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Cleveland to the Reds: 10 MLB teams still waiting on a World Series title

These MLB World Series droughts stretch across decades, from Cleveland's last title in 1948 to the Padres and Brewers, two 1969 franchises still without a championship

The Chicago Cubs went 108 years without a World Series title before they beat Cleveland in 2016. That result ended one wait and extended another. Cleveland has not won a championship since 1948, and it is one of several clubs whose fans have gone decades without a title parade.

This list looks at MLB World Series droughts across 10 franchises. Each drought is measured in one of two ways. For a club that has won before, the clock starts with its last title. For a club that has never won, the clock starts with its first season. The slides run from the oldest gap to the most recent. Each drought is given as a starting year rather than a running count of seasons.

The selection mixes two kinds of teams. Some are expansion clubs that have never won at all. The San Diego Padres and the Milwaukee Brewers both began play in 1969, the Brewers as the Seattle Pilots. The Seattle Mariners followed in 1977. The rest are clubs that won titles in earlier decades but have not won since. The Pittsburgh Pirates have five titles, and the Athletics franchise has nine. The Pirates last won in 1979, and the Athletics last won in 1989.

Other teams sit just outside this group. The Minnesota Twins last won in 1991, and the Toronto Blue Jays last won in 1993. The Colorado Rockies, founded in 1993, have never won a title. Neither have the Tampa Bay Rays, who played their first season in 1998.

A drought on its own does not show how close a team came. Several clubs in this group reached the World Series and lost, some more than once. Each slide covers when the team last won, or when it began play, along with the Series it reached and the opponents it faced.

Cleveland Guardians: no World Series title since 1948

The Cleveland Guardians last won the World Series in 1948. That is the longest active title gap in MLB.

The 1948 championship was the franchise's second. Its first came in 1920. Both titles arrived in the first half of the 20th century, and the club has not added a third.

Cleveland has reached the World Series four times since 1948. It lost all four.

The first of those trips came in 1954. The club did not return to the Series until 1995. It went back again in 1997, which gave it two appearances in the late 1990s. Neither one produced a title.

The most recent trip came in 2016, against the Chicago Cubs. That Series went the full seven games. The Cubs won the deciding game and the championship.

The four losses span the 1950s, the 1990s and the 2010s. Across that stretch, Cleveland built teams good enough to win a........

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