The 1927 New York Yankees: Murderers' Row by the Numbers

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 10 min read

The 1927 Yankees won 110 games, scored 975 runs and swept the World Series. This is the lineup, the pitching staff and the context behind Ruth's 60 home runs and Gehrig's MVP season, with the figures from the historical record.

The 1927 New York Yankees went 110-44, scored 975 runs, hit 158 home runs and swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs, a single-season record that stood until 1961, and teammate Lou Gehrig drove in 175 runs, batted .373 and won the American League's Most Valuable Player Award. The lineup around them is the one most often described by the nickname Murderers' Row.

Reputation can run ahead of evidence with famous teams, so this article checks the claims against the historical record. The 1927 Yankees turn out to be better than their legend in some ways (their run differential is the second-largest of any team with 150 or more games in the database) and more ordinary in others (the team struck out far more than the league average, and the pitching staff, though the best in the majors by runs allowed, was not historic by earned run average). The sections below cover the standings, the lineup, the pitchers, the World Series and the other baseball being played in 1927.

The season in the standings

The American League in 1927 was a one-team race. The Yankees finished 110-44, which put them 19 games ahead of the second-place Philadelphia Athletics (91-63) and 25 games ahead of the Washington Senators in third (85-69). The rest of the league finished well back:

In the National League, the Pittsburgh Pirates won the pennant at 94-60, with the St. Louis Cardinals (92-61) and the New York Giants (92-62) a game and a half and two games behind. The Yankees' .714 winning percentage is the best of any season in the club's history in the historical record's list of seasons of 100 games or more, ahead of the 1998 team (114-48), the 1939 team (106-45) and the 1932 team (107-47).

The run differential: second best in the database

Winning percentage depends on how often a team wins close games. Run differential, the difference between runs scored and runs allowed, is a steadier guide to quality. The Yankees scored 975 runs in 1927 and allowed 599, a differential of plus 376.

That is the second-highest differential for any team in the historical Teams table with at least 150 games, behind only the 1939 Yankees at plus 411. Within the 1927 season it is also far ahead of the field: the Pittsburgh Pirates, the best National League team by record, were plus 158 (817 scored, 659 allowed), and the Athletics, the second-best American League club, were plus 115.

A rough check with the Pythagorean formula, which estimates wins from runs, supports the record. Squaring the runs scored (950,625) and the runs allowed (358,801) gives an expected winning percentage of about .726, which over 154 decisions is about 112 wins. The Yankees won 110. They were not lucky; if anything they were two wins short of what the runs predicted.

The scoring itself was lopsided. League-wide, the historical record shows 4.75 runs per team-game in 1927. At that rate, a club playing 154 games would score about 731 runs, so the Yankees' 975 were roughly a third more than the average club's. Their 599 runs allowed, meanwhile, were the fewest in either league, ahead of the Dodgers' 619 and the Reds' 653.

Murderers' Row: the lineup

The name Murderers' Row had been applied to Yankee lineups before 1927, but this is the team that fixed it in memory. The regular lineup, with the positions the players are widely documented as holding, was Earle Combs in center field, Mark Koenig at shortstop, Babe Ruth in right, Lou Gehrig at first base, Bob Meusel in left, Tony Lazzeri at second, Joe Dugan at third and Pat Collins as the main catcher. The table gives each player's historical line for the year. On-base and slugging percentages are computed from the counting statistics.

Read down the on-base column and the lineup's logic appears. Combs, the leadoff man, reached base more than 41 percent of the time and scored 137 runs. Ruth and Gehrig behind him drove in 164 and 175, and Meusel and Lazzeri, hitting after them, each drove in more than 100. Four men finished with 100 or more runs batted in, and only the bottom of the order, Koenig, Dugan and the catchers, was merely good. Gehrig's .373 was second in the American League batting race behind Detroit's Harry Heilmann (.398), and Combs and Ruth, both at .356, finished just outside the top three, behind Bob Fothergill (.359).

Ruth's 60 and what it meant

Ruth's 60 home runs were more than any other American League club hit as a team. Detroit hit 51, the Browns 55, the Athletics 56, the Senators 29, the White Sox 36, the Indians 26 and the Red Sox 28. Of the 16 major-league clubs, only the Giants (109), the Cardinals (84) and the Cubs (74) hit more than Ruth did by himself, apart from the Yankees. The next best individual was his own teammate: Gehrig hit 47, and Cy Williams of the Phillies led the National League with 30.

The context matters. The historical record puts the league rate at 0.37 home runs per team-game in 1927, so the Yankees' rate of 158 in 155 games, about 1.02 per game, was nearly three times the norm. Ruth, with 540 at-bats, hit a home run every nine at-bats. He also walked 137 times and struck out 89 times, which gave him an on-base percentage of .486.

The record stood until 1961, when Roger Maris, a Yankee himself, hit 61 in a season that was eight games longer. The question of how to compare the two seasons has been debated ever since, and the answer depends on what you value. Ruth hit his in a 154-game schedule and Maris had 162 games, a difference that fed a long argument. The records themselves are not in dispute.

Gehrig's year, and why Ruth did not win the MVP

Gehrig won the American League Most Valuable Player Award, and Paul Waner won the National League's. Ruth had been the American League's winner in 1923, and under the rules of the award at that time a player could win it only once, which is the usual explanation for why a man with 60 home runs and a .772 slugging percentage did not take it home. Gehrig's numbers were remarkable on their own: 47 home runs, 175 runs batted in (the most in either league), 52 doubles, 18 triples and 218 hits.

Gehrig's 175 runs batted in led both leagues; Ruth's 164 was second, and Paul Waner of Pittsburgh was third with 131. Seven different Yankees had 100 or more hits, a sign of how deep the team was.

