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Each season, a National League team wins the league's pennant, signifying that they are its champion and they win the right to play in the World Series against the champion of the American League. In addition to the pennant, the team that wins the National League playoffs receives the Warren C. Giles Trophy, named after Warren Giles, who was the league president from 1951 to 1969. Warren's son Bill Giles, the honorary league president and owner of the Philadelphia Phillies, presents the trophy to the National League champion at the conclusion of each National League Championship Series (NLCS). The current National League pennant winners are the Chicago Cubs, who won their 17th NL pennant in October 2016.
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For most of the history of the National League (94 years), the pennant was presented to the team with the best win–loss record at the end of the season. The first modern World Series was played in 1903, and after a hiatus in 1904, continued until 1994, when a players' strike forced the cancellation of the postseason, and resumed in 1995. In 1969, the league split into two divisions, and the teams with the best records in each division played one another in the NLCS to determine the pennant winner. The format of the NLCS was changed from a best-of-five to a best-of-seven format for the 1985 postseason. In 1995, an additional playoff series was added when Major League Baseball restructured the two divisions in each league into three. As of 2010, the winners of the Eastern, Central, and Western Divisions, as well as one wild card team, play in the National League Division Series, a best-of-five playoff to determine the opponents who will play for the pennant.
By pennants, the San Francisco Giants (formerly the New York Giants) (22 National League pennants, 28 playoff appearances) are the winningest team in the National League. The Los Angeles Dodgers (formerly the Brooklyn Dodgers; 21 pennants, 27 playoff appearances). have the second-most. In third place is the St. Louis Cardinals (19 pennants and 27 playoff appearances), followed by the Atlanta Braves (17 pennants and 23 postseason appearances between their three home cities of Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Boston) and the Chicago Cubs (17 pennants and 20 playoff appearances [as the Cubs and White Stockings]). The Philadelphia Phillies won the league in back-to-back seasons in 2008 and 2009, becoming the first National League team to do so since the Braves in 1995 and 1996. Before 1903 there was no World Series as we know it today because the leagues were only loosely affiliated. As of 2014, the San Francisco Giants have the most World Series appearances at 20, followed by the St. Louis Cardinals with 19 and the Los Angeles Dodgers with 18.
The team with the best record to win the National League pennant was the 1906 Cubs, who won 116 of 152 games during that season and finished 20 games ahead of the Giants, playing in New York at the time. The best record by a pennant-winner in the Championship Series era is 108–54, which was achieved by the Cincinnati Reds in 1975 and the New York Mets in 1986; both of these teams went on to win the World Series.
National League champions have gone on to win the World Series 48 times, most recently in 2016. Pennant-winners have also won the Temple Cup and the Chronicle-Telegraph Cup, two pre-World Series league championships, although second-place teams won three of the four Temple Cup meetings. The largest margin of victory for a pennant-winner, before the league split into two divisions in 1969, is 27 1⁄2 games; the Pittsburgh Pirates led the Brooklyn Superbas (now the Dodgers) by that margin on the final day of the 1902 season.