2025 World Series Trivia Wrap-Up + Best Players Without a World Series

With the final game of the 2025 Season in the books, I can follow up on my initial column with another trivia tradition here at Hot Corner Harbor: the Annual Best Active Players Without a World Series Sporcle Quiz! I’ll include a little more writing here before we get to the break (to give the spoilers within some breathing room), but I’ll also add that if you’d like more World Series fun facts, you can take a walk down memory lane through a full Sporcle playlist collecting past years’ editions of this quiz (I think it’s actually kind of neat to watch the list of names change slowly over time), as well as an entire second playlist of various other playoff quizzes that I’ve made.

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Alright, now onto the spoilers section! We only had one name removed from the list by way of the Dodgers winning, that being the newly-acquired Blake Snell. That’s what tends to happen when a team repeats, though; at least there was one new guy this time. Speaking of repeating, the 2024-25 Dodgers are just the fourteenth franchise to string together consecutive titles, and the first such case since the 1998-2000 Yankees, which brings an end to the longest streak of non-repeat titles in MLB history. As luck would have it, the previous longest such streak was 1978 to 1992, and was bookended by the two teams the Dodgers defeated, the Yankees and the Blue Jays.*

*Also, this win ensures the continuation of one of the weirdest streaks, as every 2020s champion has included a Will Smith on the roster, between the Dodgers’ catcher and the journeyman lefty reliever.

Following up on the rest of my earlier column, we didn’t see another All-Expansion Team World Series (although we came close, with 3 out of the 4 CS teams qualifying), but the Dodgers and Blue Jays* did give us our 73rd unique Fall Classic matchup. And again, since there are a lot of repeat winners, there aren’t a lot of interesting new factoids there, either; Mookie Betts is up to four World Series across two franchises, which makes him the active leader. But the all-time lists there are littered with players from the 1950s Yankees, meaning it’s hard to move up much in the rankings. 

*As a side note, the Blue Jays' loss means that, among Expansion teams, they remain tied with all of the Mets, Marlins, Royals, and Astros at two apiece.

Similarly, nobody won with their third unique franchise (which would tie that record). But if you expand your window to anyone who played on the Dodgers this season, we do pick up two second-team winners in Andrew Heaney (2023 Rangers) and Eddie Rosario (2021 Braves), who played a combined 3 games with L.A. this season. I’m not sure either will get a chance to pick up a third franchise next year, as neither played super well… but it would technically count.

One other oddity, the Blue Jays actually outscored the Dodgers in the Series, 34-26. That may sound unlikely, but it’s happened nearly two dozen times over the course of World Series history. However, this was the first time it happened since the Marlins beat the Yankees back in 2003 (we’ve had a few dead heats in the meantime, but no outright negative differentials), so it was still pretty notable!

And with that, we can close the books on the 2025 season. Of course, there will be plenty to write about still during the offseason, with the Hall of Fame voting in particular starting very soon. As always, if you’d like to be notified when those new articles go up, you can subscribe to the Hot Corner Harbor mailing list and get an email when that happens!

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