Teams that without a World Series appearance in 15+ years

Since there are 15 teams in each league, we could say that they are all over due.

The first table has the relevant data. There are 8 teams that we could say are doubly over due since their droughts are 30+ years.

The second table has some additional data. 9 of the 13 teams have gone 15+ years without an appearance in the LCS. Only two of the teams, the Angels and A's, have had a regular season winning% of .500 or higher during their drought.

The total number of years of drought for these teams collectively is 413. They have a total of 20 LCS appearances during that time, which is less than 1 every 20 years.

Team	Years Without a World Series Appearance	Last World Series Appearance
Mariners	48	Never
Pirates	45	1979
Brewers	42	1982
Orioles	41	1983
A's	34	1990
Reds	34	1990
Twins	33	1991
Blue Jays	31	1993
Padres	26	1998
Angels	22	2002
Marlins	21	2003
White Sox	19	2005
Rockies	17	2007

 

Team	Regular Season Winning% During Drought	LCS Appearances During Drought	Last LCS Appearance
Mariners	0.477	3	2001
Pirates	0.464	3	1992
Brewers	0.492	2	2018
Orioles	0.471	3	2014
A's	0.506	2	2006
Reds	0.483	1	1995
Twins	0.489	1	2002
Blue Jays	0.496	2	2016
Padres	0.477	1	2022
Angels	0.514	2	2009
Marlins	0.457	0	2003
White Sox	0.465	0	2005
Rockies	0.455	0	2007

Update Oct. 29:

I came up with a probability of about .21 that 5 teams in 15 years will not make it to the World Series.

A math professor I know gave me a combination formula that said there were 3003 ways this could happen (altho he said he was not sure if it was right).

.645^10 = .0124
 
(.645 is the probability that a team goes to the series at least once in the 15 year period)

.355^5  = .00566

(.355 is the probability that a team goes to the series zero times in the 15 year period)

Then .0124*.00566 = .00007

Then .00007*3003 = .21

There might be a problem with independence. If one team is not making the series, that might be raising the odds for everyone else. But I don't know if this is an issue or how much it would matter.

One thing to remember is that there are teams that have gone more than 15 years (and in some cases alot more years). So that would make what we have seen less likely that .21. And what we have is 13 between the two leagues or 6.5 per team.

The probability I got for 6 teams is .194 and for 7 teams it is .137. The average of that is .165 (but things might not be linear)

One other thing, I used Excel's random number generator and ran 10 15 year periods. The average number of teams not making it to the series each period was 5.5.

Update Oct. 30:

I calculated the probability of the droughts for each of the 13 teams. Those are in the table below.

Team	Prob
Mariners	0.0307
Pirates	0.0371
Brewers	0.0548
Orioles	0.0246
A's	0.0861
Reds	0.0962
Twins	0.0927
Blue Jays	0.1074
Padres	0.1763
Angels	0.2083
Marlins	0.2434
White Sox	0.2598
Rockies	0.3151

I took into account how many teams were in the league for the various years in each case.

For the Mariners, for example, there were 14 teams in the AL from 1977-2012. In each of those years, the probability that the Mariners don't make it to the series is 13/14 = .929. Then the probability that they don't make it any of those 36 years is .929^36 = .0706.

From 2013-2024, the AL had 15 teams. In each of those years, the probability that the Mariners don't make it to the series is 14/15 = .933. Then the probability that they don't make it any of those 12 years is .933^12 = .4351.

Combining those two cases gives us the probability that the Mariners don't make the series in any year from 1977-2024:

.0706*.4351 = .0307.

Some of the probabilities in the table are pretty low. The teams with the shorter droughts from recent years have higher probabilities. Again, independence is an issue. If one of these teams is not going to the series, it raises the probability for another team (at least in its own league). So the numbers could be a bit higher.