What single season MLB team was the greatest of the 'aughts? This guy (who, granted, was writing for a Chicago audience) thinks it's the 2005 White Sox. He also thinks the fact that they exceeded their Pythagorean projection by eight games is somehow a point in their favor.

This is hooey. The Sox' Pythagorean record was 91-71, which meant they probably weren't even the best team in their division (Cleveland's '05 pythag was 96-66). They very likely weren't the best team in the league. You could argue that they weren't the best White Sox team of the decade (I suspect they probably were, but that would require a detailed analysis of that team against the 2000 one). They were just a good team who got pretty lucky and then won a bunch of games in a row at the right time of the year.

So that's one team down, out of 300. Which one really was the best?
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I'm going to narrow it down somewhat arbitrarily by considering only teams who won at least 95 games. They didn't have to have won the World Series or even make the playoffs (though I don't think there were any 95-game winners who didn't make the playoffs in the aughts). I count 42 teams, much more than half of them in the AL. Postseason success will be considered, and those games weighed more heavily on a per-game basis than the other 162 are, but it's not necessary. 162 regular season games tells you more about a team than 3 to 19 postseason games will, period.

At the bottom of this post (because I went ahead and created the table and can't figure out how to move it or type below it) is a table of all 95-game winners this decade, their actual and pythagorean records, and the number of wins they picked up in the postseason. I've bolded the top five actual records, top five Pythagorean records, and the postseason wins totals of all World Series winners.

I'm going to have to take some time looking at this, and I'll give you my analysis on Monday. In the meantime, I know it's the holidays and everything, but I'm hoping you'll chime in with your thoughts.

All 42 of these teams are in play (and others, I suppose; only five of the ten WS winners below, after all), but here's a quick rundown of who I currently see as the top nine contenders (I tried to make it an even ten, but I don't think any of the others below really belongs with these nine):

2009 Yankees: 103 wins and a pretty easy jaunt to the Series title, star hitters at 8 of the 9 positions and a league-average hitter in the ninth. Mediocre starting pitching after Sabathia, but a great back of the bullpen.

2007 Red Sox: "Only" 96 wins, but a 101 pyth record, and the championship. A very balanced team; Ortiz was the only great hitter, Beckett the only great pitcher, but very few weaknesses, and, again, a great bullpen.

2004 Cardinals: Interestingly, every Cardinal team from 2002-2005 makes the list below, but not the 2006 team that won just 83 games and the Series. This was easily the best of all those great Cardinal teams, winning 105 and deserving to win 100 per Pythagoras. Lineup was three greats (Pujols, Rolen, Edmonds) and nothing else. Chris Carpenter paced a very good starting rotation, and La Russa got between 50-70 very good innings out of a bunch of relievers.

2004 Red Sox: Right now it looks like a toss-up for the best Sox team of the decade. These Sox actually won two more games, but Pyth'ed five fewer, and of course swept that great Cardinal team out of the Series. This lineup was more star-dependent, but Ortiz and Manny were good guys to depend on, and so were Schilling and Pedro, who carried an otherwise pretty weak rotation.

2003 Braves: The story of the decade was a terrible stretch of postseason failures, but they had some pretty great teams, and this was probably the best of them, with 101 wins and a 96 pyth. This was an uncharacteristically offense-heavy year for the Braves, with no pitcher topping a 112 ERA+. This was the year when Javy Lopez went nuts and hit 43 homers, which complemented Gary Sheffield's 39, Andruw Jones' 36 and Chipper Jones' 27 nicely. John Smoltz had a 1.12 ERA and 45 saves in 64 innings.

2002 Yankees: If I can have two Red Sox teams, I suppose I might as well have two Yankee teams. This squad won 103, same as they did this year, and their '02 Pythagorean was four wins better. Jason Giambi and Bernie Williams both had huge years with the stick, and the starting rotation was unspectacular but very well balanced. They got bumped out of the first round of the playoffs by the team just below.

2002 Angels: Hard to see a team that didn't even win their division being named the team of the decade, but Pythagoras said they were the best team in the league, and they won the Series. An underrated offensive team (Erstad was the only hole; heck, even Eckstein OPS+'ed 101 that year), a very good defensive one apart from Tim Salmon in right, career years from Ramon Ortiz and Jarrod Washburn, and a nice swan song by Kevin Appier.

2001 Mariners: 116 wins, tying the 1906 Cubs for the most ever (though in nine more opportunities). Ichiro!, Edgar, Mike Cameron, Bret Boone and John Olerud led a team that was just very, very good at everything. They hit their first bad stretch of the season in the playoffs. I think that if you play the 2001 postseason a hundred times, the Mariners probably win the whole thing in 65 or 70 of them. It just didn't happen.

2001 A's: Okay, so there's no way they're better than the Mariners from the same year (who beat them by 14 games in the standings), but they deserve a mention for completeness' sake. Their Pythagorean was only five games behind the M's, and the A's won 9 of the 19 games they played against each other. They had to play the winningest team any of us has ever seen 19 times, and still finished with the second-best pythagorean record of the decade. That's a team (led by a tremendous Giambi season, the famous Tim Hudson-Mark Mulder-Barry Zito trio, and an almost equally impressive Cory Lidle) you really can't leave off this list.

Thoughts?