So with that in mind, let’s jump right in… after a quick reminder that you can subscribe to the Hot Corner Harbor email list for updates when a new article goes up (and only when an article goes up, no spam!). It’ll be useful for the offseason, where I have a couple of article ideas in mind on top of my usual Hall of Fame coverage and Future Hall of Fame series (not to mention the eventual follow-up on this playoff trivia piece!).
DROUGHTS
It feels like kind of a boring year on the drought front, in spite of the fact that all three of our longest active World Series droughts are represented in the playoffs this year, in the Guardians, Brewers, and Padres. A big reason for that is probably because eight of the past ten World Series winners are represented in this season’s postseason field (and with the also recently-crowned Rangers just narrowly missing out as well).
That brings the overall numbers down a bunch, despite those three big ones trying to push in the other direction. But it’s really just those three and the Rays (who, like the Padres and Brewers, are searching for their first ever championship, albeit with a much shorter history). Everyone else here has won at least one title since the turn of the millennium. In fact, our median drought for this set falls right in between the Phillies (2008) and Yankees (2009). It’s actually kind of difficult to wind up with a group of teams with a sub-20 year median drought, given that this is a 30-team league and there have been plenty of repeats in that span. This just isn’t a group that skews towards the long-suffering, in general.
If you look at the chart of Average and Median droughts of the playoff field over time, you can see a bit of a dip this year. It’s especially true in the median side of things; we’re back in line with what we might see during the eight-team playoff days, when there were fewer chances for multiple really long championshipless streaks to sneak in and bring the average up a bit. In the multi-Wild Card days, only 2021 sits below 2026, a wild postseason where half of the ten-team field had won in the prior decade (in line with what we have this year, but with two fewer playoff slots), and the two longest droughts were the Braves (then-1995) and the Rays (never, founded 1998). That’s going to be tough to match, but we somehow came close this season.
PLAYERS WITHOUT A WORLD SERIES
I will once again be publishing a Sporcle Quiz covering the “Best Active Players Without a World Series” upon the final out of the series, something that has become a tradition here over the years (and if you’d like to see how the list has evolved over time, here are all of the past versions for you to go back and try). I’ll include a section at the end of this piece covering who the specific players this year are for anyone who doesn’t mind spoilers for that quiz, but if you’d like to avoid that and only want to know how well-represented each postseason team is in titleless players, here’s what we’re tentatively seeing (I will need to do a final re-tally once Baseball-Reference updates the Wins Above Replacement totals for the year, but I think all of these will stay unchanged):
None: Astros
One: Dodgers, Rays, White Sox
Two: Braves, Brewers, Guardians
Three: Cubs, Red Sox
Four: Padres
Five: Yankees
Six: Phillies
THREE-TEAM PLAYERS
For those who have never read one of these columns before: while there are plenty of players who have won three or more World Series, most of those did so while playing with a dynasty team that picked up multiple titles. Much rarer is the player who has won a World Series with three different teams; lefty reliever Will Smith became just the eighteenth after winning with the Braves, Astros, and Rangers from 2021 to 2023.
It’s not every playoff run that we see someone eligible for joining this club, but we do have someone this year: Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman is back, making another run at it after falling short last year. Chapman won his first title a decade ago with the Cubs, then picked up number two with the Rangers alongside Smith. There were a few other guys who could have made a run also, like Max Scherzer or Joc Pederson, but their teams came up a little short.
The other interesting name here is more long-term, in William Contreras. The 28-year-old Brewers catcher was on the 2021 Braves, and 2027 will be a team option season before his current contract expires. Picking up a second title in Milwaukee would set him up to chase a World Series with a third team, should he leave in free agency (or get traded by the team before then). Mauricio Dubon (Braves + 2022 Astros), Austin Hedges, and Nathaniel Lowe (both Guardians + 2023 Rangers) are also notable pending free agents.
Those are all kind of a long-shot, but there are never that many potential cases here, so it’s worth at least mentioning them. Outside of that, we have a handful of other former champions trying to win on new clubs: guys like Cody Bellinger, Xander Bogaerts, Alex Bregman, Willson Contreras, Max Fried, Chris Sale, Kyle Schwarber, Dansby Swanson, Kyle Tucker, and Trea Turner… but most of those guys are locked in for long enough that even if they pick up another title this year, it can be difficult to say whether they’ll last long enough to try again with a third different franchise after their current deals end.
