1998 Yankees Win 125 Games

The 1998 New York Yankees went 114-48 in the regular season -- then went 11-2 in October -- and finished with a combined record of 125-50. That's not a typo. That's the greatest single season any baseball team has put together in the modern era, and I don't think it's particularly close.

They swept Texas in the ALDS. They beat Cleveland in six in the ALCS. They swept San Diego in the World Series. They won the AL East by 22 games over Boston. Twenty-two. The division race was functionally over before the All-Star break. And here's the thing -- even knowing all of that, the numbers still don't capture how suffocating this team was to play against.

The Buildup

The 1998 season started hot and never cooled off. The Yankees played at a .700+ clip for virtually the entire year, with no losing streak longer than four games. They ripped off a 10-game winning streak in May that bracketed David Wells's perfect game on May 17. Then they did it again in late August and early September. The rest of the AL East spent the summer fighting for second place.

The roster had no holes. None. Bernie Williams won the AL batting title at .339. Derek Jeter hit .324. Paul O'Neill drove in 116 runs. Tino Martinez clubbed 28 homers and knocked in 123. Scott Brosius -- the guy who'd hit .203 for Oakland the year before -- went .300 with 19 home runs and 98 RBI. The lineup hit top to bottom -- only Chad Curtis, at .243, dipped below .265 among everyday starters. There was nowhere to hide.

The rotation was just as deep. David Cone went 20-7 and led the American League in wins. Wells went 18-4 (and, you know, threw a freakin' perfect game). Andy Pettitte went 16-11 as the "worst" starter in the group -- and he'd have been the ace on half the teams in baseball. Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez showed up in June after defecting from Cuba on a raft, went 12-4 with a 3.13 ERA, and acted like he'd been pitching in the Bronx his whole life. (Six months earlier he was literally on a boat in the Caribbean. Half a year later he was shutting down American League lineups. You can't make this stuff up.)

And then there was Mariano Rivera. 36 saves. 1.91 ERA. 1.06 WHIP. The cut fastball was fully operational by '98, and the rest of the league just had to deal with it. Once Mo came in, the game was over. Everybody in the building knew it -- including the guy at the plate.

The Moment

The only time this team looked human all year was the ALCS against Cleveland. The Indians won Games 2 and 3 to take a 2-1 series lead, and suddenly the talk shows were asking if the 114-win juggernaut had a fatal flaw. Cleveland was loaded -- Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome, David Justice, Omar Vizquel, Sandy Alomar Jr. -- and they'd already beaten the Yankees in the 1997 ALDS. The revenge narrative was thick.

Then El Duque took the mound for Game 4 in Cleveland and shut the door. Seven innings. One run. Eight strikeouts. That impossibly high leg kick, those varied arm angles, that absolute zero on the panic meter. He looked like a guy pitching a Tuesday night game in Havana, not a win-or-go-home ALCS start. The Yankees won 4-0 and never looked back. They took Game 5 behind Wells, then Cone closed it out in a 9-5 Game 6 victory to punch the ticket to the World Series.

The World Series against San Diego was clinical. The Padres actually led Game 1 by three runs going into the seventh -- 5-2 -- and for about ten minutes it felt like the Padres belonged on the same field. Then Chuck Knoblauch hit a three-run homer to tie it. Two batters later, Tino Martinez hit a grand slam. In the span of one inning, the Yankees went from down three to up four. (The Padres' collective body language after that inning told you everything. They knew.)

Game 3 gave us the signature moment. San Diego led 3-2 in the eighth and brought in Trevor Hoffman -- 53 saves that year, the best closer in the National League, his changeup basically unhittable. Hoffman got two outs. Then Brosius -- the .203 guy from Oakland, the reclamation project, the man nobody expected to be here -- drove a pitch into the left-field seats for a three-run homer that blew the game open. Yankees won 5-4. Hoffman stood on the mound looking like he'd seen a ghost.

Pettitte and Mo closed it out in Game 4, 3-0. Championship number 24. And Paul O'Neill -- whose father Chick had died that morning -- played the whole game and stood alone in the outfield at Qualcomm Stadium afterward, weeping. The cameras caught it. If you were watching, you were crying too. (I was twelve. I was definitely crying.)

This is the best team I've ever seen.

The Aftermath

Brosius took home World Series MVP honors after hitting .471 with 2 homers and 6 RBI in the four-game sweep. The man the Yankees got for Kenny Rogers -- a guy coming off one of the worst offensive seasons in the American League -- was the best hitter in the World Series. Brian Cashman, all of 30 years old in his first full season as GM, had made the trade that gave the dynasty its missing piece.

The bigger story was Darryl Strawberry. He'd hit 24 home runs in just 295 at-bats during the regular season, showing that his power was still elite when healthy. Then came the colon cancer diagnosis on September 18. His surgery happened October 3 -- three days before the ALDS started. Joe Torre spoke about Straw with visible emotion throughout October, and the team dedicated the championship run to him. The celebration was real, but so was the weight underneath it.

The 2001 Seattle Mariners later broke the regular-season mark with 116 wins. Didn't matter. The Mariners lost in the ALCS (to the Yankees, naturally) and never won the ring. The 1998 Yankees' 125 combined wins while also winning the championship is the number that counts. It's the record that matters because it includes October, and October is all that matters.

Is this the greatest baseball team ever assembled? The 1927 Yankees -- Ruth, Gehrig, a +376 run differential -- have their case. But the '27 team played four World Series games against the Pittsburgh Pirates and went home. The '98 team won 11 of 13 games across three rounds of playoffs against Texas, Cleveland, and San Diego. They beat good teams, great closers, and a loaded Indians roster that had their number a year earlier. And they did it with no single superstar carrying the load -- just nine guys in the lineup, five starters, and Mo, all showing up every single night.

125 wins. 50 losses. The best team I've ever watched play baseball.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many total games did the 1998 Yankees win?

The 1998 Yankees won 125 total games -- 114 in the regular season (a .704 winning percentage) and 11 in the postseason, going 3-0 against Texas in the ALDS, 4-2 against Cleveland in the ALCS, and 4-0 against San Diego in the World Series. Their combined 125-50 record remains the benchmark for the greatest single season in modern baseball.

Are the 1998 Yankees the best team in baseball history?

They're the strongest candidate among modern-era teams. The 1927 Yankees (110-44, Ruth and Gehrig, +376 run differential) have a legitimate claim, but the '98 team won more games, survived three rounds of playoffs, and posted an 11-2 postseason record. The 2001 Mariners won more regular-season games (116) but didn't win the World Series. No team has matched the '98 Yankees' combination of regular-season dominance and October dominance.

Who won the 1998 World Series MVP?

Scott Brosius, the Yankees' third baseman, won World Series MVP after batting .471 with 2 home runs and 6 RBI in the four-game sweep of the San Diego Padres. His three-run homer off closer Trevor Hoffman in the eighth inning of Game 3 was the defining moment of the Series. Brosius had hit .203 for Oakland the previous year, making his MVP performance one of the great turnaround stories in postseason history.