We rebuilt all 121 World Series, 707 games from 1903 to 2025, from MLB's Stats API and tracked the series score after every game. That gives the value of every lead, the comebacks, the sweeps and the home team's record in each game from Game 1 to Game 7.
How often the Game 1 winner wins the World Series
Game 1 winners have won 76 Series and lost 44. The rate has been higher lately, 24 of the 31 Series since 1995, or 77 percent, against 52 of 89 from 1903 to 1993, 58 percent, though over 31 Series chance alone could still explain the gap. MLB.com's count through 2023, 23 of 29 since 1995, matches ours. By decade the rate has ranged from 3 of 10 in the 1950s to 8 of 10 in the 1910s, the 2000s and the 2010s.
Where the win comes matters a little. Home teams have won 61 percent of Game 1s, and a team that wins Game 1 at home has gone on to win the Series 45 times in 68, or 66 percent; a road team that takes Game 1 has won 26 of 44, or 59 percent. A round earlier the edge is similar: since 1995, Game 1 winners have won 42 of 62 League Championship Series, 68 percent.
The most recent Game 1 winner to lose the World Series was last year's: the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 11-4 in the opener and lost in seven games. A few features of the early Series shape these counts:
- The Series of 1903, 1919, 1920 and 1921 were best-of-nine, first to five wins. The Game 1 winner won two of the four.
- Three games ended in ties that counted for neither team: Game 1 in 1907 and Game 2 in 1912 and 1922. With its opener tied, the 1907 Series has no Game 1 winner, so the count covers 120 of the 121 Series.
- No World Series was played in 1904 or 1994.
- Four Series were played entirely in one ballpark: 1921 and 1922 at the Polo Grounds, 1944 at Sportsman's Park and 2020 at Globe Life Field. They are left out of every home-field figure.
What a 2-0, 2-1 or 3-2 World Series lead is worth
For each of the 117 best-of-seven Series we recorded every score it passed through and whether the team ahead went on to win. Tied games are skipped, so the score always counts wins.
| Situation | Times | Won the Series | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Won Game 1 | 120 | 76 | 63% |
| Up 2-0 | 55 | 45 | 82% |
| Won Game 1, lost Game 2 | 62 | 30 | 48% |
| Up 3-0 | 25 | 25 | 100% |
| Up 2-1 | 92 | 63 | 68% |
| Up 3-1 | 49 | 43 | 88% |
| Up 3-2 | 68 | 46 | 68% |
A 2-0 lead has held 45 times in 55, and no team has come back from 0-2 since the 1996 New York Yankees against the Atlanta Braves; the 13 teams that have gone up 2-0 since then all won. Ten teams have overcome an 0-2 start in a best-of-seven Series, the first of them the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers.
Leads of 2-1 and 3-2 are worth about the same, 68 percent each. Teams up 3-2 have lost 22 times in 68, most recently the Blue Jays, who led the Dodgers 3-2 last year and lost Games 6 and 7 at home.
World Series 3-1 comebacks, and the 3-0 lead nobody has lost
Teams leading 3-1 have won 43 of 49 World Series, 88 percent. Nine of the teams trailing 3-1 forced a deciding game, and six of them won it:
- 1925: Pittsburgh Pirates over the Washington Senators, Game 7 at home
- 1958: New York Yankees over the Milwaukee Braves (also down 0-2), Game 7 on the road
- 1968: Detroit Tigers over the St. Louis Cardinals, Game 7 on the road
- 1979: Pittsburgh Pirates over the Baltimore Orioles, Game 7 on the road
- 1985: Kansas City Royals over the St. Louis Cardinals (also down 0-2), Game 7 at home
- 2016: Chicago Cubs over the Cleveland Indians, Game 7 on the road
The three that forced a deciding game and lost it were the 1912 New York Giants, the 1967 Boston Red Sox and the 1972 Cincinnati Reds. The 1903 Boston Americans also won after trailing 3-1, but in a best-of-nine Series.
No team has come back from 3-0 down. All 25 teams that led 3-0 won the Series, 21 of them with a sweep; the other four, the 1910 Philadelphia Athletics, the 1937 Yankees, the 1970 Baltimore Orioles and the 2024 Dodgers, lost Game 4 and won Game 5.
World Series sweeps: 21 in all, and none since 2012
Twenty-one of the 117 best-of-seven Series ended in a sweep, 18 percent, including two with a tie along the way: the 1907 Chicago Cubs against the Detroit Tigers and the 1922 New York Giants against the Yankees. If every game were a coin flip, a sweep would come one time in eight, about 15 times in 117.
