Power Ranking The Philadelphia Phillies and MLB's 25 Best Pitching Staffs Ever

Ranking the greatest anything of all time is not a simple task.

There are so many variables that must be taken into consideration when ranking an item over the course of time, that often, and in this case, teams that are probably deserving of a spot in the rankings are left out. When ranking MLB's greatest pitching staffs of all time, the first thing that must be questioned is, what is a pitching staff?

Baseball's pitching staff has changed so much over the course of time that it is extremely difficult to rank such great teams on an even keeled scale. The first question you must consider is what constitutes a pitching staff? In today's game, a pitching staff is like an outline - five starting pitchers that rotate throughout the season, a corps of middle relievers usually limited to one inning, and the team's two best relievers stocked in the back of the bullpen as the eighth inning set-up man and closer in the ninth inning. Twenty to thirty years ago, the game was a bit different. Starters were relied on deeper into the game, middle relievers were used more frequently, and closers were less important, but equally as vital. Now, when you travel back fifty to sixty years, it was unusual for a good starter to not throw a complete game every time he took the mound.

So how is a pitching staff calculated in these rankings?

Firstly, the only time that a pitching staff in these rankings should be considered is the year in which they are listed. For example, a team like the Atlanta Braves had many different variations of that great staff in the 90's, but only the listed year is the one garnering the ranking. One thing that hasn't changed over the course of baseball's illustrious history is the value of a pitcher. How valuable was a pitcher to the team's overall success, and how vital was a team's group of pitchers (the staff) to their overall success? Sure, any number of SABRmetrics like WAR and FIP are okay barometers of a staff's value, but how valuable was that group of pitchers to their team in a select time period with completely different circumstances, to that of another time period? For that reason, a team's ranking will be defined by a number of things:

• Staff's overall talent.
• Staff's success.
• Depth of a staff.

With those factors in mind, where do the Philadelphia Phillies "Four Horsemen" rank among the greatest staffs of all time?

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