EXPANSION TEAMS
It took over four decades from the first round of expansion to have our first World Series match-up between new teams (2015, the Royals and Mets), but it’s happened two more times in the subsequent decade (2019, Astros and Nationals; 2023, Rangers and Diamondbacks). So, what are the odds that we see our fourth such Fall Classic this year?
Eh… possible, but not great. Both of our top seeds are expansion teams, in the Rays and Brewers, but only two other expansion franchises (the Padres and the Astros) made it to October. If we assume a 50/50 chance for either team to advance in a playoff round for simplicity’s sake (it’s not that far off, as a rough estimate), that gives us about a 3-in-8 chance for either pennant winner to be one of the DLC franchises. And taking that to both pennant winners being expansion teams, we get a 9-in-64 chance (about 14%, or just above 1-in-8 if you need some other ways to visualize it). Again, not impossible, but not terribly likely either.
I did get curious about how often we’ve seen both league’s top seeds* be expansion teams like this year, and it turns out, it’s about as common as an all-expansion World Series. In fact, it just happened for the third time ever last year, thanks to the Blue Jays and the Brewers (again); I just didn’t think to look into it at the time. That was the first instance of it happening in over a decade, with the Angels and Nationals managing the feat in 2014. And the first such occurrence actually preceded the All-Expansion World Series by several years, with the Astros and Mariners leading their respective leagues in wins all the way back in 2001.
*I feel like MLB should come up for a name and award for the team with the best record each season, like the NHL has with the Presidents’ Trophy; the Commissioners’ Trophy, maybe? It seems analogous, but I’d honestly rather someone other than Rob Manfred, Bud Selig, et al. get that recognition…
It’s interesting it happened that much sooner, because the overall totals actually aren’t that far off from pennants; expansion teams have claimed 17 AL Pennants and 14 NL ones, against 18 AL Win Titles and 13 NL ones (one of those being the 2007 one, which was shared between fellow NL West expansion teams the Rockies and Diamondbacks). Overall, every expansion team has led their league in wins at least once except for the Padres and Marlins, and the Brewers and Astros have even led both leagues. The Rays and Brewers are now each four-time winners, tying them with the Astros, Blue Jays, and Mets (who were the first expansion team to pull the feat off, way back in their Miracle 1969 campaign).
UNIQUE MATCH-UPS
As you might expect from a postseason field that is two-thirds original members of the AL and NL, there’s a pretty high number of potential World Series rematches here. And that’s extra true given the specific teams involved. As you might expect given their lead in World Series appearances, the Yankees have faced the most unique opponents in the history of the Fall Classic with twelve, although the Brewers are one of the three teams they’re still missing (the other two are the Nationals and Rockies). Conversely, their histories against the Dodgers (11 occurrences) and the Braves (4 occurrences) are two of the most common duels in Series history.
The non-Yankees entrants this year are no slouches here, either. The Dodgers, who are second in pennants behind the Yankees, are also tied for second in unique World Series opponents; their face-off with the Blue Jays last October moved them into a tie with their rivals the Giants, at ten unique match-ups. They won’t have a chance to break that tie this year, though, as none of the teams they’re missing (Tigers, Royals, Angels, Mariners, and Rangers) made it to the playoffs this go-around.*
*The Giants’ chances would have been slightly better this year, in the hypothetical universe where they made it to the playoffs; they’re missing the Orioles, Rays, Blue Jays, Astros, and Mariners.
Surprisingly, the Red Sox are right behind those two with nine unique prior match-ups under their belt, despite a lot fewer pennants. However, the Brewers, Padres, and Braves are all among the teams they haven’t met in a championship before, meaning they have a good chance of causing a new match-up should they go all the way. I’ll admit, the Braves one kind of surprised me, I could have sworn that had happened at some point in history, back in the early days of the World Series when it would have been a Boston cross-town series. It’s one of the rare Original Sixteen matchups still yet to have occurred. The Cubs, meanwhile, actually have a greater chance of a repeat face-off despite even fewer pennants than Boston, as they’ve squared up against every AL team here outside of the two expansion teams.
