[Nick Soulis]

Format of Finding the Greatest

Baseball is a different type of game; it is a game of longevity and patience. Baseball is a game of seasons that lead up to a moment rather then immediate matchups and results. A season is so important in an undertaking like this because it keeps things the way the participants know it and excel in, a pennant race. A pennant race for all of 162 games will determine the best team every time, there is no room for flukes or hot streaks, this is about the cream rising to the top, this is the way baseball has always been.

The format for the season will also help provide a very intriguing side of things. We will be able to track and compare all the teams in a 162 game schedule and will be able to create our won leader boards and record book. The hallowed numbers of .400 or 56 straight games can be chased by the greatest. Batting titles will be played out and records in direct competition by the likes of Ty Cobb vs. Pete Rose and Barry Bonds vs. Babe Ruth will create themselves. So in an inadvertent way, we are able to measure individual greatness under a familiar measuring stick while keeping the overall focus on the ultimate finding of the greatest team.

So each and every team will be inserted into a pennant race. There are a total of 2624 major league baseball clubs between the year 1900 and 2023.

Every major league team will be included. These teams will be divided into six tiers, tier one including the strongest teams in history and tier 6 the weakest. Each tier will have 480 teams.

Round 1. One Hundred Sixty Four seasons will be played out. The rules to the seasons will be as follows:

- 162 game schedule
- 1986 settings
- 4 divisions of 4 teams.
- Winners of each division will advance, no wild cards.
- Injuries will be low

Only pennant winners advance, I like this because I think part of the importance of winning a pennant has been lost of late. 164 seasons means 164 champions. These 80 teams will receive a bye to the round 3. The 164 other pennant winners will also advance.

Round 2 The remaining 164 pennant winners will face off against each other in a best of seven series leaving 82 teams.

Round 3 The 82 will be added to the 164 making 256 total teams.


There will be an allstar game each season including a home run derby. This will be tracked as the best names to ever play will likely compete.
All awards will be tracked and awarded.

One issue that came forth was rather to use injuries of not. There are two sides to this debate; one is that injuries shouldn’t play a role in a perfect world where you are trying to find the best team based on skill and merit alone. I would argue however that we are not trying to find the best team on skill alone, but rather on everything else that incorporates a champion including endurance, stamina, and conditioning in a long season. So for this reason injuries will be included, I will however curtail them a bit in hopes that they won’t be too frequent. But make it known from now; at some point the engine will create an injury that greatly impacts a team and a season or pennant race.

On a final note of course the process isn’t perfect, but I can not think of a better way then to play out seasons to determine greatness. Will luck have a part of things? Surely to some extent, but with the marathon of the process the hope is that the standard deviation for any outliners will be greatly reduced and we will have a conclusive champion of all time. For what would baseball be without a little intervention from the baseball Gods?