All-Decade Teams 2000-09 - Intro and List

Example of baseball-reference.com layout circa summer 2001

I first started obsessively keeping track of baseball stats during the summer of 2001. I was doing summer theater with my parents in western Pennsylvania, and there wasn't a lot for me to do between rehearsals, until I discovered a fledgling website called baseball-reference.com. Back then, B-R was little more than a collection of text pages listing back-of-the-baseball-card-type stats and not much else. But it was enough for me look back at the just-completed 2000 season (I don't even think the site had midseason updates back then) and put together a basic roster for how each team performed in terms of fantasy points, and the rest was history.

Given that my baseball list journey started with statistics from the year 2000, by the time we complete the 2019 season, I will have a full two decade's worth of numbers in my system. We can debate whether a historical "decade" technically comprises years 0-9 or 1-10, but based on the starting point of my lists (not to mention the hysteria surrounding the transition to Y2K), I'm going with the former. With this in mind, I can use the next two months to explore the first decade of my baseball database, while waiting for the conclusion of the last season of decade number two.

In a departure from how I usually do things, I will not be using fantasy points when determining the players on these "All-Decade Teams" - at least not for this first pass. Instead, I'll be looking at total number of games played per position, which might not capture the "best" players to represent each team over the course of the decade in question, but it will show the most common players. I should also say that compiling these lists was made unbelievably easier with the new and improved baseball-reference's "Starters" section under the "People" tab on any given team's franchise page. It has truly been amazing to see how that site has blossomed into the indispensable baseball fan's tool it is today.

Below is a list of the winningest teams of the decade in question (2000-09), some of which will turn into links to a rundown that team's All-Decade Roster, as determined by my tireless research. Enjoy!

TEAM	W	L	REC	DECIMALS
New York Yankees	965	651	.597	153465
Boston Red Sox	920	699	.568	252007
St. Louis Cardinals	913	706	.563	928351
Anaheim (Los Angeles) Angels (of Anaheim)	900	720	.555	555556
Atlanta Braves	892	726	.551	297899
Oakland Athletics	890	728	.550	061805
Minnesota Twins	863	758	.532	387415
Los Angeles Dodgers	862	758	.532	098765
San Francisco Giants	855	762	.528	756957
Chicago White Sox	857	764	.528	685996
Philadelphia Phillies	850	769	.525	015442
Seattle Mariners	837	783	.516	666667
Houston Astros	832	787	.513	897468
New York Mets	815	803	.503	708282
Cleveland Indians	816	804	.503	703704
Florida Marlins	811	807	.501	236094
Chicago Cubs	807	811	.498	763906
Toronto Blue Jays	805	814	.497	220506
Arizona Diamondbacks	805	815	.496	913580
Texas Rangers	776	844	.479	012346
Colorado Rockies	769	852	.474	398519
San Diego Padres	769	852	.474	398519
Cincinnati Reds	751	869	.463	580247
Milwaukee Brewers	741	878	.457	689932
Detroit Tigers	729	891	.450	000000
Montreal Expos / Washington Nationals	711	908	.439	159975
Baltimore Orioles	698	920	.431	396786
Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays	694	923	.429	189858
Pittsburgh Pirates	682	936	.421	508035
Kansas City Royals	672	948	.414	814815