he is measuring dominance, and that if he evaluated 19^th century teams as well, the rating system would place an unusually high number of those teams at the top of his list. Similarly, when I suggested in an email to him that he consider joining me in rating the worst teams that the list would be dominated by teams early in the period selected (assuming he went back to at least 1900).

I would agree with Craig’s sense that the 19^th century teams should not be seen as consistently the greatest teams in baseball history. However, I believe it is reasonable to assert that they were consistently the most dominant teams in baseball history. The reason is good teams in that era had one tremendous advantage in being dominant over teams from later periods. Namely, that there were often some very bad teams around also. Naturally, the good teams beat up on their hapless foes. It certainly makes them more dominant over their opposition, but it has little to do with the greatness of the team, because great teams are ones which would stack up well against quality opposition.

Getting back to Japanese baseball, there are two eras which had a bunch of exceptionally bad teams. They occurred at the very beginning of Japanese professional baseball during wartime in Japan and for the first five or six seasons after the big expansion in 1950 to two leagues from one. When I tried using Craig’s system to identify the best teams and the mirror system to identify the worst teams, both lists were heavily populated by teams from those two time frames. I first thought it might be a function of the shorter schedules of Japanese baseball, but my first attempt to alleviate such an effect had only a small effect on those two eras domination of the two lists.

It finally occurred to me that the problem lay in the dominance versus greatness issue I’ve been writing about here at such length. I eventually realized that it was no coincidence that the two lists were skewed toward those eras. In fact, it was common for a single season to be represented on both lists.

That last phenomenon could only logically be explained in three ways: 1) it was merely random, 2) there were a lot of great teams then, and they just beat up on the lesser opposition, or 3) there were a lot of awful teams then, and they were consistently thrashed like rented mules by teams which were good and/or great.

The explanation of random chance has two key strikes against it: one, the clustering of the teams into two eras, and two (and maybe more tellingly) is the frequency with which the same season showed up on both lists. The second choice is possible, but I really favor the bad teams explanation. I have several reasons for feeling this way. First of all, any sport which does not have a free agent system when it starts out and/or goes through a huge expansion has a couple of teams which are real stinkers. It is unlikely that Japanese baseball is any different in this regard. Second, there is the confirmed tendency in all sports for the extremes to reduce over time. Third, there is the assertion by many well-informed observers that the quality of Japanese baseball has improved over time. It is easy to fit all of these facts into a scenario where the quality of play improves, with the largest improvement coming from the worst teams. This scenario would work well with the bad teams explanation. I cannot think of a similarly good scenario to fit these facts and the good teams explanation.

As I indicated earlier, I think Craig’s system does a good job of identifying dominance. However, this exercise has taught me that unless a system tries to filter out the difference between a great team and a dominant one, I cannot accept it as anywhere near the final word on a team’s greatness. I am aware of one effort which at least seems to try and address this issue. Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein wrote a book entitled Baseball Dynasties, and their method for identifying great teams relied on standard deviatons from the mean. I’d have to refresh my familiarity with the fine points of such mathematics to give you a good assessment of how well they’ve dealt with the distinction between dominance and greatness, but it’s clear they have tried to do so.

Frankly, I decided I wasn’t going to take the time to bone up on my math nor to program Excel to do the standard deviation calculations I’d need to try and replicate the Neyer-Epstein approach or some similar idea. I settled for 1) titling my article in terms of dominance rather than greatness, 2) manipulating the evaluation system to give teams from every era a chance to show up on either list, and 3) confessing here that such manipulations require a definite compromise in truly assessing dominance. I retained Craig’s idea of using the ratio of runs scored to runs allowed in the formula, and the idea of using the mirror image of the system used to identify dominant teams to identify the teams which were most dominated. The formulas are:

For dominance:

((2 times wins) minus losses) times winning percentage times (runs scored divided by runs allowed), plus a postseason bonus I will describe later

For being dominated:

((2 times losses) minus wins) times (1 minus winning percentage) times (runs allowed divided by runs scored)

If a team is around .500, it should allow about as many runs as it scores, and both systems should come close to replicating wins (dominance) and losses (being dominated) plus one half of ties. The dominance formula will push high win teams which score a higher ratio of runs relative to their opponents dramatically forward, and the being dominated formula will push forward exactly the opposite kind of team.

I wound up using the two times wins figure in the dominance calculation in order to 1) give every era a chance to get a team on the list, and 2) to minimize the effect of random chance on a shorter schedule. My two lists still wind up with heavy representation from the two time frames in question, the startup in wartime era, and the big expansion era. Since I am measuring dominance, I can live with those eras dominating the lists. I do believe that the most dominant teams are quite good, but I have reservations in asserting it accurately represents the greatest teams in Japanese baseball history based on the fact the lists are both skewed toward those two eras. As you might guess, I am considerably more comfortable in asserting that the "most dominated" list is close to a correct rendering of the worst single season teams in Japanese baseball history.

