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The Texas Longhorns made an addition to the 2027 roster on Tuesday when Houston Memorial right-hander Grant Sperandio announced his re-classification.

The 6’2, 210-pounder will enroll in January and play for the Longhorns next season. Sperandio originally committed to the Longhorns three years ago.

Considered one of the top right-handed pitchers in the country, Sperandio has a chance to factor into Max Weiner’s pitching rotation next season because he has a power arm with a fastball that reaches 97 miles per hour and high spin-rate secondary pitches — a curveball and a slider — that he can throw for strikes, including three different types of fastballs he can manipulate in the zone thanks to a three-quarter arm slot.

The World Series is upon us, and this one should be a delight: The team with the best record in the National League, the Milwaukee Brewers, against the team with the best record in the American League, the Tampa Bay Rays.

The players are about to take baseball’s grandest stage. Yet this has somehow become a strange national obsession: not how Jacob Misiorowski or Junior Caminero might shine in the series, but how many people might watch it.

Should you care? Not really. Have you ever thought about watching a World Series game and thought, “Hmmm, let me consider what the ratings might be before I decide to tune in?”

Major League Baseball cares, of course, because its owners count on billions of dollars from the sale of television rights, and those rights are worth more money when more people watch the games. And, since the fog of a collective bargaining war has enveloped the sport, the ratings make for an intriguing subplot in the World Series.

Read more:Rays defeat Guardians in ALCS, will face Brewers in World Series

This World Series is what owners say they want: less of, say, the Dodgers and the New York Yankees, more of teams from smaller markets that seldom advance through the playoffs, if they even get there. Neither the Brewers nor the Rays have won a World Series.

Yet the ratings for the Dodgers-Yankees World Series in 2024 almost doubled those for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers in 2023, and this year’s ratings should be much closer to 2023 than 2024.

So, in a sport that already generates the majority of its broadcast revenue in national rather than local packages, amid the collapse of regional sports networks, are the owners taking a risk of making less money on the World Series?

Fox currently airs the World Series as the jewel of a seven-year, $5.1-billion deal that expires in 2028.

Ed Desser, a Santa Monica-based consultant who launched NBA TV and helped negotiate the Dodgers’ record SportsNet LA deal, said the value of a World Series featuring teams such as the Dodgers and Yankees goes beyond the large audiences they command because they play in large markets.

“It’s commonplace for people to hate the Dodgers, hate the Yankees — and, to some extent, that’s good for business, because it’s another rooting interest. Anything that gets people to focus their attention is good,” Desser said. “It’s easy to hate a team that’s in a glamorous place and spends more than almost anybody.

“I’m not sure that anybody has an ax to grind against the Rays or the Brewers. Sports is about passion.”

That said, neither Desser nor Bob Thompson, the former president of Fox Sports Networks, believes MLB is setting itself up for a big fall in revenue from the Fall Classic.

For Fox — and whatever other bidders might emerge come 2028 — ratings would be important, but not as much as you might think.

“Does expected audience matter? Of course,” Desser said. “They’re in the media business, and the way you monetize is by selling subscriptions to your channel and selling advertising.

Read more:Shaikin: Questions about Shohei Ohtani's health, a salary cap and Mark Walter loom for Dodgers

“But, typically, you’re taking a much longer viewpoint. You’re making a deal that might be five, eight, 12 years. When you do that, you have an expectation that some teams get better, some teams get worse, sometimes you get a large market, sometimes you get a small market. It kind of evens out.”

This is the fifth season of the current Fox contract. The 10 World Series berths have been spread among nine teams, with the Dodgers appearing twice.

To a broadcast outlet, Thompson said, financial success in the World Series is not just about ratings.

“It’s about how good the matchup is and how long the matchup goes. The bulk of the advertising is sold up front (before we know the teams),” Thompson said. “Ratings for the series aren’t going to be a huge deal, unless you’re selling time in, say, Game 6 and Game 7, where you can really be jacking your rates.”

Last year’s Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series extended to seven games, attracting viewers amid a dramatic finish and ultimately getting a higher rating than the 2024 Dodgers-Yankees series, even though Canadian viewers weren’t included in that Nielsen count. The Dodgers-Yankees series lasted five games, and the Dodgers beat up on the Yankees when the Yankees weren’t beating themselves.

Even if the World Series itself might be worth less with more lower-profile teams competing, Thompson said MLB could include it as part of a larger package, or dangle it as an incentive for streaming outlets or other new bidders.

He also noted that the latest MLB collective bargaining proposal calls for fewer regular-season games and more postseason games.

“Playoffs are going to get you a premium over regular-season games,” Thompson said.

And, to the extent that postseason ratings might be in decline, ratings for everything — sporting events, awards shows, news shows, dramas, comedies, you name it — are in decline. Only the NFL is immune to lower ratings.

“Big events matter more than they used to, even with smaller audiences,” Desser said. “The World Series is still a big event, and there is a premium for that.”

Read more:Shaikin: How the playoffs might impact the lockout, and ... unfair to the Yankees? What?

The three most-watched shows on broadcast television in the week of Oct. 5-11, according to Nielsen: Sunday Night Football (Atlanta Falcons vs. Baltimore Ravens) with 17 million viewers; SEC Football (Alabama vs. Georgia) with 12 million viewers; NLCS Game 1 (Dodgers vs. Brewers) with 11 million viewers.

