MLB’s other low-payroll teams on notice. The Rays and Brewers didn’t spend big to get here.
By KEN ROSENTHAL / THE ATHLETIC
No matter what type of economic system comes out of MLB’s next labor agreement, the low-payroll clubs are officially out of excuses.
The Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays ranked 19th and 27th in luxury tax payroll, yet produced the best regular-season records in their leagues and are now playing in the World Series. They are proof such teams can succeed in a system the league says is broken and untenable. And they are hardly a fluke, as their repeated trips to the postseason have shown.
I’ll say it again: Payroll disparity is a legitimate concern. The labor agreement should be adjusted to put small-market teams on a more level economic playing field. But this bears repeating, too: The coming labor Armageddon is much more about the team owners’ desire to raise their franchise values than it is about competitive balance.
Those who think a salary cap and floor will rescue teams such as the Pittsburgh Pirates and Cincinnati Reds should ask why those teams are not as successful as the Brewers, Rays and Cleveland Guardians in the first place. It is certainly not because they are being outspent by massive amounts.
No, it’s because the Brewers, Rays and Guardians are more innovative, show greater proficiency in scouting and player development, build better cultures and make better decisions. Continuity also is part of it.
Rays manager Kevin Cash, who took over in December 2014, is the game’s longest-tenured manager. Pat Murphy is in only his third season managing the Brewers, but before that was their bench coach for eight years. The coaching staffs and front offices of Milwaukee, Tampa Bay and Cleveland have been relatively stable, too.
Owners of those clubs, while setting limits on their major league payrolls, at least have shown trust in their front offices and given them tools to succeed. The sizes of the Milwaukee, Tampa Bay and Cleveland analytics and scouting staffs are above league average.
Those investments pay off.
Starting in 2005, the year Mark Attanasio became owner of the Brewers, Milwaukee is sixth in regular-season wins and Tampa Bay eighth. The league would point out, in its game of competitive balance “gotcha,” that neither has won a World Series. Nor has Cleveland, which ranks seventh in wins in that span.
Yes, this year’s champion will be the first small-market club to win a Series since the 2015 Kansas City Royals. But that’s a rather narrow measure. The Brewers are making their eighth trip to the postseason in the past nine years, a stretch that includes three appearances in the National League Championship Series. The Rays are making their sixth trip in the past eight years and second World Series appearance in that time. The Guardians just concluded their eighth trip in the last 11 years, a run that included a World Series appearance and two other trips to the American League Championship Series.
Give an elite hitter enough chances in October, and he will eventually succeed. The same can be said of quality teams that frequent the postseason. You know which other club struggled to break through in October? The Los Angeles Dodgers. From 2013-19, they won the National League West seven consecutive times, yet never captured a title.
All of that changed in 2020, and the Dodgers then went through more seasons of postseason heartbreak before winning back-to-back championships in 2024 and 2025.
Now it is either the Brewers’ or Rays’ turn.
One common denominator for both of those clubs, and the Guardians, is that they excel at helping pitchers achieve their maximum potential. Freddy Peralta — a success with the Brewers and Rays but not with one of the game’s highest-payroll teams, the New York Mets — stands as a premier example, twice over.
Big spenders such as the Mets, New York Yankees, Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies surely are exasperated by their inability to keep up with teams operating with much lower payrolls. But let’s talk about the low-payroll teams that are also vexed by Milwaukee, Tampa Bay and Cleveland — teams that, to hear the league tell it, enter each season bereft of hope.
Fans of the Pirates should want to know why a team loaded with pitching talent finished 16th in the regular season in earned run average.
Fans of the Royals should want to know why the club wasted a prime season of a superstar signed long term, Bobby Witt Jr., in part because it fielded one of the league’s worst bullpens.
And fans of the A’s, another team badly in need of pitching upgrades, should want to know how their new president of baseball operations, Taylor Smith, will apply some of the processes he learned while starting out in baseball with the Rays.
We could go on.
The Reds dream of being the Brewers, but their ownership lacks the patience to build properly. The Washington Nationals’ commitments for 2027 are almost $25 million less than those of any other major league team. The Baltimore Orioles initially were successful with their rebuild, but their talented core of position players stalled because of a seeming lack of development at the major league level.
Owners of some of these clubs might view the success of the Brewers, Rays and Guardians as a reason to spend even less, under the theory, “If they can pull it off, why can’t we?” A floor of some kind would help in that regard. Then again, forcing the successful low-payroll clubs to spend to a minimum level might make them even stronger. Before the Dodgers started money-whipping the rest of the league, Andrew Friedman’s small-market sensibilities helped transform them into a perennial power.
No team is perfect. Officials with the Rays, Brewers and Guardians wince at mistakes they have made over the years. The Rays traded Joe Ryan for Nelson Cruz and Cristopher Sánchez for Curtis Mead. The Brewers ended up with William Contreras and Robert Gasser for Josh Hader but wrecked their 2022 club in the process, and just last offseason they made an ill-advised $22.05 million qualifying offer to Brandon Woodruff. The Guardians traded to the Rays two of the players who crushed them in the ALCS, Junior Caminero and Yandy Díaz.
These clubs, though, are not afraid to make difficult, unpopular decisions and often seem to be one step ahead.
Other low-payroll clubs are well run. Two of them, the St. Louis Cardinals and Miami Marlins, are headed by former Rays executives, Chaim Bloom and Peter Bendix. The Nationals, under Paul Toboni, seem to be on the right track. The same can be said of the Colorado Rockies under Paul DePodesta and Josh Byrnes.
Would a cap-and-floor system automatically elevate such teams to perennial threats in October? No. Would it reduce the Dodgers to the level of say, the Arizona Diamondbacks? Of course not. The best teams in baseball often are the smartest. And teams at both the top and bottom of the pay structure are not suddenly going to turn dumb.
The next labor agreement should be more balanced, giving low-payroll clubs more of an opportunity to, among other things, retain homegrown stars. But enough with the excuses, and enough with the owners’ insistence that a cap-and-floor system is the only solution, particularly when the rigidity of that position might lead to the cancellation of part or all of the 2027 season.
The Brewers and Rays figured it out. Fans of low-payroll clubs should be asking why their favorite teams have not figured it out, too.
