Sports

The Dodgers spent $338 million. Two cheaper teams made the World Series

The Rays and Brewers open the World Series on Friday, and neither has ever won it. Together they spent less than the Dodgers team Milwaukee swept.

Published

13 hours ago

October 21, 2026

Massih Shahbazi

A baseball on a field under stadium lights, in black and white, next to the headline A first-time champion, guaranteed

The Los Angeles Dodgers spent about $338 million on players this season, according to ESPN’s Joon Lee. They went home in four straight games.

The team that swept them, the Milwaukee Brewers, now opens the World Series on Friday night against the Tampa Bay Rays, and the matchup comes with a rare guarantee: neither franchise has ever won it all, ESPN noted. By Halloween at the latest, baseball will crown a first-time champion, and it will be a team that spent a fraction of what the sport’s superpower did.

Two small markets, one very big trophy

The road here wasn’t gentle for either side. The Brewers swept the two-time defending champion Dodgers in the National League Championship Series, and the Rays came back from a 2-1 series deficit to beat Cleveland in six games, ESPN reported. Both were top seeds: the Brewers won 103 games this season, the Rays 98.

Game 1 is Friday, Oct. 23, at American Family Field in Milwaukee, with first pitch at 8 p.m. ET. Drew Rasmussen is expected to start for Tampa Bay and Jacob Misiorowski for Milwaukee, according to ESPN. If the series goes the distance, Game 7 would land on Oct. 31, CBS Sports reported.

Follow the payroll

Put the two payrolls side by side and the story writes itself. The Rays ranked 28th in baseball at about $95.6 million and the Brewers 19th at about $146.2 million, by Spotrac’s count, Yahoo Sports reported. Add them together and the two World Series teams combined still spent less than seven other clubs did on their own.

The team Milwaukee swept, meanwhile, spent more than both finalists put together. Lee’s math went even further: the Dodgers’ payroll topped the combined payrolls of the other three teams in the final four, the Brewers, the Rays and Cleveland.

That matters off the field too. ESPN’s Jeff Passan argued that this year’s final four says a lot about baseball’s looming labor fight, where the gap between the richest teams and everyone else sits at the center of the argument. A World Series between two low-payroll clubs hands ammunition to anyone who says the system already lets smaller markets win, and an awkward October to anyone arguing that money decides everything.

The fairer read is that money buys you a seat at the table. It doesn’t buy you the last hand.

Forty-four years of waiting

For Milwaukee, this run carries history. The Brewers won the first National League pennant in franchise history this year, and their only other pennant came in 1982, when they were still an American League team and lost the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games, Sports Illustrated reported. That’s 44 years between World Series games for a fan base that has watched bigger cities spend past them for most of that stretch.

Tampa Bay is chasing its first title on its third American League pennant, SI reported. For a franchise that has spent years being held up as the model of doing more with less, there’s a certain pressure in finally getting to prove the model can finish the job.

Where the edges are

On paper this is a coin flip with a slight lean. Milwaukee is favored at about -160 to win the series, with Tampa Bay at +140, ESPN’s betting desk listed. CBS Sports’ panel of experts leans Brewers in six, according to its picks.

The case for Milwaukee starts in the late innings. Analysts see the Brewers’ bullpen as their clearest advantage, and they also have more depth through the lineup, Yahoo Sports reported. The case for Tampa Bay is power: the Rays have more of it in the lineup, and their starting rotation is considered a real strength. Both teams have been stingy in October, with the Brewers leading all playoff teams in OPS allowed on balls in play and the Rays fourth, Yahoo Sports reported.

Translated out of stat-speak, these are two teams that don’t give away much. Expect close games, a lot of bullpen traffic and managers who will pull a starter one batter earlier than the TV crew thinks they should.

What the champagne will say

There’s a version of this World Series that the league’s marketing department didn’t draw up: no Dodgers, no Yankees, no coastal megamarket, just two teams plenty of casual fans couldn’t name three players from. That’s a fair worry for ratings. It’s a terrible argument against the baseball.

Because whoever wins, the celebration will mean something the big-budget version can’t. In Milwaukee, it would end a wait that started before most of the current roster was born. In Tampa Bay, it would put a ring on a franchise that has been told for years that smart isn’t enough without money.

The Dodgers spent $338 million to make sure they’d be here. Two teams that spent less than that combined are the ones who showed up. Starting Friday, one of them gets to find out what a first title tastes like.