The 2026 World Series came with a guarantee that one team would graduate from the miserable list of MLB teams that have never won a title. That team turned out to be the Milwaukee Brewers.
The Brewers swept the Tampa Bay Rays in five games Wednesday, winning Game 5 by a score of 4-1. After 57 years of existence as a franchise, the club has its first Commissioner’s Trophy.
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The Brewers are the fourth franchise in the past decade to win their first title, joining the Houston Astros (2017, 2022), the Washington Nationals (2019) and the Texas Rangers (2023). The Chicago Cubs arguably got an even bigger monkey on their back when they ended their 108-year title drought in 2016.
That leaves four MLB teams still waiting for their moment in the sun. Let’s run through them.
Tampa Bay Radio (appear in 2008, 2020, 2026 World Series)
The list begins with the Rays, who now have the pitiful status of being a team that has appeared in most Classics events without winning. In fact, they have now reached as many World Series as the other three teams combined.
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Tampa Bay spent its first decade of existence as one of the most miserable teams in all of sports, finishing last in nine of 10 seasons as an AL East powerhouse. That all changed in 2008, when an analytics-focused overhaul led by current Los Angeles Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman finally bore fruit with a World Series run that ended in a five-game loss to the Philadelphia Phillies.
The Rays have been regularly competitive since then, but Friedman and the Dodgers were expecting them to make another World Series appearance in the 2020 covid-altered season. That ended in a six-game losing streak. Around this time they lost five games.
San Diego Padres (1984, 1998);
The Rays have the most World Series appearances without a title, but it’s the Padres who have now gone the longest without a break. The Milwaukee Padres and Brewers existed as expansion teams in 1969, with the Brewers playing one season as the Seattle Mariners before moving to Wisconsin.
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The Padres made their first streak in 1984, led by a young Tony Gwynn in his first MLB season. That team lost in five games to a dominant Detroit Tigers team. San Diego reached the final round again with Gwynn in 1998, but that streak was even more fragmented, as the New York Yankees’ dynasty collapsed.
The Padres have been competitive in the regular season since 2020 and have paid a lot of money to keep the talent of the brand name in San Diego, but so far it has resulted in only one appearance in the NLCS in 2022. This year the team beat the Chicago Cubs in the wild-card round, but lost 3-1 to the Brewers in the NLDS.
Colorado Rockies (2007)
The Rockies have the third-worst winning percentage in MLB since the 1993 season, and they haven’t helped themselves on that front recently. Colorado as its streak of last place in the NL West ends at five seasons, after another streak of three fourth place finishes. Flint never shared the title.
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They have reached the playoffs five times in 34 years, most recently in 2018, when they were swept out of the NLDS by the Brewers. Their only World Series appearance came in 2007, with a team featuring Troy Tulowitzki, Matt Holliday and Todd Helton.
That team entered the 2007 Fall Classic on a 10-game winning streak between the regular season and the playoffs, when it swept the Phillies and Diamondbacks, then was swept by the Boston Red Sox. Liberty has recorded two playoff victories since then.
Seattle Mariners (never appeared in the Series)
The Mariners are one of four teams to never win the World Series. They are the only team that has never reached the World Series.
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They’ve certainly had this talent in the past, starting their first season in 1995 with an all-time great core of Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez would hit in his rookie season. Among that group, only Martinez has been there since 2001, but that’s when Ichiro Suzuki came in and led the team to a record 116-win season, which ended in disappointment with a five-game ALCS loss to the Yankees.
Seattle has only made the postseason twice since, in 2022 and 2025. Last year’s team came closer to the Fall Classic than any other, taking the Toronto Blue Jays to seven games in the ALCS before George Springer broke their heart. This year’s team was one of the most offensive in the MLB, missing the playoffs with a 76-86 record.
Which team will be the closest to winning their first World Series?
There is no way to know for sure. We could succeed this year by working towards something like…
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Rays (98-64, reached the World Series)
Padres (91-71, reached the NLDS)
Mariners (76-86, missed 8 games)
Flints (58-105, missed 30 games)
If you want future talent to go, here’s how the four teams are ranked in MLB Pipeline’s post-salary deadline system.
There are many other ways to evaluate these organizations, but the unfortunate truth is that winning the World Series requires so many things to go right that it is also a lightning bolt. The Rays are probably the most suitable for breaking through, but also keeping the wave of small-market vehicles cheap year after year. Maybe that will change with the new CBA, but 2026 can feel like nothing more than a missed opportunity.
Which pain is the longest World Series drought?
Those four teams are all title-less, but not the club that has waited the longest for a World Cup title. Cleveland’s Rangers last won all of them in 1948, which represents the longest drought in MLB. It is also the second-longest drought in American sports in the major four men’s leagues, behind the Arizona Cardinals team that won the NFL championship in 1947, playing in the pre-merger days with Chicago.
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Cleveland has lost four World Series since last in 1954, 1995, 1997 and 2016. That 2016 loss probably stung the most after a 3-1 series lead heading into Game 7 that went into extra innings at home against a Cubs team looking to end a longer drought.
This year’s Rangers are tied for 2-2 with the Rays in the ALCS, but have lost the next two games with big starts from Drew Rasmussen and Freddy Peralta.