The Yankees have eight of the sweeps, in 1927, 1928, 1932, 1938, 1939, 1950, 1998 and 1999. The most recent was the 2012 San Francisco Giants' sweep of the Tigers, and the 13 Series since have all lasted at least five games, the longest run without a sweep in World Series history.
The World Series Game 7 home team record: 19-22
Seven games is the most common length: 41 of the 117 best-of-seven Series went the distance, counting 1912, when a tie made an eighth game necessary. If every game were a coin flip, about 37 would have.
Home teams are 19-22 in those 41 winner-take-all games, the same count as MLB.com's history of World Series Game 7s, which includes the 1912 eighth game, won by the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. In the 40 games numbered Game 7 they are 18-22, 45 percent, the lowest share of any game in the Series. Over all games, home teams have won 54 percent, a little more than the 52.8 percent MLB home teams won in the 2026 regular season through mid-September.
Road teams have won the last five Game 7s: the 2014 Giants in Kansas City, the 2016 Cubs in Cleveland, the 2017 Houston Astros in Los Angeles, the 2019 Washington Nationals in Houston and the 2025 Dodgers in Toronto. Five in a row also happened from 1952 to 1958 and from 1965 to 1972, and before the current run home teams had won nine straight, from 1982 to 2011. In 2019 the road team won all seven games, the only World Series in which that happened.
Winning the opener is no help by then. The Game 1 winner has won 16 of the 40 Game 7s, while the team that forced Game 7 by winning Game 6 has won 22.
The 2026 World Series: dates and home field
The 2026 World Series starts on Friday, October 23. Games 1 and 2, on October 23 and 24, and Games 6 and 7, on October 30 and 31 if needed, are at the park of the pennant winner with the better 2026 record; Games 3, 4 and 5 follow on October 26, 27 and 28, the last only if necessary.
The postseason started on Tuesday, September 29, with the Wild Card Series openers. The Chicago White Sox won 6-3 in Houston, and the Yankees (9-0 over the Boston Red Sox), the Braves (5-3 over the Philadelphia Phillies) and the San Diego Padres (8-0 over the Cubs) won at home. In the best-of-three Wild Card Series played since 2022, Game 1 winners have won 15 of 16; the exception was last year's Yankees-Red Sox series, which Boston opened with a win before the Yankees took the next two.
Every series, with its results and the games still to play, is on the 2026 MLB playoff bracket, and the regular season's results are on the MLB schedule. How wild cards have fared once they get to October is in our analysis of wild cards in the World Series, and what the top two seeds gain by skipping the first round is in our look at the MLB playoff bye.
World Series Game 1, comebacks and Game 7: frequently asked questions
How often does the Game 1 winner win the World Series? 76 times in 120, or 63 percent, from 1903 to 2025. Since 1995 the Game 1 winner has won 24 of 31.
How many teams have come back from 3-1 down in the World Series? Six: the 1925 Pittsburgh Pirates, 1958 Yankees, 1968 Detroit Tigers, 1979 Pirates, 1985 Kansas City Royals and 2016 Cubs. No team has come back from 3-0.
What is the home team's record in World Series Game 7s? 19-22, counting the 1912 Series, which was decided in an eighth game after a tie; in the 40 games numbered Game 7, home teams are 18-22. Road teams have won the last five, most recently the 2025 Dodgers in Toronto.
How many World Series sweeps have there been? Twenty-one, two of them with a tied game along the way, most recently the 2012 San Francisco Giants against the Detroit Tigers. The Yankees have eight of them.
When does the 2026 World Series start? On Friday, October 23, at the park of the pennant winner with the better regular-season record. Game 7, if needed, is on October 31.
How this was built: every World Series game from 1903 to 2025, 707 in all, from MLB's Stats API, one request per season, with 1995 to 2025 taken from the API's postseason series. A Series goes to the first team to four wins, five in the best-of-nine Series of 1903 and 1919-1921, and tied games count for neither team. The series-score figures use the 117 best-of-seven Series. Home-field figures use the 112 best-of-seven Series played in two ballparks without a tied game, which leaves out 1907, 1912, 1922, 1944 and 2020. League Championship Series and Wild Card Series figures come from the same API, from 1995 and 2022. The 2026 schedule is from MLB.com and the API as of the morning of September 30, 2026.