How am I choosing the best baseball teams

Who is the best baseball team ever?  That is the age old question.  There's no definitive way to determine this.  Great teams were in different eras with different players and cultures, which makes it impossible to compare exactly.  What I want to do is to run a simulation of the top teams and see who comes out on top.  This will not answer the question, but it will be fun and interesting trying.

March madness ended a few weeks back so it gave me an idea of doing a tournament with the top 64 teams of all time.  I will break these out into 4 brackets, just like the tournament.  I feel the best way to break out the teams is by era.  Overall, I want to find the best team from 1901 to today, 2012.  I don't want to try to start comparing pre 1900.

So I will break out the tournament into 4 time periods.  Division one will be the Deal Ball era, and Ill use 1901 to 1918.  Division two will be the time period of 1919 to 1947.  1947 was the year that black athletes were allowed to play baseball, so that adds a dimension of added competition.  Then to break the last two divisions, I don't have any set event to break them out, so Ill just take the remaining years, (2012-1947 = 65 yrs) and split them in half.  So division three is 1948 to 1979 and Division four is 1980 to today.

To actually simulate the games, I am going to use the Sim Matchup engine from www.Whatifsports.com. There I can play all the games and get full outputs on each.  In rounds 1 and 2, I will play a best of 15 series.  I feel that should be enough to decide a winner accurately.  I will rotate pitchers each game.  In rounds 3 and 4, I will use best of 19 and in rounds 5 and 6, I will use a best of 25.

This is going to take me quite awhile to simulate all of these and report on each, but I am going to try to at least get a few series in each week, so hopefully I can have this done in a few months.

The Teams:

1901-1919	1920-1947	1948 - 1979	1980-2011
1.Pitts Pirates 1909	1. NYYankees 1927	1. Cincinnati Reds 1975	1. NYYankees 1998
2. Chicago Cubs 1906	2. Philadelphia A's 1931	2. Cleveland Indians 1954	2. Seattle Mariners 2001
3. NYGiants 1904	3. NYYankees 1932	3. NYYankees 1961	3.  NY Mets 1986
4. Boston RedSox 1912	4. NYYankees 1939	4. Baltimore Orioles 1969	4. Atlanta Braves 1998
5. Chicago Cubs 1909	5. St Louis Cards 1942	5. Brooklyn Dodgers 1953	5. StLouis Cards 2004
6. Pittsburgh Pirates 1902	6. Brooklyn Dodgers 1942	6. NYYankees 1953	6. Detroit Tigers 1984
7. NYGiants 1912	7. Boston RedSox 1946	7. SF Giants 1962	7. Oakland A's 1988
8. Philadelphia A's 1910	8. NYYankees 1942	8. Detroit Tigers 1968	8. Atlanta Braves 1993
9. Boston Redsox 1916	9. NYGiants-1936	9. NY Yankees-1949	9. Philadelphia Philles 1980
10. Chicago WhiteSox 1917	10. Washington Senators-1924	10. Oakland A's-1972	10. SF Giants 1993
11. Philadelphia A's - 1913	11. NYGiants-1922	11. NYYankees-1977	11. Oakland A's 2002
12. Boston Braves - 1914	12. NYYankees-1923	12. StLouis Cards-1964	12. NYYankees 2009
13. Chicago WhiteSox-1919	13. Detroit Tigers-1935	13. Milwaukee Braves-1957	13. Toronto BlueJays 1992
14. Detroit Tigers - 1909	14. Cincinnati Reds-1940	14. Brooklyn Dodgers-1949	14. Boston RedSox 2004
15. Boston Redsox-1918	15. StLouis Cards-1926	15. LA Dodgers-1963	15. Baltimore Oriolies 1983
16. NY Giants-1917	16. Cleveland Indians-1920	16. NY Mets-1969	16. Milwaukee Brewers 1982