For fans of the underdog, this is the World Series for you. The Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, New York Mets and all of baseball’s other biggest spenders have fallen by the wayside, leaving the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays as the last two teams standing.
Two of the sport’s more unfashionable franchises are both trying to win the World Series for the very first time and not since 1980, when the Philadelphia Phillies beat the Kansas City Royals, has such a match-up occurred.
It means that by the time 2026 Fall Classic completes its best-of-seven series next weekend, there will only be four of MLB’s 30 franchises never to have hoisted the Commissioner’s Trophy aloft. The Seattle Mariners – who are the only team never to have even played in a World Series – Colorado Rockies, San Diego Padres and this year’s losers will make up the unfortunate quartet.
This year’s clash makes a refreshing change in a sport where money usually talks, as evidenced by the Dodgers – with the highest payroll in the MLB – winning back-to-back titles and seeming destined to become the first team to pull off a three-peat since the 1998-2000 Yankees until they ran into Milwaukee-shaped juggernaut in the National League Championship Series, and were swept 4-0,
Milwaukee, a city of fewer than 600,000 people in the rural state of Wisconsin, is MLB’s smallest media market and the Brewers rank 19th when it comes to payroll. Remarkably, the Rays are 28th in payroll, with only the Cleveland Guardians – who they beat in the American League Championship Series – and the Miami Marlins spending less on salary. The two World Series participants have a combined payroll of barely over half that of the Dodgers and not since 1991 have both pennant winners been among the bottom 50 per cent of the league in player spending.
They are two analytically-driven franchises punching above their weight thanks to smart management and superb player scouting. So while in one respect this is a surprise World Series match-up, in another it very much isn’t. They both had the best regular-season record in their respective leagues (Brewers with 103 wins in the NL, Rays with 98 wins in the AL) as they were able to maintain their excellence over MLB’s bloated 162-game campaign.
And while they might not be able to overpay in order to acquire other teams’ best talent, they have done a remarkable job at developing their own.
The Brewers boast the best pitcher in baseball in the form of flame-throwing phenom Jacob Misiorowski, who can reach 105mph with his fastball, is a shoo-in for the NL Cy Young award and will start Game 1 of the World Series on Friday evening, and superstar 22-year-old Venezuelan outfielder Jackson Chourio.
Meanwhile, the Rays have the likes of AL MVP candidate Junior Caminero as a hard-hitting third baseman, lights-out closer Bryan Baker and stolen base machine Chandler Simpson.
This promises to be a fascinating edition of the Fall Classic although without a traditional big-name franchise in the mix, there is a legitimate fear it may struggle to attract the casual sports fan and could rival the 2023 edition, when the Texas Rangers beat the Arizona Diamondbacks in five games, as the least-watched World Series on record. Let’s hope not as these two teams deserve to have the eyes of the US on them over the next 10 days or so.
However, even if it struggles to truly cut through in the crowded sports landscape, this World Series could yet have a huge impact on the very future of baseball.
The current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the players and the league (essentially the contract between the two sides that allows major league baseball to be played) expires on 1 December and there is no new agreement in sight. There will almost certainly be a lockout while the two sides try to hash out a deal and there’s a good chance this delays the start of spring training (baseball’s preseason).
The question then becomes whether the labour dispute will bleed into the time when the 2027 season itself should be starting and mean regular-season games have to be sacrificed. This would ultimately cost both sides money, so they will be keen to avoid it, but the 1972 and 1981 seasons were shortened for this reason, 1994 saw the entire postseason cancelled meaning there was no World Series and the most recent lockout in 2022 caused spring training to be abbreviated and opening day pushed back.
The main sticking point of any potential CBA looks set to be the proposal from Major League Baseball and the team owners to introduce a salary cap. Baseball is the only one of North America’s four major sports without a cap and the owners are keen to bring one in to limit payroll spending and stop runaway contract inflation and bidding wars on players.
They claim it will create a fairer system for all 30 teams and ensure greater competitive balance by not allowing the big-market franchises to simply outspend their opponents and giving the smaller teams a better chance to retain their stars. There would also be a salary floor, which they say will raise wages for the non-superstar players.
By contrast, the players union view the salary cap as a tool to unfairly suppress player compensation and argue that smaller franchises are already capable of beating the big dogs by being smartly run, without the need to artificially reduce spending via an arbitrary cap. They believe the playoffs create enough randomness and competitive parity already and this ‘small-market World Series’ between the Brewers and Rays could hardly have come at a better time from their perspective – weakening the owners’ suggestion that without a cap, only the big-market teams can win.
In response, the league would rightly point to the fact that the last time a small payroll team won before 2026 was the Royals in 2015, meaning this is simply an anomaly.
The owners are proposing a hard salary cap of $245.3m and a salary floor of $171.2m for 2027. If that had been in place this year, only 10 of the 30 MLB teams would have been compliant, with eight franchises coming in above the cap and 12 falling below the salary floor. If this is introduced, it will fundamentally change the face of the sport and a long hard winter of negotiations seems inevitable.
So, enjoy this unusual World Series. Not only is it two brilliant teams going head to head, it might be the last bit of Major League Baseball action for a while. In fact, it might even determine the future of the entire sport.