MLB playoffs 2025: World Series Drought-Buster Watch - ESPN

Editor's note: This file originally ran on Oct. 2, 2025 with seven teams that have gone longer than 30 years without a title remaining and will be updated with teams removed as they are eliminated from the 2025 postseason

Mathematical probability, in a perfectly equitable distribution of championships, means each MLB team would win a World Series once every 30 years. That is not the world we live in, of course, so many franchises have experienced long title droughts that have stretched into multiple decades. There is even one that has never appeared in the Fall Classic.

That establishes a super fun element to this year's postseason. We have several playoff teams who have gone longer than 30 years since their last World Series championship — including the Milwaukee Brewers, who have never won, and the Seattle Mariners, who have still never reached the World Series 48 years into their franchise history.

Maybe, just maybe, some team's long-suffering fans will experience that euphoria of winning the final game of the season.

Yes, it's the year of the World Series Drought-Buster Watch. Let's look at those seven franchises, what went wrong through the years, and why this may finally be The Year.

Last World Series title: None (franchise debuted in 1969, moved to Milwaukee in 1970).

Last World Series appearance: 1982 (lost to the Cardinals in seven games).

Closest call since then: Lost the 2018 NLCS to the Dodgers in seven games.

Three painful postseason moments:

Leading 3-1 in the bottom of the sixth inning in Game 7 of the 1982 World Series, the Cardinals load the bases with one out. Keith Hernandez hits a two-run single off Bob McClure and George Hendrick follows with a go-ahead single as the Cardinals go on to a 6-3 win.