1970s Oakland A's: Greatest baseball team ever?

I will defer to Junkie on 1970s baseball, because it was before I was alive, but I do find it interesting that no one on this thread has mentioned the 1996-2000 or 2001 Yankees dynasty. I know everyone hates the Yankees on this board, but that was a pretty damn good run against a free agent filled era.
I don't know if it was the greatest run ever, but I do believe that the 1998 Yankees are the greatest team in the history of baseball.

 

Campaneris over Concepcion? No thanks.

 

Actually, they didn't. The 1998 Yankees:

1B: Tino Martinez (acquired in a trade)
2B: Chuck Knoblauch (acquired in a trade)
3B: Scott Brosius (acquired in a trade)
SS: Derek Jeter (drafted)
LF: Chad Curtis (acquired in a trade)
CF: Bernie Williams (drafted)
RF: Paul O'Neill (acquried in a trade)
DH: Chili Davis/Darryl Strawberry (free agents)/Tim Raines (acquired in a trade)
C: Jorge Posada (drafted)/dickhead Girardi (acquired in a trade)

SP: Andy Pettitte (drafted)
SP: David Cone (acquired in a trade)
SP: David Wells (free agent)
SP: Orlando Hernandez (free agent)
SP: Hideki Irabu (free agent)

CL: Mariano Rivera (drafted)
SU: Mike Stanton (free agent)
SU: Graeme Lloyd (acquired in a trade)
SU: Jeff Nelson (acquired in a trade)
SU: Ramiro Mendoza (drafted)

Really, the '96-'00 Yankees are a lot like those '70s-era A's in that they're not dominated by HOFers. Jeter's the only HOFer among the players who were on all four of those title teams, and there's no one else really close. The sum of teams were truly better than the parts.

The Yankees didn't start falling apart (relatively speaking) until they really began swinging their dicks in free agency by getting Giambi, Mussina, Matsui, et al, and acquring A-Fraud.

 

Oh. My bad.

I just figured you were into Dark Side of the Moon again.

 

That's an impressive breakdown, BYH. Thanks.
I do want to point out that the Yankees didn't "fall apart" by signing Matsui and A-Rod (or A-Fraud as you like to call him), but rather by failing to shore up their pitching. They thought they were making good moves, and most thought they were by aquiring Contreras, Vasquez, Weaver and others, but they just didn't pan out.
Mussina has been very, very good as a Yankee until this year, so I don't blame him.
But I think the Yankees dynasty ended with its pitching. The Giambi signing would have been great if the Yankees young pitching would have held up. Shit, he would have won a title or two with the Yankees if that would have happened.

 

tino was traded to the yankees because the Ms knew they wouldn't be able to pay him -- some 'rediculous' amount like $2M a year -- in order to keep griffey, a-rod, the big lefty tanker and bone in RF when tino's contract was up the following year.

the yankees bought tino, period.


cone was a deadline trade for pitchers Marty Janzsen, Jason Jarvis and Mike Gordon, who never pitched in the majors. the yanks picked up another salary.

the yankees paid $3M and four minor leaguers for knoblauch. again, they paid to get a player, although they did lose a pretty good young pitching prospect.

raines was picked up in a trade for a guy named blaise kozeniewski, who never made it past double A ... the white sox got rid of raines' salary to a team that could afford to throw money around.

these weren't brilliant trades made by an organization, just moves that were made because it had/has a deep-assed pocketbook. ... just sayin'.

 

Sorry, Junk, you don't lose a seven-game series -- losing three of four games on your home field -- to a team missing its best player, then turn around and claim that the better team didn't win.

And the Reds' run advantage over the A's in 1972 was based on one game, the 8-1 win in Game 6, the only game of the series that wasn't decided by one run. To claim that the 72 Reds-A's equals 1960 Yankees-Pirates is a little disingenuous.

(By the way, why the 1972 never gets mention as one of the greatest World Series of all time is beyond me.)

I don't think anyone is claiming, and I certainly am not, that the A's were more talented than the Reds. But fewer teams in baseball had a more innate ability to win close games, and that's what made those Oakland teams stand out.

 

Hardly the greatest team of all time.

Should this team really even be in the conversation?

Angola, you need to brush up on your baseball history.

 

Well, any team that goes 125-50 and wins the World Series is in the conversation Joe.

 

The 1987 St. Louis Cardinals and 1991 Atlanta Braves kindly request you resubmit this post in blue font, at your earliest convenience. :

 

Conversely, the 2003 Florida Marlins (clinched all three rounds on the road), 2004 Boston Red Sox (completed the historic comeback against the Yankees with two Yankee Stadium wins) and 2005 Chicago White Sox (clinched all three series on the road, I believe) are here to tell you home field means nada.

 

So the Yankees should be criticized because the Mariners, off the most exciting season in franchise history, were too cheap to pony up for a 1B who was in his prime?

Knoblauch was a salary dump by the Twins, but they knew what they were doing dumping his flaky ass. The Yankees won in spite of him. He was a pretty good leadoff hitter, but his 24/7 drama in the field makes me pretty confident the yankees would have won it all from 1998-2000 with Mariano Duncan at 2B.

I'll give you Cone. but Raines was nothing more than a role player for the Yankees. A solid player, sure, but in limited duty. He got more than 300 ABs in a season once in three years.