| 1998 MLB season | |
|---|---|
| League | Major League Baseball |
| Sport | Baseball |
| Duration | March 31 – October 21, 1998 |
| Number of games | 162 |
| Number of teams | 30 |
| TV partner(s) | Fox/FSN, ESPN, NBC |
| Draft | |
| Top draft pick | Pat Burrell |
| Picked by | Philadelphia Phillies |
| Regular Season | |
| Season MVP | AL: Juan González (TEX) NL: Sammy Sosa (CHC) |
| Postseason | |
| AL champions | New York Yankees |
| AL runners-up | Cleveland Indians |
| NL champions | San Diego Padres |
| NL runners-up | Atlanta Braves |
| World Series | |
| Champions | New York Yankees |
| Runners-up | San Diego Padres |
| World Series MVP | Scott Brosius (NYY) |
The 1998 Major League Baseball season ended with the New York Yankees sweeping the San Diego Padres in the World Series, after they had won a then AL record 114 regular season games. The Yankees finished with 125 wins for the season (regular season and playoffs combined), which remains the MLB record.
The 1998 season was marked by MLB’s expansion to 30 teams (16 in the NL, 14 in the AL), with two new teams–the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League, and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the American League–added. To keep the leagues with even numbers of teams[1] while allowing both leagues to have a new team, the Milwaukee Brewers were moved from the American League Central Division to the National League Central Division. The Detroit Tigers were shifted from the American League East to the American League Central, while the Devil Rays were added to the American League East. The Diamondbacks were added to the National League West, making the NL have more teams than the AL for the first time (this arrangement would last until the end of the 2012 season, when the Houston Astros moved from the National to the American League for 2013, giving each league 15 teams).
The biggest story of the season was the historic chase of the single-season home run record held at the time by Roger Maris. Initially, the St. Louis Cardinals' Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey Jr. of the Seattle Mariners started the season on a pace to both break Maris' record. In June, the chase was joined by the Chicago Cubs' Sammy Sosa, who broke the decades-old record of Rudy York for most home runs in a calendar month with 20 that month. Eventually, Griffey fell off the record pace, but still ended with 56 homers. Both McGwire and Sosa broke the record in September, with McGwire ultimately finishing with 70 homers to Sosa's 66. McGwire's record would last only three years, with Barry Bonds hitting 73 in 2001. The 1998 season was also the first in MLB history with four players hitting 50 or more homers, with Greg Vaughn of the San Diego Padres hitting 50. In a postscript to the record chase, both McGwire and Sosa have since been widely accused of having used performance-enhancing drugs during that period, and McGwire would admit in 2010 that he had used steroids during the record-setting season.[2]
The defending World Series champions Florida Marlins finished last in the NL East Division at 54–108, making it the first, and only, time that a team went from winning the World Series one year to finishing with 100 or more losses and last in their division the following year.
- ^ With an odd number of teams (15), only seven games would be able to be scheduled in each league on any given day during the intra-league portion of the regular season. Thus, one team in each league would have had to be idle on any given day. This would have made it difficult for scheduling, in terms of travel days and the need to end the regular season before October. See Major League Baseball#League organization. If each league had wished to remain at fifteen teams, the schedule would have had to include one inter-league game during each day of intra-league play. Instead, with each league now having an even number of teams, interleague games occur only in certain parts of the regular season.
- ^ "McGwire apologizes to La Russa, Selig". ESPN.com. January 11, 2010. Retrieved January 11, 2010.