Two clubs in today’s postseason chase are staring at a kind of baggage nobody wants: a World Series drought that keeps stretching. The Cleveland Guardians and Milwaukee Brewers have both put together runs of steady success in recent years, but neither has been able to turn those trips into a championship. Every season that passes only pushes them deeper into an uncomfortable corner of baseball history.
That history gets pretty bleak once you start lining teams up by how long it’s been since their last title. Cleveland sits at the top of the list at 77 years, while Milwaukee and San Diego are tied at 57. Seattle is next at 50, followed by Pittsburgh at 47, Baltimore at 43, Detroit at 42, the Mets at 40, the Athletics at 37 and Cincinnati at 36.
For Cleveland, the number is especially jarring because the drought has been the longest active one in the sport since 2016, when the Cubs beat them in the World Series and snapped Chicago’s 108-year wait. The Guardians have been around since 1901, though the franchise has worn different names over the past 125 years while staying in Cleveland the whole time. They won their first World Series in 1920 and added another in 1948, their most recent championship.
The strange part for Cleveland is that the franchise has actually reached the World Series three times since that 1948 title - and each time, it ran into another team ending a long drought of its own.
Milwaukee’s wait has a different origin story. The city’s modern big league club traces back to 1969, when the Seattle Pilots arrived as one of two expansion teams before relocating to Milwaukee after that lone season.
The Brewers were born in 1970, spent their American League years there until 1998, and then moved into the National League. Milwaukee had already seen other baseball teams come and go, including the Braves, who spent 13 seasons in the city.
The Brewers have reached the World Series only once, in 1982, when they represented the American League and lost to the St. Louis Cardinals.
San Diego’s run without a title is the same length as Milwaukee’s, but the path looks different. The Padres also arrived in 1969 as an expansion team and have never left the city.
Before that, San Diego had hosted plenty of minor league clubs. In 57 seasons, the Padres have made the playoffs 10 times - five as division winners and five as wild-card teams - and their only two World Series trips both ended in losses, to the Detroit Tigers in 1984 and the New York Yankees in 1998.
Seattle’s drought hit 50 years in 2026, and the Mariners occupy a unique spot on the modern MLB map: they are the only active team that has never been to a World Series. The franchise came to life in 1977 after the city lost the Pilots to Milwaukee, and there were stretches when the team’s future in Seattle seemed uncertain. It has stayed put, though, and has reached the postseason six times - four division titles and two wild-card appearances.
Pittsburgh, meanwhile, owns one of the deepest histories in the sport and one of the longest waits for another shot at the top. The Pirates’ five World Series titles are spread across much of the 1900s, but the last came in 1979, when they beat the Orioles.
Since then, the franchise has had only scattered bursts of success: three straight playoff trips from 1990-92, then another three-year run from 2013-15 after a 21-year gap. The Pirates haven’t been back to the postseason since 2015, and they haven’t reached the World Series again since that 1979 title.
In Other News...
Mariners Fans Have Seen This Former Project Break Through Too Late
Jake Bauers spent time in Seattle as one of those tantalizing left-handed projects who never quite put it together, the kind of bat the Mariners hoped might blossom with a little patience and the right role. Now with the Milwaukee Brewers, he has done just that, capping a season of real progress with a breakout run that included a 140 OPS+ and a team-leading 26 home runs.
Scott Servais once suggested Bauers might benefit from a change of environment, and the ex-Mariners outfielder has turned that idea into a pretty clear case study. His rise has been steady rather than sudden, but it still leaves Seattle looking at a familiar question: how many promising pieces only become finished products after they leave? [Read more 🡒]
Mariners Fans Just Got An Uncomfortable October Reminder
The Cleveland Guardians run through October has offered a familiar kind of reminder for Seattle followers: once the regular season ends, the door stays open for teams that know how to play deep into the calendar. Cleveland won Game 3 of the ALCS and is now within striking distance of the World Series, a stunning position for a club that only needed 85 wins to claim the AL Central and still found a way to turn a modest regular-season profile into October momentum.
For the Mariners, it is an uncomfortable comparison because it comes back to how they have talked about building a winner and what that has looked like in practice. Jerry Dipoto has long framed Seattles path around a certain standard for sustained success, but the Guardians current postseason surge is the sort of example that forces a fresh look at whether that approach is enough when the games matter most. [Read more 🡒]
Mariners Still Have One Lineup Problem They Cant Ignore
With the postseason churning around them, the Mariners are still staring at a familiar roster question that is hard to put off any longer. Around the league, the Brewers have moved on to a World Series berth, the Guardians have gotten a lift from rookie Petey Halpin and other clubs are already dealing with retirements, surgeries and coaching changes, but Seattles attention remains on how it will line up its own offense for next season.
The issue is less about adding another headline name than figuring out where the production goes from here and how the lineup holds together if the club wants to keep pace in the American League. Randy Arozarenas role in that mix has become central to the conversation, and it is the kind of problem that can linger into the winter if the Mariners do not find a clean answer soon. [Read more 🡒]