With the second quarter of the 21st century ready to crown another baseball king, USA TODAY Sports ranks the 25 World Series champions from least-accomplished to the very best:

The Los Angeles Dodgers earned back-to-back World Series appearances in 2024 and 2025. Check out other fun facts from World Series history now.

We've ranked the World Series champions since 2000, as well as the best runners-up since the start of the century. But let's dive a bit deeper into the well and look at the 10 best teams of the past 25 years who didn't reach the World Series.

On Saturday night, the Los Angeles Dodgers won Game 2 to even up 1-0 their World Series matchup against the Toronto Blue Jays. Yoshinobu Yamamoto put on a pitching clinic, throwing a complete game on just 105 pitches and retiring the last 20 batters he faced in the contest.

Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Addison Barger has potentially put Game 1 of the 2025 World Series out of reach for the defending champions.

More than 55,000 fans packed Shea Stadium on October 26, 2000, for the fifth game of the World Series. The “hometown” Mets trailed the reigning, defending, undisputed two-time World Series champion Yankees three games to one.