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The Boston Red Sox were the best team in baseball this year. That's not exactly a hot take.
But how do the 2018 Red Sox stack up to the recent champions (and top contenders) of other major sports leagues? Quite well, it turns out.
The data analysis website FiveThirtyEight recently ranked the best overall teams of the 2018 calendar year using relative Elo ratings, which measure team strength based on "head-to-head results, margin of victory and quality of opponent."
The top team in 2018, ahead of the mighty Golden State Warriors and Alabama Crimson Tide? Your Boston Red Sox.
In fact, Boston's 1610 Elo rating was the highest of any Major League Baseball team in the 21st century, as FiveThirtyEight's Neil Paine noted any Elo rating over 1600 in baseball "makes you an all-time great club."
(If you're wondering why the Red Sox rank No. 1 on this list despite having the "lowest" Elo rating, it's because each rating is relative to its sport: MLB teams have much lower overall Elo ratings than NBA teams, mostly due to the number of games they play.)
Boston Red Sox
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Boston certainly played like MLB's team of the century, winning a franchise-record 108 regular season games before going 11-3 in the postseason against two 100-win clubs and a 92-win Los Angeles Dodgers squad.
The Red Sox did earn one dubious distinction, however. According to FiveThirtyEight, they were part of the worst upset of 2018 when the lowly Baltimore Orioles defeated them 10-3 on Sept. 26. (The pitching matchup in that game: Chris Sale vs. Jimmy Yacabonis.)
Even one of the greatest baseball teams of all time can't win 'em all.
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