From 115+ win flourishes to 120+ loss disasters, one of the great things about Major League Baseball’s long regular seasons is they have produced both great and awful summer-long runs.
Anyone who has followed Major League Baseball for more than a few minutes probably knows that the New York Yankees have won more World Series than any other franchise, and by a laughable margin.
But did you know the Yankees do not hold the record for the most wins in a single season?
They take up three of the top nine spots on that list, but they’re not No. 1.
They also are not No. 1 for most losses in a season, which is a virtually unbreakable record from well over a century ago — though the Chicago White Sox tried like mad to break it in 2024, didn’t they?
We’ll go through the greatest win totals and worst loss totals in MLB history. In the case of ties, winning percentage is the tiebreaker, as not every season consisted of 162 games played.
Which Teams Won the Most Games in a Single Season?
1. 1906 Chicago Cubs (116-36-3)
The Chicago Cubs won back-to-back World Series in 1907 and 1908 before the infamous Curse of the Billy Goat that afflicted this franchise for more than a century. But it was in the year before those two titles that they set the MLB record for wins in a season — only to lose in the World Series.
Player-manager Frank Chance anchored the lineup as the primary first baseman, batting .319 and stealing 57 bases. However, it was the pitching staff led by Mordecai “Three Fingers” Brown that did the heavy lifting with a teamwide ERA of 1.75.
The race for the NL pennant was close until early August, when the Cubs reeled off 37 wins in the span of 39 games, tossing 11 shutouts during that stretch.
2. 2001 Seattle Mariners (116-46)
Everyone loved the 1990s M’s featuring Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson.
That entire trio was gone by 2001, though, when Ichiro Suzuki showed up and helped lead Seattle to one of the all-time great regular seasons.
Bret Boone was actually their best player as far as Wins Above Replacement is concerned, but it was Ichiro who won AL Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player for a Mariners squad that posted a +300 run differential and a winning record against all 18 teams it faced that season.
Like the 1906 Cubs, though, all those wins amounted to nothing in October. The Mariners were bounced by the Yankees in the ALCS.
3. 1998 New York Yankees (114-48)
The Los Angeles Dodgers might be on the brink of a dynastic run, but the most recent one of those in MLB history peaked with this Yankees juggernaut in 1998.
While Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa had their race for the single-season home run record, these Yankees were devoid of big boppers, Tino Martinez leading the team with a modest 28 home runs. It was a relentless lineup, though, with Bernie Williams winning the batting crown while Derek Jeter had his first of many “almost MVP” campaigns.
Meanwhile, both David Wells and David Cone made compelling cases for the AL Cy Young, Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez was a solid Rookie of the Year candidate as a 32-year-old and, of course, Mariano Rivera was damn near unhittable in the ninth inning.
Unlike the aforementioned 116-win teams, this one actually finished the fight, going 11-2 in the postseason and sweeping the San Diego Padres in the World Series.
4. 1954 Cleveland Indians (111-43-2)
The 1954 American League had a very clear line in the sand between the three haves with at least a .610 winning percentage and the five have nots that ended up below .450.
And Cleveland sure loved facing the have nots, going a combined 89-21 against that quintet of never-had-a-chancers.
The Indians had seven different players — four hitters, three pitchers — receive at least one vote for AL MVP, with batting champ Bobby Avila, HR and RBI champ Larry Doby and 23-win pitchers Early Wynn and Bob Lemon all finishing in the top six.
New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra won that vote, though, and the New York Giants swept Cleveland out of the World Series.
5. 2022 Los Angeles Dodgers (111-51)
Even before they started handing out controversial deferred contracts like Kit Kats on Halloween, the Dodgers were already ridiculously good.
They had the big three of Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and contract year Trea Turner, plus 2022 was probably Will Smith’s most productive season to date, and he’s the best catcher in baseball these days.
But that starting rotation was just plain stupid good. Clayton Kershaw, Tony Gonsolin, Julio Urias and Tyler Anderson each made at least 22 starts with a sub-2.60 ERA.
If only they’d had a better bullpen, they might have made a better run at the 116-win record and might not have immediately lost in the NLDS with relievers responsible for two of those three Ls.
