A couple weeks back, I looked at this year's Cardinals staff and asked if they were maybe the greatest of all-time. In terms of ERA-, which adjusts for league and park, they are still the tops. But three other Cardinals teams still rank in the top seven when it comes to that metric, and they came in consecutive years: 1942, '43 and '44.
Those staffs were solid from front to back, but being the era of four-man rotations and not nearly the kind of bullpen usage we see today, their value laid heavily in the two top starters: Mort Cooper and Max Lanier.