Gehrig is often the second name in the pair, but the franchise sheet in the database lists his 1,995 career runs batted in with the club, the most in Yankee history, and 2,721 hits. To follow the statistics used in this section, see how to read a baseball box score.

The pitching staff: good, deep and underrated

The legend of the 1927 team is its bats, but the pitching was the best in the majors by runs allowed. The staff's earned run average was 3.20, it threw 82 complete games and 11 shutouts, and it recorded 20 saves. It gave up only 42 home runs, fewer than Ruth hit.

Moore is the surprise. A reliever who started only 12 of his 50 games, he won the American League earned run average title at 2.28 and tied for the major-league lead in saves with 13. Hoyt was second in the league in earned run average at 2.63, and Shocker was third. All three of the leaders pitched for New York.

The staff's strikeout totals are low: 431 strikeouts for the entire team, an average of fewer than three per game. That fits the period. Pitchers of the 1920s relied more on contact and defense, and the major-league leader in strikeouts, Dazzy Vance, had 184. A good modern starter can exceed that total by himself. It is a reminder that a statistic is only meaningful against the league of the time.

What the offense gave up: strikeouts

One of the quieter facts in the sheet is how often the powerful lineup struck out. The Yankees batters struck out 605 times in 155 games, about 3.9 per game, against a league rate of 2.76 per team-game. Ruth struck out 89 times, Gehrig 84 and Lazzeri 82. The team also drew 635 walks.

That is the cost of power, then as now. Hitters who swing hard and pull the ball strike out more, and a team that wins by home runs will always show a high strikeout total. The lineup struck out more than average and still scored a third more runs. Compare that with a modern analytical approach, as described in expected statistics such as xBA, xSLG and xwOBA, which judge hitters by the quality of their contact (exit velocity and launch angle) rather than by outcomes alone.

The World Series: a sweep of the Pirates

The Pirates won 94 games and were led by the Waner brothers: Paul, the National League batting champion at .380 with 237 hits and 131 runs batted in, and Lloyd, who batted .355 and had 223 hits. Together they were nicknamed Big Poison and Little Poison. They finished first in the National League by a game and a half.

The Yankees swept them in four games. The decisive game was the fourth, which ended on a wild pitch in the ninth inning. The sweep was the Yankees' second Series title (they had won in 1923 and lost in 1926 to the Cardinals) and the first of back-to-back titles, since they swept the Cardinals in 1928 as well. For comparison, the Pirates would beat the Yankees in the seven-game 1960 Series, a very different outcome that is covered in the 1960 World Series and Mazeroski's home run. Sweeps of big favorites do happen: the 1954 Giants swept a Cleveland Indians club that had won more than 100 games (see the 1954 World Series and the Catch).

The rest of baseball in 1927

The majors in 1927 had 16 teams and drew 9,922,868 fans. The Yankees alone drew 1,164,015 at Yankee Stadium, about 12 percent of the major-league total, which gives some sense of what the team meant at the gate. Baseball was also played at a high level outside the white major leagues, and the historical record carries those results.

In the Negro National League, the Chicago American Giants finished first at 62-31, with the Kansas City Monarchs (55-33) and the St. Louis Stars (59-36) next in the standings, and beat the Birmingham Black Barons four games to one for the league championship. In the Eastern Colored League, the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants won the pennant at 53-35, and the two champions met in a championship series, which Chicago won five games to three. Willie Foster led the Negro National League in earned run average at 2.25, ahead of Bullet Rogan's 2.49.

These teams played a schedule that was shorter and less regular than the majors' because of travel and the realities of segregated baseball (the Chicago club's 62-31 record covers 93 games), so their records are not directly comparable to the Yankees'. They are included because a complete picture of the 1927 season, as the historical record recognizes, includes them. For the history of the Series that crowned the majors' champion, see the first modern World Series of 1903 and the Black Sox scandal of 1919, the scandal that came just before Ruth's years of dominance.

How the 1927 team compares

Where the team stands depends on the measure. By winning percentage, 1927 is the best Yankee season in the sheet. By run differential, 1939 is better (plus 411 against plus 376), and 1936 (plus 334) and 1998 (plus 309) follow. The 1998 team won more games (114-48), but it played eight more of them.

By title count and by sheer weight of talent, the 1927 Yankees had four Hall of Famers in the regular lineup (Ruth, Gehrig, Combs and Lazzeri) and two more on the mound (Hoyt and Pennock). All six appear on the franchise sheet's list of Hall of Fame players with four or more seasons for the club. Few teams have had so many.

None of this proves the 1927 Yankees were the best ever, and the sheet does not claim to. The 1906 Cubs, for instance, had a differential of plus 323 over a 152-game season at 116-36 and are the usual rival in the argument. What the numbers do say is that 1927 was among the very best, and that its reputation for hitting, though deserved, tends to overshadow the team's pitching and the fact that it won by a margin no other American League club approached.

Common questions

How many games did the 1927 Yankees win? 110, against 44 losses, a .714 winning percentage. They won the American League by 19 games over the Athletics.

How many home runs did Babe Ruth hit in 1927? 60, with 164 runs batted in, a .356 average and a .772 slugging percentage. The record stood until Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961.

Who won the MVP in 1927? Lou Gehrig won the American League award and Paul Waner the National League award.

Who was in Murderers' Row? The name is generally applied to the 1927 lineup, led by Ruth and Gehrig, with Combs, Koenig, Meusel, Lazzeri, Dugan and the catchers.

Did the 1927 Yankees lose a World Series game? No. They swept the Pirates four games to none.

Where to go next

For the club's modern history, visit the Yankees team page. To compare the leaders of 1927 with other seasons, use the site's leaders page. For more on how individual seasons are scored and read, try how to read a baseball box score, and for another famous Series, read the 1975 World Series.