There is one aspect of the dominant formula which is not mirrored by the most dominated formula. That is the playoff bonus aspect. This part of the formula exists to push forward Japan Series winners more strongly than those who lost the Japan series, but yet to push those teams forward more strongly than those who only won a split season title without winning the whole season, but yet to push those teams forward more than those who didn’t even qualify for any playoff. A team which wins its league for the full season receives 7 points, and a split season champion which does not win the league for the full season or a team qualifying for a league championship series but fails to get to the Japan Series gets 3.5 points. Finally, a team which makes a playoff but fails to play for the league championship gets 1.5 points. I also awarded two points for every Japan Series win (four has always been the mark to win the series). I allowed one half a Japan Series win to those full season league champions who predated the Japan Series (the 1939-1949 league champs, in other words). These relatively small bonuses helped sort the results in a way that the list is dominated either by teams which won the Japan Series or who predated it.

Below are the two lists for your consideration, first the one for the dominating teams, then the one for the most dominated teams.

Most Dominant Teams

Rank	Year/Team	Wins	Losses	Runs	Runs allowed	Playoff Status	J Series wins	Dominance Score
1.	1955 Yomiuri Giants	92	37	579	291	1	4	223.59
2.	1950 Shochiku Robins	98	35	908	524	1	2	216.57
3.	1951 Yomiuri Giants	79	29	702	381	1	4	188.86
4.	1940 Tokyo Kyojin	76	28	439	221	1	0.5	188.00
5.	1953 Yomiuri Giants	87	37	667	392	1	4	178.55
6.	1966 Yomiuri Giants	89	41	559	335	1	4	171.51
7.	1956 Nishitetsu Lions	96	51	611	372	1	4	166.24
8.	1955 Nankai Hawks	99	41	606	445	1	3	164.19
9.	1952 Yomiuri Giants	83	37	650	389	1	4	164.09
10.	1942 Tokyo Kyojin	73	27	399	228	1	0.5	160.02
11.	1954 Chunichi Dragons	86	40	570	376	1	4	151.58
12.	1939 Tokyo Kyojin	66	26	493	267	1	0.5	148.41
13.	1951 Nankai Hawks	72	24	496	322	1	1	147.63
14.	1941 Tokyo Kyojin	62	22	357	193	1	0.5	147.26
15.	1959 Nankai Hawks	88	42	574	408	1	4	142.61
16.	1954 Nishitetsu Lions	90	47	560	379	1	3	142.10
17.	1990 Yomiuri Giants	88	42	589	399	1	0	140.90
18.	1950 Manichi Orions	81	34	713	512	1	4	140.55
19.	1956 Yomiuri Giants	82	44	568	351	1	2	137.38
20.	1978 Hankyu Braves	82	39	700	482	1	3	136.02
21.	1947 Osaka Tigers	79	37	502	325	1	0.5	135.28
22.	1989 Yomiuri Giants	84	44	520	358	1	4	133.20
23.	1965 Yomiuri Giants	91	47	536	404	1	4	133.11
24.	1957 Nishitetsu Lions	83	44	546	370	1	4	132.66
25.	1948 Nankai Hawks	87	49	592	395	1	0.5	127.84

Most Dominated Teams

Rank	Year/Team	Wins	Losses	Runs	Runs Allowed	Dominated Score
1.	1955 Taiyo Whales	31	99	290	578	253.48
2.	1958 Kintetsu Pearls	29	97	326	613	238.85
3.	1961 Kintetsu Buffaloes	36	103	421	691	206.76
4.	1954 Yosho Robins	32	96	365	625	205.48
5.	1970 Yakult Atoms	33	92	336	552	182.58
6.	1950 Hiroshima Carp	41	96	511	877	181.60
7.	1940 Lion	24	76	225	416	179.86
8.	1955 Tombo Unions	42	98	420	691	177.36
9.	1952 Shochiku Robins	34	84	326	573	167.66
10.	1950 Kokutetsu Swallows	42	94	480	790	166.08
11.	1959 Kintetsu Buffaloes	39	91	381	578	151.86
12.	1965 Sankei Swallows	44	91	337	533	147.12
13.	1952 Kintetsu Pearls	30	78	356	568	145.19
14.	1940 Nankai	28	71	242	424	143.24
15.	1957 Daiei Unions	41	89	377	575	143.05
16.	1956 Takahashi Unions	52	98	403	611	142.64
17.	1954 Daiei Stars	43	92	402	589	140.79
18.	1965 Kintetsu Buffaloes	46	92	397	574	133.02
19.	1956 Taiyo Whales	43	87	319	483	132.74
20.	1952 Hiroshima Carp	37	80	365	573	132.03
21.	1942 Daiwa	27	68	191	322	131.53
22.	1971 Nishitetsu Lions	38	84	425	623	131.21
23.	1990 Fukuoka Daiei Hawks	41	85	522	757	126.20
24.	2003 Yokohoma Bay Stars	45	94	563	715	124.48
25.	1939 Eagles	29	65	247	434	122.72

Notes:  In "Playoff Status", a value of "1" means the team won the league in a full season, a value of "0.5" means the team won a split season half, but either lost in the playoffs of no playoff existed. Teams winning their league before the Japan Series started in 1950 were awarded one-half a win in that category.