With the defending champion Texas Rangers eliminated from playoff contention Thursday evening, Major League Baseball extended a historic streak. For the 24th straight season, a new champion will be crowned.
Yes, we haven’t seen a team win back-to-back World Series since the Yankees did so three straight years from 1998-2000. Not only is the longest MLB streak without a repeat champ, but it’s the longest streak in major professional sports here in North America. Namely, the NFL, NBA and NHL have never experienced anything like this. There are certainly other ways to define “parity” in professional sports, but baseball has the lead on this front by a wide margin.
Previously, since the advent of the World Series, the longest such streak in baseball came between 1978 (the ’77-’78 Yankees) and 1992 (the ’92-’93 Blue Jays).
Since the last repeat championship in Major League Baseball, we’ve seen 16 different franchises win the World Series including the following:
- The Giants won three titles (2010, 2012 and 2014) after having previously not won any since moving to San Francisco
- The Red Sox won their first title since 1918 and four in all (2004, 2007, 2013 and 2018), the most this millennium
- The Diamondbacks (2001), Angels (2002), Astros (2017), Nationals (2019) and Rangers (2023) won their first titles in franchise history. The Astros won again in 2022
- The Cubs won their first title since 1908 (2016)
- The White Sox won their first title since 1917 (2005).
- The Marlins won their second title in their 11th season overall (2003)
- The Cardinals won two titles (2006, 2011), giving them an NL-high 11
- The Yankees won the 2009 championship, giving them an MLB-high 27
- The Phillies won their first title since 1980 (2008)
- The Royals won their first title since 1985 (2015)
- The Dodgers won their first title since 1988 (2020)
- The Braves won their first title since 1995 (2021)
That is an awful lot of fun stuff in there and we’re about to see another team put one on the board here in the next six weeks.