The top entertainment show that week: Tracker (CBS), with 7.4 million viewers.

The owners will make their money on the World Series, one way or another.

“Even at a lower expectation for audience, there is still going to be that value,” Desser said. “It’s one of the biggest things happening in October.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

As you no doubt know by now, the World Series beginning Friday in Milwaukee between the Brewers and Rays is the first World Series involving two teams that had never won it before since 1980, when the Royals and Phillies met. That one was won by the Phillies, four games to two, and that franchise had been around for nearly a century (starting in 1883) before winning. They’d won only two National League pennants before 1980, in 1915 (losing the World Series to the Red Sox) and 1950 (losing to the Yankees). The 1980 Royals, meanwhile, were in just their 12th season and had posted seven winning seasons in those 12 years. (Comparison point: From 1969-80 the Cubs had just four winning seasons.)

This World Series isn’t exactly that one, but we do have one team (Milwaukee) that’s won only one pennant previous to this year in its 58 years of existence (1982, when they lost the World Series to the Cardinals as an AL team). The Rays have been in two World Series, losing both (2008 to the Phillies and 2020 to the Dodgers). Both these teams have had multiple postseason appearances over the last decade, eight for Milwaukee and six for Tampa Bay.

Both these teams have been described as “small market” teams. Let’s examine that for a moment. The Brewers do, in fact, inhabit the smallest TV market in Major League Baseball (TV market size generally being the benchmark for such things). This ranking of TV markets shows Milwaukee as No. 38, smallest in MLB. (That will change two years from now when Las Vegas, No. 40, joins MLB.)

But notice another thing about that ranking. Where do you find Tampa-St. Petersburg? No. 11. That’s right, the TV market of the Rays is nearly a Top 10 market, just below the San Francisco Bay Area and just ahead of Phoenix.

So why are the Rays a “small market” team? Likely this comes from their payroll spending, which has been among the lowest in MLB for quite some time. This year, per Spotrac, the Rays’ cash payroll ranks 28th (the Brewers, incidentally, are 18th).

Why is this happening? Most likely, because of the location of their stadium:

The vast majority of the people who live in the Tampa Bay area live east of the bay, in Tampa and its suburbs. Now look how difficult it is to get to the Trop from there. Three bridges, and during rush hour? Forget it. I have been there twice and stayed in St. Petersburg and it’s still hard to get to. Here’s what I wrote about my first visit there in 2017.

The Rays were recently sold and they are finally going to get a new stadium built. It will be in Tampa, near the Raymond James Stadium where the NFL’s Buccaneers play. This, plus their World Series appearance, should help Rays attendance jump significantly. They could almost immediately become a “big market” team.

So if anyone tells you that this matchup will have any effect on the labor negotiations that will follow, you can tell that person that they’re wrong. Nothing that happens in the World Series is going to change ownership’s desire for a salary cap. That is being asked for not for “competitive balance,” as has been stated by some including Commissioner Rob Manfred, but to increase team profit and thus, team valuations.

I seem to have strayed from the baseball aspect of the World Series here, a bit, so let me say that we have a matchup of the teams with the best record in each league since all the way back in … 2024, when the Dodgers and Yankees met. Just the year before, the 84-win Diamondbacks (who swept the 101-win Dodgers in a division series) and 90-win Rangers (who swept the 101-win Orioles in a division series) were the World Series opponents. In my view, the postseason really is random. This year it went in fairly predictable fashion. Other years, it doesn’t.

These teams played very early this year in Milwaukee at the end of March, with the Brewers taking two of three. I doubt that has much predictive value for the World Series.

As far as who I’m rooting for? I don’t think you have to take more than one guess. I respect what the Brewers have accomplished, but I can’t root for them to win. Go Rays, and let’s make this a seven-game series, because, well, more baseball is always good and after this World Series ends, we don’t know when we’ll next see MLB players on the field.

Shohei Ohtani memorabilia is still fetching eye-watering numbers even after his disappointing 2026 postseason.

A jersey the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar wore in 2025 just sold for $2,055,700 on The Realest’s auction block.

Officials who oversaw the sale said in a statement this week the hefty price tag set a public auction record for a 21st century game-used baseball jersey, topping the $1.792 million that New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge’s MLB debut uniform previously netted.

Ohtani donned the jersey on March 18, 2025 during Los Angeles’ Tokyo Series matchup against the Chicago Cubs at the Tokyo Dome in Japan.

It featured the first-ever Gold MLB Logoman patch, and Ohtani later signed it. He also wrote inscriptions on it that commemorated the date of the game and his 2025 National League MVP award.

Ohtani went on to have huge seasons in ’25 and ’26, though he had a forgettable run for the Dodgers during their playoff run this month.

The designated hitter batted .192 in eight games while dealing with several injuries. He also recorded just one home run and only three RBIs.

Nonetheless, the market for his items is still clearly as hot as ever — something The Realest founder and CEO Scott Keeney noted in the days after the record-breaking sale of the Ohtani jersey.

“The greatest collectibles are the ones that capture moments that can never be recreated, and this jersey represents exactly that,” Keeney said. “Ohtani is redefining what’s possible in the collectibles market, and the global response to this jersey reinforces just how significant these historic artifacts have become.”