When the Yankees won the title on Wednesday night, their fans said (with barely a straight face), “Whoa, we’ve had to wait almost a DECADE for this.”  Meanwhile, every other baseball fan said (with a sour face), “The Yankees, again?”  To truly understand this dynamic, let’s look at some history, and do some math.

The Yankees have been the Yankees since 1913.  For the past century, they’ve played in a league that had, on average, about 20 teams in it.  Thus, they have had a mathematical expectation of winning the title once every 20 years or so.  If you do the historical math on the Yanks, they SHOULD have won the title 4.8 times, as opposed to the 27 they’ve actually won.  This gives them a “title gluttony factor” (or TGF) of 5.625, meaning they win the championship 5.625 times more often than they statistically should.

To put that in perspective, consider the Red Sox.  With a slightly longer history, the Bosox SHOULD have won the thing 5.4 times, and they’ve done it 7 times.  Giving them a paltry TGF of 1.2, meaning they’ve won it only about as often as they should have.  In fact, the only other teams with long histories and a positive TGF are the St. Louis Cardinals (10 titles in 109 years, TGF = 1.83) and the Baltimore Orioles (3 titles in 56 years, TGF = 1.3).

Moving a team helps.  The Dodgers are a greedy bunch, with a TGF of 1.9, but only if you ignore their previous life in Brooklyn.  Similarly, the San Francisco Giants are at 1.9, the Atlanta Braves are at 1.7, and the Minnesota Twins are at 1.5.  The Oakland A’s have been extremely greedy, winning 4 titles in only 40 years, a TGF of 2.5.

Other than these 9 teams, no modern team has won the title as often as they should have.  Except for one fabulously successful franchise.  Can you guess who?  They have won the title only twice.  But, since they play against 29 other teams and have only been in the league for only 16 years, they hold a garish TGF of 3.5.  Which means the only baseball team which can compete with the Yankees for title greed is….

the Florida Marlins.