6. 1909 Pittsburgh Pirates (110-42-2)
The Pirates haven’t won much of anything in recent decades, but they were mighty fine back when the Flying Dutchman was carrying them through the 1900s.
They actually had a better winning percentage in 1902 when they went 103-36-3 (.741 vs. .724), but played a dozen fewer games that year.
In each of 1907, 1908 and 1909, though, Honus Wagner led the National League in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. And it was in ‘09 that a supporting cast featuring George Gibson, Dots Miller and Owen Wilson (no, not that Owen Wilson) stepped up for what was the NL’s highest-scoring team by a considerable margin.
7. 1927 New York Yankees (110-44-1)
Speaking of high scoring offenses, this was the Yankees team dubbed Murderers’ Row, since that’s what it felt like opposing pitchers needed to navigate.
Babe Ruth set the record that Roger Maris would eventually break, clubbing 60 home runs. Lou Gehrig wasn’t far behind with 47 dingers and 173 RBI en route to AL MVP. Both halves of that dynamic duo posted an OPS of 1.240 or better. For reference, Aaron Judge finished at 1.159 and Juan Soto didn’t even crack 1.000 while many lauded them as the greatest duo ever in 2024.
In addition to Ruth and Gehrig, Earle Combe, Tony Lazzeri and Bob Meusel each batted well north of .300, and all eight of the primary position players hit at least .269. They scored 131 more runs than the next-best team in the American League, plus had enough pitching prowess to post an absurd +376 run differential.
They made mincemeat of the Cardinals in the World Series, winning all four games of that sweep by at least three runs.
8. 1969 Baltimore Orioles (109-53)
If we factor in postseason wins, the 1970 Orioles — who won 108 regular-season games before winning the World Series — actually finished two wins ahead of the 1969 version that lost 4-1 to the Mets in the Fall Classic.
But let’s split the difference and call this the greatest two-year run of MLB’s live ball era.
The triumvirate of Jim Palmer, Dave McNally and Mike Cuellar anchored the pitching staff, Cuellar winning AL Cy Young in 1969 and all three finishing top five in 1970.
The pitching was just OK, though, compared to the Baltimore juggernaut which put the O in offense. Boog Powell almost won back-to-back MVPs. Frank Robinson and Brooks Robinson were into their mid-30s, but still excellent. Davey Johnson was an All-Star both years. Don Buford probably should have been, too. And Paul Blair might have been the most valuable of them all.
9. 1961 New York Yankees (109-53-1)
The Babe Ruth 60 HR season landed at No. 7, and the Roger Maris 61 HR season checks in at No. 9.
Maris’ record-setting slugfest robbed Mickey Mantle of what really should have been another AL MVP trophy. Between that dynamic duo, though, came 115 home runs and 269 RBI for a team that actually started out pretty slow.
Through 44 games, the Yankees were 24-19-1, tied for third place in the AL standings. From that point forward, they went 85-34, which extrapolates to a 162-game pace of 116 wins.
Bonus Team: 1884 St. Louis Maroons (94-19-1)
How legitimate is this record compiled in what was the only season in the history of the “Union Association”?
Probably not very. Several of the franchises folded after only playing a few games. Even the Maroons only lasted for three years, joining the National League in 1885 and playing their last game in 1886.
Nevertheless, it is recognized as a season in Major League Baseball’s history, and this .832 winning percentage is by far the highest by any team that played at least 90 games.
Fred Dunlap batted .412, and all five pitchers who logged at least 20 innings did so with an ERA of 2.01 or better. The Maroons made a mockery of a league that appears to have been just that.
Which Teams Suffered the Most Losses in a Single Season?
1. 1899 Cleveland Spiders (20-134)
Officially, the Spiders disbanded after the 1899 season. But Frank Robison owned both this franchise and the St. Louis Perfectos, and sent all of the Spiders’ best players to the Perfectos before the season began.
By early July, the Spiders were such a joke of a franchise that opposing teams refused to even travel to Cleveland the rest of the way, resulting in Cleveland playing 93 consecutive road games, in which it went 8-85 and allowed 8.3 runs per game.
