A Major League Baseball season is a mammoth affair of 162 matches as teams criss-cross North America in search of enough victories to claim a place in the post-season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even the best teams lose a significant number of matches during the campaign, but sometimes they get on a roll and appear unstoppable and here are the top five longest winning streaks in MLB history.<\/p>\n\n\n
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Filmgoers will perhaps be familiar with the story of the 2002 Oakland A’s as their 20-match winning run was featured in the movie Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt as general manager Billy Beane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bay Area franchise were forced into recruiting uncut diamonds based on statistical information to try and battle it out with the big spenders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The A’s had a record of 68-51 when their streak started with a 5-4 win over the Toronto Blue Jays on 13th August and they stormed to the top of the American League West, despite a scare in their 20th match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They surrendered an 11-0 lead against the Kansas City Royals, but just got over the line with a Scott Hatteberg home run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They went on to claim the division with 103 wins, but any World Series hopes were dashed by a best-of-five defeat to the Minnesota Twins, who were also the team who ended the streak on 6th September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Providence Grays and St Louis Maroons had also collected 20 wins in 1884, but the Chicago White Stockings had gone one better four years earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their run came 23 years before the first World Series, but they were undoubtedly the strongest team in the National League, winning the title with a record of 67-17, which was 15 wins better than their nearest rivals, the Grays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their run started with a 5-4 win over the Boston Braves on 2nd June and ended when they lost 2-0 against the Cleveland Blues on 10th July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
The Chicago Cubs won 100 games in the National League in 1935 as they matched the record of their rivals from across the Windy City from 55 years earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their streak started with a 8-2 win over the Philadelphia Phillies on 4th September and went on until they suffered an 11th-innings loss to the St Louis Cardinals, who had won the World Series the year before and were pipped to the NL title by four wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Cubs made it through to the World Series themselves, but fell to a six-match loss to the Detroit Tigers, the fifth time they had lost in the showdown since 1908.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It would take until 2016 before they finally got their hands on the biggest prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The longest winning run in American League history came in 2017 as the Cleveland Indians won 22 consecutive matches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They were in dominant mood as the average winning margin was 4.77 and in nine of their matches, they won by a distance of five runs or more and, incredibly, in a 198-innings run, they trailed in just eight of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The run also included 15 wins in 14 days and they won the American League Central by 17 matches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their streak started with a 13-6 win over the Boston Red Sox on 24th August and was ended by a 4-3 loss to the Kansas City Royals on 15th September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They qualified as the number-one seeds in the AL, but their interest was ended by the New York Yankees in the Divisional round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
The longest ever streak without a loss was posted by the New York Giants in 2016, although there is some controversy as the run included a tie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a remarkable season for the Giants as they started the season by winning just two of their opening 15 matches, but then went on a 17-game winning run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, during their record run that started on 7th September with a win over the Brooklyn Robins, the Giants did have a 1-1 tie with the Pittsburgh Pirates that was rained out after nine innings and then started again as part of a double-header the following day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The streak ended win an 8-3 defeat to the Boston Braces just 23 days later, but remarkably, they were only able to finish fourth in the National League, posting an 86-66 record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Major League Baseball season is a mammoth affair of 162 matches as teams criss-cross North America in search of enough victories to claim a place in the post-season. Even the best teams lose a significant number of matches during the campaign, but sometimes they get on a roll and appear unstoppable and here are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":39465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baseball"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n