NEW YORK — When the Milwaukee defeated the mighty, monied Los Angeles Dodgers on Thursday night, they set up the first World Series between two of baseball’s smallest spenders in 35 years — just as team owners are arguing that clubs like the Brewers need a salary cap to compete consistently.
Milwaukee will face Cleveland or Tampa Bay in a best-of-seven series for the title beginning Oct. 23, ensuring two clubs in the bottom half of big league payrolls will play in the World Series for the first time since 1991. The Dodgers, New York Mets and New York Yankees will watch from home with payrolls this season that each cost more than the Brewers’, Guardians’ and Rays’ rosters combined.
The low-budget World Series showdown will start six weeks before a likely management lockout, a work stoppage that threatens the 2027 season as owners and players battle over the sport’s lack of a salary cap.
Speaking at the All-Star Game in July, baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred made his case for a cap while saying exceptions did not reflect parity.
“Our view of the world is that over a very long period of time there’s a very strong relationship between who gets into the playoffs and who proceeds, notwithstanding the exceptions we’ve got,” he said.
Milwaukee, which won the NL pennant with a four-game sweep of the Dodgers, had MLB’s 19th-highest payroll as of Aug. 31, while Tampa Bay was 25th and Cleveland 30th. The last time both pennant winners were among the bottom 50% in player spending was when Minnesota (15th among 26 teams) beat Atlanta (19th) for the 1991 championship.
In terms of market size, Milwaukee ranks as MLB’s 30th and smallest Designated Market Area, defined by Nielsen as non-overlapping geographic regions that group counties based on television viewing areas. Cleveland is 22nd and Tampa Bay 15th.
If the Guardians win the AL pennant, this would mark the first World Series involving two teams in the bottom half of MLB cities by DMA since St. Louis (24th) beat Detroit (18th) in 2006. No small-market team has won the World Series since Kansas City in 2015.
Three years after the Twins won that 1991 title, players went on strike as owners pushed for a salary cap, leading to the cancellation of the World Series. No such cap was added, and owners hadn’t proposed one again until this summer.
Since the 1991 Twins, the only World Series winners with bottom-half payrolls have been the 2002 Anaheim Angels, 2003 Florida Marlins and 2017 Houston Astros.
“It’s how the game is played in the moment dictates winning outcomes,” agent Scott Boras said Friday. “There’s no question that the probabilities of winning, success, are increased with greater talent, but we all know that talent has many variables as to how it performs at times.”
MLB owners have proposed a salary cap with a floor, a system players say they will never accept. A lockout is likely to start Dec. 2.
Opening-day payrolls were topped by the Mets ($358.4 million), Dodgers ($323.3 million) and Yankees ($302.8 million). The Brewers were at $125.9 million, the Rays $90.5 million and the Guardians $75.5 million.
“Don’t believe what you hear from the owner who’s complaining: ‘I don’t have the resources to compete,’” players’ association head Bruce Meyer said at the All-Star Game. “They all have the resources to compete. Our proposals include provisions that would give them more resources and reward the teams that actually do compete.”
Manfred maintains spending big increases the odds of success.
“It defies human experience to ask a fan to think that the bottom end of that gap has the same opportunity to win as the top,” he said. “There is no question that everybody in any sport is not going to win once every 30 or 32 years depending on how many teams you have, but the data in our sport is stark: Your opportunity to make the playoffs if you are a larger-market team is dramatically higher and your opportunity to proceed to the subsequent rounds, that advantage grows with each round.”
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