It’s plausible someone will win more than 116 games in a season one day, but no one is ever going to sniff this record in futility.
2. 2024 Chicago White Sox (41-121)
Three of the seven largest loss totals have happened in the past decade, but this recent dumpster fire takes the cake.
The 3-22 start to the season was merely the beginning of the embarrassment for the White Sox, as it wasn’t until mid-May that they started really putting together losing streaks.
The first schneid lasted 14 games. Then came the AL record-tying 21-game skid, which marked the beginning of a 46-game stretch in which they went 4-42.
Amusingly, though, the White Sox almost kept the Atlanta Braves from making the playoffs, taking two out of three from Atlanta, who ended up qualifying for the postseason via tiebreaker.
3. 1962 New York Mets (40-120)
Expansion teams never fare well right off the bat. Of the 14 current franchises that were formed in 1904 or later, the best record belongs to the 1961 Los Angeles Angels at 70-91-1. The vast majority finished at least 30 games below .500.
None of them was quite as awful as the Mets’ inaugural season, though, in which all 12 pitchers who logged at least 20 innings did so with an ERA of 4.40 or worse, and in which their lone, mandatory All-Star was 35-year-old Richie Ashburn, who was used as a pinch hitter for about one third of his games played in what was the final season of his career.
The Houston Astros (then the Colt .45s) debuted that same year to a 64-96-2 record, and looked like a massive success compared to the Mets.
4. 2003 Detroit Tigers (43-119)
Before the dog days of Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer were Detroit’s ‘Dear God’ days of Mike Maroth, Jeremy Bonderman and Nate Cornejo.
Cornejo went 6-17 with a 4.67 ERA…and incredibly was the third-most valuable player on the entire roster, as far as Baseball Reference WAR is concerned.
The Tigers almost set a mark that even the 2024 White Sox couldn’t match, but they randomly started winning games at the end of the season, finishing 5-1 after a 38-118 start.
They never had anything close to a 21-game losing streak, but they did have six separate eight-game skids and were swept in a series 22 times.
5. 1916 Philadelphia Athletics (36-117)
While the Philadelphia Phillies were doggone good in the 1910s, the Philadelphia A’s were an irredeemable mess, suffering at least 100 losses five times in a seven-year stretch.
1916 was their magnum opus of awful, posting a run differential of negative-329.
From late June through early August, they endured a stretch of 41 losses in 43 games, including a 20-game losing streak.
Their longest winning streak of the year? Two games!
Not only did the A’s have a losing record against every other team they faced, each of those teams won at least twice as many games against the A’s as they lost, the worst “vs. PHA” record belonging to the Yankees at 15-7.
6. 1935 Boston Braves (38-115)
One of the all-time “Wait, he seriously played for that team?” bits of sports trivia is that Babe Ruth finished his MLB career with the 1935 Boston Braves.
Unfortunately, at 40 years old, the Great Bambino had next to nothing left in the tank. He appeared in 28 games and hit just six home runs before retiring in June.
Yet, that was good enough for the second-highest HR total on a team that was so moribund that it became financially unviable, was sold to new ownership and became the Boston Bees for five years.
Yes, they were so bad in 1935 that they changed the team name, hoping that would somehow spark something. But it would be another decade (and a switch back to the Braves) before their next 80-win campaign.
7. 2018 Baltimore Orioles (47-115)
This was the beginning of a brutal four-year stretch of Baltimore’s baseball history, save for the fact that being so terrible set them up to draft the likes of Adley Rutschman, Heston Kjerstad and Colton Cowser and re-emerge as a contender in a relative hurry.
The symbolic bottoming out point was when the Orioles traded away Manny Machado during the All-Star Break, several weeks before the trade deadline had even forced their hand — and then coming out in the first game of the second half with Mark Trumbo and Chris Davis in the heart of the order.
They might as well have flown a literal white flag at Camden Yards for the rest of the season.
They did at least get Dean Kremer in that deal with the Dodgers, but that’s it.
And despite unloading Machado in mid-July, he still ended that season as Baltimore’s most valuable player, by far, in just 96 games played.
