Baseball is the sport where any team can beat any other on a given day, which is exactly what makes a long winning streak so remarkable. Stringing together 15, 20, or more wins in a row means beating good teams and bad ones, surviving bad bounces, and avoiding the off nights that catch up with everyone over a 162-game season. So what is the longest winning streak in MLB history, and how close has anyone come to it recently?
The all-time record has stood for more than a century, and it comes with a famous asterisk that fans still argue about today. Below it sits a short list of legendary hot streaks, including a couple from the modern era and one that a 2025 club chased deep into the summer.
The chart below ranks the longest winning streaks in modern MLB history, with the team, the year, and the length of each run. Take a look, then we’ll get into the stories behind the numbers.
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The Longest Winning Streak in MLB History
The longest winning streak in MLB history belongs to the 1916 New York Giants, who won 26 consecutive games from September 7 to September 30. It remains the record for the modern era, but it comes with an asterisk that fans have debated for more than a century.
In the middle of the run, on September 18, the Giants played a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates that ended in a 1-1 tie, called because of darkness. Because that tie interrupted the streak, it is sometimes described more precisely as a 26-game unbeaten run rather than 26 straight wins. Either way, the Giants needed 27 games to do it, and no team has matched the mark since.
The Modern Record: 2017 Cleveland
The longest winning streak with no ties at all belongs to the 2017 Cleveland club, which won 22 games in a row from August 24 to September 14. Because there was no interruption, many consider it the cleanest record on the books, and it stands as the American League record outright.
That team was historically dominant during the run, hitting over .300 as a group with a sub-2.00 ERA, trailing in only one of the 22 games for a single half-inning. It serves as a reminder, though, that a September streak does not guarantee October success, as Cleveland was upset in the first round of the playoffs that year.
The Rest of the Top Five
Behind the Giants and Cleveland, the all-time modern list is short and historic. The 1935 Chicago Cubs won 21 in a row down the stretch on their way to the pennant.
The 2002 Oakland Athletics won 20 straight, a streak immortalized in the book and film Moneyball. And the 1947 New York Yankees and 1906 Chicago White Sox share fifth place with 19 wins apiece. Only a handful of teams in over a century have even reached 19, which shows just how rare this kind of run really is.
The Recent Chase
Long streaks still happen, even if the record stays out of reach. In 2025, the Milwaukee Brewers caught fire and won 14 straight, a franchise record, as part of a run that carried them to the best record in baseball. The 2023 Tampa Bay Rays opened their season 13-0, and the 2021 St. Louis Cardinals ripped off 17 in a row, the longest streak in the expansion era since the 2017 Cleveland run. These streaks rarely threaten the Giants’ 26, but they show that the magic of a hot streak is alive in the modern game.
Why 26 Is So Hard to Beat
The reason you do not see 20-game streaks every season comes down to the nature of baseball itself. Even the best teams lose about a third of their games, and the gap between the best and worst clubs is far smaller than in some other sports, where a single superstar can take over.
A pitcher only throws once every five days, so no team can ride one player to a long run of wins. Putting together 20 in a row requires every part of the roster to click at once, for weeks, without a single off night. For a sense of where all these teams play, see our guide to the oldest MLB stadiums.
The Bottom Line
The longest winning streak in MLB history is the 1916 New York Giants’ 26 games, a record that has survived more than a hundred years of baseball, with the 2017 Cleveland club’s 22 standing as the longest unbroken streak. Below them, runs of 19 to 21 wins are the stuff of legend, and even a modern 14-game streak like the 2025 Brewers’ is enough to define a season. In a sport built on the certainty that anyone can win on any day, doing it 20-plus times in a row may be the hardest feat there is.