On the flip side, anyone the Brewers face off against would constitute a unique World Series, since their only prior appearance came as an AL team. And while only two of their eleven playoff series came as an AL team, and that was back in the time where there was only one round prior to the World Series, one of those two AL Brewers series was of course against the Yankees (1981 ALDS), making it kind of a rematch. And the Padres are close, with only two prior Fall Classics to their name… but one of those was of course against the Yankees.
Meanwhile, the expansion team version of the Cubs is the Astros; they have five pennants against five unique opponents, and four of them are in this playoff bracket. The asterisk here is that one of those four is the White Sox, which can’t happen as a 2005 rematch because the Astros were in the NL back then, but it could happen in an earlier round. It would mark the third postseason series between the pairing, as the two also met back in the 2021 ALDS.
Some other potential pairings of note: we do have some potential new match-ups between Original Sixteen teams: Guardians-Phillies, White Sox-Phillies, White Sox-Braves, and the aforementioned Red Sox-Braves. White Sox and Brewers would be an interesting geographic match-up, and an interesting inversion of the Brewers-Cubs rivalry. Similarly, Rays-Braves would be unique, as one of the only possible “Deep South” match-ups. Also, it technically falls under the “repeat match-up” section rather than a potential new one, but we could see our first all-Chicago series in 120 years; that’s kind of neat, and feels like it’s worth making an exception for.
(a full table of potential World Series match-ups is below; Red/One spaces are pairings that have happened, and blue-highlighted teams are expansion franchises)
Full List of Potential Rematches
Recurring Match-ups
Yankees-Dodgers, 12x (1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956, 1963, 1977, 1978, 1981, 2024)
Yankees-Braves, 4x (1957, 1958, 1996, 1999)
Red Sox-Dodgers, 2x (1916, 2018)
Yankees-Phillies, 2x (1950, 2009)
Guardians-Braves, 2x (1948, 1995)
Yankees-Cubs, 2x (1932, 1938)
One-time Match-ups
Astros-Phillies (2022)
Astros-Braves (2021)
Rays-Dodgers (2020)
Astros-Dodgers (2017)
Guardians-Cubs (2016)
Rays-Phillies (2008)
Yankees-Padres (1998)
White Sox-Dodgers (1959)
Guardians-Dodgers (1920)
Red Sox-Cubs (1918)
Red Sox-Phillies (1915)
White Sox-Cubs (1906)
I’ll cover the full, spoiled list of which players are due to appear on this year's Best Active Players Without a World Series quiz next, but first, here’s a one more chance to subscribe to the Hot Corner Harbor mailing list to space things out a little for anyone who’d like to go in fresh when it goes up (and also, you know, to give you another opportunity to sign up if you haven’t yet, since it will let you know when that quiz goes up!).
PLAYERS WITHOUT A WORLD SERIES, SPOILERS VERSION
Astros: none (closest misses: Daulton Varsho, Josh Hader)
Braves: Matt Olson, Raisel Iglesias
Brewers: Christian Yelich, Brandon Woodruff
Cubs: Kevin Gausman, Ian Happ, Nico Hoerner
Dodgers: Tarik Skubal
Guardians: Jose Ramirez, Steven Kwan
Padres: Manny Machado, Yu Darvish, Fernando Tatis Jr., Robbie Ray
Phillies: Bryce Harper, Zack Wheeler, J.T. Realmuto, Aaron Nola, Cristopher Sanchez, Luis Arraez
Rays: Yandy Díaz
Red Sox: Sonny Gray, Trevor Story, Ranger Suarez
White Sox: Luis Castillo
Yankees: Paul Goldschmidt, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rondon
I will probably use 19.0 career Wins Above Replacement (per Baseball-Reference) as my cutoff for this year’s quiz, and I think most of the names here will fall above that line. And Darvish was out with injury for all of the season, but I’ve counted that in the past, so he’ll be taken off the list with his teammates should San Diego win.
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