Former All-Stars

I was intrigued when I discovered that this year's Boston Red Sox have 17 different former or current all-stars playing for them, the most of any team in baseball. This seemed like a high percentage of the team to me, so I started looking back at previous seasons totals. This got me wondering if the number of all-stars that are on any individual team has any correlation with that team's performance in a given season. To do this, I decided to go back to 2006 and find every team that had 15 or more current or former all-stars on it, and look at their season performance, and specifically whether or not they made they playoffs.  There were 28 such teams, for an average of 4.7 teams/season.

Year	Tm	All-Stars	Wins	Losses	Playoffs
2011	BOS	17	84	55	yes*
2011	NYY	16	85	53	yes*
2011	ATL	15	82	57	yes*
2010	BOS	18	89	73
2010	LAD	17	80	82
2010	NYY	17	95	67	yes
2010	ATL	16	91	71	yes
2010	PHI	15	97	65	yes
2009	BOS	21	95	67	yes
2009	LAD	19	95	67	yes
2009	CHW	15	79	83
2009	TEX	15	87	75
2008	BOS	18	95	67	yes
2008	LAD	18	84	78	yes
2008	NYY	17	89	73
2008	CHW	15	89	74	yes
2008	DET	15	74	88
2007	LAD	20	82	80
2007	BOS	18	96	66	yes
2007	NYM	17	88	74
2007	NYY	15	84	68	yes
2006	LAD	23	89	73	yes
2006	BOS	18	86	76
2006	PHI	17	85	77
2006	CHW	16	90	72
2006	NYM	15	97	65	yes
2006	NYY	15	97	65	yes
2006	SEA	15	78	84

Now obviously there are a lot of repeat teams in this list, as teams that don't have a lot of turnover are going to have largely the same number of all-stars in a string of consecutive years. The most prevalent team on the list is the Red Sox, who have at least 15 all-stars in all 6 seasons that I looked at. This is followed by both the Yankees and the Dodgers, who both have at least 15 in 5 of the 6 seasons.

The average win total for these teams (not including the 2011 teams) is 88.2 wins, well above league average, and within a few of a usual playoff spot. Of these 28 teams, 16 made the playoffs (I'm including the 2011 Red Sox, Yankees, and Braves as playoff teams) a 57% success rate. A pretty good result in a sport where only 26.7% of the teams make the playoffs in every season. This result shows that there is in fact a likely correlation between having a lot of all-stars on your team and making the playoffs. Most of the teams on this list are also teams with large payrolls, which allows them to stock up on veteran players, who have been around a few years and have a better chance to become an all-star than a rookie.

The three teams with the highest number of all-stars in a season are the 2007 Dodgers with 20, the 2009 Red Sox with 21, and the 2006 Dodgers with 23. The 2007 Dodgers went 82-80 and missed the playoffs, but both the 09 Red Sox and 06 Dodgers did make the playoffs, but failed to advance to the World Series.

Although a high percentage of these teams did make the playoffs, it should be noted that only one, the 2007 Red Sox with 18 all-stars, actually ended up winning the World Series.