Curiously enough, though: No 10-game losing streaks. They were just kind of consistently pretty bad, but never downright dreadful, failing to win 10 games in any month.
8. 2019 Detroit Tigers (47-114)
The weather helped Detroit avoid matching Baltimore’s 115-loss mark from the previous season. There were three Tigers-White Sox games in 2019 that were canceled due to inclement weather, and they only bothered to make up two of the three.
This team was almost unquestionably worse than the 2018 Orioles, though.
Detroit’s minus-333 run differential was darn near the worst of MLB’s divisional era (since 1969), saved from that distinction only by the grace of their former selves (the 2003 Tigers were minus-337) and the hapless 2023 Oakland A’s (minus-339).
Had they made up that game and lost it by at least seven runs — a fate they suffered 21 times that season — they would hold that dubious record.
Bonus Team: 1890 Allegheny City (23-113-2)
Five years before becoming the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Steel City’s baseball franchise was a run-hemorrhaging nightmare.
Only once in franchise history have they allowed at least 1,000 runs in a season, that coming when they gave up 1,235 in 1890. That’s slightly less than the 1,252 the Cleveland Spiders allowed in 1899, but Allegheny City also played in 16 fewer games than Cleveland did, allowing an astonishing 8.95 runs per game, including a 23-game losing streak in which they were outscored 236-84.
Because they only played in 138 games, the artists later known as the Pirates were edged out by a few miserable teams from 162-game seasons. With a .169 winning percentage, though, this team makes the 2024 White Sox (.253 winning percentage) look respectable.
How Does MLB Team Performance Influence Fantasy Baseball?
If we learned anything from Shohei Ohtani’s six-year run with the perennially sub-.500 Los Angeles Angels, it’s that you don’t need to be on any sort of all-time great team in order to be an all-time great fantasy baseball player.
At the same time, if we learned anything from his first season with the 98-win, World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, it’s that playing on a great team sure can help a player’s fantasy impact.
Batters on top-tier offenses are going to get more RBI opportunities and very likely score more runs than they would in a less proficient offense. Not only that, but opposing pitchers are far less likely to pitch around or nibble on the corners of the strike zone against a great hitter if there are more great hitters coming up right behind him.
Similarly, starting pitchers are more likely to get wins and relief pitchers are more likely to get saves when toeing the rubber for 100-win teams than they are on 60-win teams.
Now, that doesn’t mean you should prioritize drafting a player just because he’s on a World Series hopeful. There were plenty of both Yankees and Dodgers in 2024 who weren’t worth much of anything for fantasy purposes, as well as a few quality fantasy assets on teams who suffered at least 100 losses.
But if you went out of your way to get Ohtani or Juan Soto after they landed on those teams during the 2023-24 offseason, you certainly reaped the rewards.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which franchise has the most wins all-time?
While the Chicago Cubs and Seattle Mariners share the single-season record, the all-time record belongs to the San Francisco Giants, who entered the 2025 season at 11,541 wins dating back to 1883.
The Dodgers (11,432), Cubs (11,327), St. Louis Cardinals (11,285) and Atlanta Braves (11,114) are all somewhat within shouting distance of the G-Men, but the Dodgers could finish 21 games ahead of the Giants in the NL West in each of the next five seasons and still be a few games behind them.
As far as winning percentage is concerned, though, the Yankees are lapping the field at .569, the Giants the next-closest team at .535. The difference is that the Yankees didn’t become a franchise until 1903, and the Giants already had 1,374 wins before New York played a single game.
Which franchise has the most losses all-time?
The Philadelphia Phillies hold that dubious title, entering 2025 with 11,326 losses dating back to 1883. That’s 377 more than the next-closest team (Atlanta Braves at 10,949), so the Phillies will probably remain No. 1 on that list for as long as they remain a franchise.
Worst winning percentage is at least somewhat up in the air, though. The Miami Marlins are presently in that basement at .459, but the Colorado Rockies are close at .462. That could flip as early as 2025.
What is every active franchise’s best single-season win total?
You know what’s wild about this list? All 30 teams have a singular best win total; no cases where a team hit its high-water mark in multiple seasons.
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