Your team is probably out, or about to be. The only rooting rule that matters this October: pull for the franchise that's never done it. The best version of that story is sitting on the No. 1 overall seed.
Entering 2026, only five franchises had never won a World Series: the Rockies, Brewers, Padres, Mariners and Rays. Three of them made this field. The Brewers won 103 games and the NL Central. The Padres and Cubs grabbed wild-card spots, and San Diego remains the oldest team in the sport still waiting on a first trophy. The Rays held off the Yankees to win the AL East. Any of the three ending it would be a genuinely good night for baseball.
Milwaukee is the one to build your October around. It's the best team in baseball by record, the top seed all the way through, and its entire World Series history is one appearance, in 1982, back when it played in the American League, a seven-game loss to the Cardinals. That's the whole ledger. Last fall the Dodgers swept the Brewers out of the NLCS in four. If you've spent this year hoping the Dodgers don't waltz to another title, the team that got humiliated by them a round short is right there.
Plenty of people are lining up behind the White Sox, and it's easy to see why: three straight 100-loss seasons, then a run back to the postseason. It's a great turnaround story. Chicago has already won three World Series, the last in 2005, when they swept the Astros, so this isn't a first-title chase. A team with a trophy this century carries different stakes than a franchise with none. Enjoy the White Sox. Just don't confuse a comeback with a coronation.
Same problem with the Cleveland crowd. The Guardians own the longest active title drought in the sport, all the way back to 1948, and nostalgia is a perfectly human reason to want it to end. But Cleveland has hoisted the thing. Twice, actually. There's a difference between waiting a very long time and never getting there at all, and if we're handing out the sport's biggest prize as an act of mercy, mercy should go to the fans who have received exactly nothing.
The never-won angle carries real weight right now because the list keeps shrinking. In 2023 the Rangers won their first title in franchise history, dropping the number of ringless teams from six to five. It can happen. It just did. Whichever of these five breaks through next gets the night Texas had: a city told for decades to wait, finally not having to.
The Padres would be a fine ending, and so would the Rays. But the Brewers are the best team in the bracket and the emptiest trophy case in it, and those two things almost never line up. Milwaukee doesn't need your pity vote to survive to the World Series. It needs your voice once it gets there. Give it to them.
