For Major League Baseball and its broadcast partners, it’s hard to imagine how this World Series matchup could have gone any worse. The Tampa Bay Rays versus the Milwaukee Brewers, two of MLB’s cheapest teams in two of its smallest media markets — glorious evidence against Commissioner Rob Manfred and MLB’s cash-lusting owners’ declaration that the league needs a salary cap to maintain competitive balance. The Rays and Brewers are glorified mom-and-pop shops, and just spent six months sticking it to the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies and Dodgers. They would have also stuck it to MLB’s most expensive team, the New York Mets, had they not finished last in the NL East and missed the playoffs.
Like with the recent Indiana Pacers/Oklahoma City Thunder NBA Finals, market sizes will probably make this one of the least-viewed Fall Classics in recent years. But from a baseball perspective? This is the kind of World Series that us sickos dream about — we got random speculative developmental centerfielders finally tapping their raw power, bunts for days, relievers you’ve never heard of with special beam cannons for arms, Jake Bauers unlocking the secrets of the universe at age 31 … for some reason. It’s just every kind of epic, even if I don’t care for bunts.
It’s also the perfect summation of the 2026 season, with the American and National League top seeds throwing down as they should and fittingly getting their moment in the sun during a season in which nobody (myself included) would shut up about Tarik Skubal, the Dodgers three-peating and the incoming lockout. All the while, the Brewers and Rays just kept winning.
I don’t actually like postseason baseball — enjoy it? Sure, it’s often exciting, but I don’t actually like it as a representation of the season we just played when more often than not we have teams like the Brewers and Rays grind for 103 and 98 wins for months only to have their work disappear before they get a chance to face each other. I was open about my skepticism of the Rays, and did not think that their rotation would be this good with Freddy Peralta, but both teams have put in the work all season; I’m glad the two best teams made it here.
They did so with remarkably similar roster constructions — high contact, occasional but not relied-upon power and washout pitching that overwhelms every aspect of their opponent’s offensive gameplan. I’m still a home run enjoyer, but balls-in-play cabal is growing more powerful by the day, and I acknowledge that the Rays and Brewers have managed to mitigate an unbridgeable talent deficit by maximizing the value and minimizing the risk of each batted ball. As I explored in my bunt video, the Rays somehow got the run value of their bunts above that of their non-bunts, which is super-duper irregular.
It’s not like the Rays and Brewers won their league championships with bunts and sac flys, though. Ask the Dodgers about the back-to-back sonic booms in Game 4 that effectively ended their season; timely hitting has always been more important than repeatable hitting, and timely hitting is not repeatable. In the MLB postseason, you can’t believe how much better it is to be lucky than good.
Because of spending and talent pool limitations, both teams simply invested in what they could control: getting balls on the ground … and pitching. Pitching, pitching, pitching … and more pitching. For such cheap teams, these are gnarly staffs, each with a top-10 rotation and bullpen. The Brewers pen in particular have been downright otherworldly this postseason, with Aaron Ashby levitating out of his cleats and Abner Uribe frying hitters like turkey bacon. Both closers, Bryan Baker and Trevor Megill, are all world.
Then you have the starters, with the Rays leaning on a couple of former Brewers products — Drew Rasmussen and Freddy Peralta — while the Brewers rely on … a couple of other Brewers products in Jacob Misiorowski and Logan Henderson. Behind Misiorowski, the Brewers starters can get a little dicey with Brandon Woodruff’s status still up in the air, with Henderson in particular losing his mind in Game 2 against the Dodgers on two disastrous fielding errors; Dustin May and Robert Gasser make up the rest of the official four-man rotation. But it’s not like the Rays are infallible either with Nick Martinez and Griffin Jax.
Okay, that’s probably enough naming guys; who is going to win? Short, slightly snippy answer: someone new, because fun fact: neither of these teams has ever won the World Series. So that’s cool! Short, less snippy answer: the Brewers, and let’s say in six games. Milwaukee is a slight favorite on FanDuel, and my pick is for a few reasons. First, I think the Brewers have a better overall offense when we get down to brass tax. The Rays might actually have the two “best” (or at least the most complete) hitters in the series in Junior Caminero and Yandy Diaz, but the rest of their lineup has so many exploitable holes. The Brewers just spent a week showing the Dodgers there’s nowhere to pitch around … for Tarik Skubal, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Blake Snell. Will the hot streak continue? I don’t know, but if it does, god bless Nick Martinez.
Baseball is stupidly, frustratingly random, and so you have to ask yourself: how do you fight that randomness? Well, you fight it with swing-and-miss stuff, which the Brewers have in droves out of their bullpen and it’s the one thing that I am willing to invest in when projecting such an even series. When push comes to shove, and push always comes, the Brewers have the arms to deal with it. It was their win condition last year, it’s their win condition this year. You saw what happened to an even slightly diminished Dodgers offense when they faced this bullpen — horrible things.
So give me the Brewers in six, though I would certainly love seven games. I would have no problem with the Rays winning even being a Red Sox fan, I don’t think our two teams have any real historical animosity even though we’re both in the AL East. But one thing before we go: Tropicana Field remains an absolute abomination to the sport of baseball and is one of the least attractive buildings on planet earth. No venue has ever created less hype for a sporting event period, and I’d certainly like if the Rays explored other options for future World Series engagements beyond The Trop. Thanks, and have a nice day.