The Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers are meeting in the Fall Classic despite their low payrolls. It’s a matchup that runs counter to MLB’s never ending quest to bring a salary cap to baseball.
As I write this the Brewers are up in the Series and are one game away from winning the title. That does not change the fact that those who run the game have spent all year trying to convince fans that a World Series like this one was all but impossible. They continually state that baseball is a sport where money determines the outcome on the field, maintaining that low-revenue franchises like the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays could never be the last two standing.
The Brewers and Rays proved them wrong. The Rays have baseball’s fourth-lowest payroll. The Brewers reside in MLB’s smallest media market and have the 19th highest payroll. Now one of them is about to be crowned champion, while the likes of the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees watch on TV.
Still, a Fall Classic of lower paid guys won’t prevent baseball’s impending labor lockout. MLB officials contend that the current economic system is broken and that this Brewers-Rays showdown is an exception to long established trends that favor wealthier organizations. A lockout that threatens the 2027 season is all but inevitable.
The rise of Milwaukee and Tampa Bay has made MLB’s argument a bit trickier. The Brewers just swept the Dodgers out of the playoffs. The Rays dispatched the Yankees earlier this month. The Dodgers and Yankees together spent half a billion more in payroll than the teams that beat them.
In other words, a large budget does not guarantee success—just ask the New York Mets.
That doesn’t mean the Brewers and Rays are flukes. Their ingenuity, intelligence, and creativity are the envy of the sport.
Milwaukee has qualified for the postseason in eight of the past nine seasons. The Rays have won more regular-season games since 2008 than anybody other than the Dodgers and Yankees.
This season has been their finest work yet. The Brewers finished with the best record in baseball at 103-59. The Rays were the top seed in the American League, at 98-64.
It is not a secret that the Brewers and Rays reached this point by using their smaller budgets to look for edges on the margins, resulting in rosters that look like they were chosen out of another era.
Actually, both play the game out of another era. Fundamentals over home runs and strikeouts. Milwaukee and Tampa Bay led MLB in batting average. The Rays struck out less than anybody, paced the AL in stolen bases and bunted more than any team in a decade. The Brewers, meanwhile, are the first team since 1960 to rank in the top three in runs despite being in the bottom three in home runs.
I maintain that it is baseball at its purest.
And now, as baseball gears up for the fight that will determine its future, the Rays and Brewers have proven that the little guys can win, even without a salary cap.
