The best team is in the league’s smallest market, but money still helps

The Milwaukee Brewers put together the best record in MLB in 2025 while ranked 23rd in payroll, according to Spotrac. (Wikipedia)

By ANDY McCULLOUGH / THE ATHLETIC

During the final week of baseball’s regular season, members of the most expensive roster in MLB history strapped on ski goggles and shook Champagne bottles as they surrounded manager Dave Roberts of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Despite a trying year, the Dodgers had captured the National League West yet again.

“Everybody in the world knows,” Roberts said, “that this division goes through Los Angeles.”

Four days earlier, manager Pat Murphy of the Milwaukee Brewers commemorated a similar achievement. His message to his club, which won the NL Central, sounded a tad different.

“You son-of-a-guns did the little things over and over, when no one — no one! — said that the Milwaukee Brewers would be in the running to win the division,” Murphy said.

The divergent tones belied the consistent accomplishments of each franchise. Both the Dodgers and the Brewers have won division titles in four of the past five seasons. Though the Dodgers have appeared in 13 consecutive postseasons, the Brewers have missed the playoffs only once since 2018.

The difference in perception comes down to dollars. The Dodgers spend lavishly on players, including a $1.4 billion off-season after 2023 and another $450 million spree after winning the World Series last fall. The Brewers do not; the team put together the best record in MLB in 2025 while ranked 23rd in payroll, according to Spotrac.

In this era, as the rest of the postseason field demonstrates, that makes Milwaukee one of the exceptions to the rule. Money, as big league executives across the revenue spectrum like to say, does not buy championships. But it certainly increases the chances of reaching the postseason.

Six of the 12 playoff spots this season are occupied by teams with a top-10 payroll. The only participants from the bottom third in spending are the Brewers, with an estimated $117 million payroll; the Cincinnati Reds, ranked No. 22 with an estimated $119 million roster; and the Cleveland Guardians, ranked No. 25 with an estimated $101 million tab.

Had things gone differently in the season’s final days, the top-10 spending New York Mets and Houston Astros could have made the Brewers the only entrant from that category.

The odds will favor the big spenders this year, as they did last October, when the Dodgers beat the New York Yankees in the World Series in five games.

There has not been a repeat champion in MLB since the Yankees completed a three-peat in 2000. But there has been a repeat economic class of champion: A team with a top-10 payroll has won the World Series in five of the past six seasons.

The last club with a bottom-10 payroll to win a championship was the 2003 Florida Marlins.

At the outset of the year, Rob Manfred, the MLB commissioner, said he placed revenue disparity “at the top of my list of concerns about what’s occurring in the sport.”

The MLB postseason began Tuesday against the backdrop of another looming dispute between the 30 team owners and the players’ union. Manfred has telegraphed the likelihood of the owners once again voting to lock out the players when the collective bargaining agreement expires after next season. The lockout after the 2021 season lasted 99 days and bled into spring training, but no regular-season games were lost. Many team officials worry the next labor stoppage may take longer and become more rancorous.

At the heart of the conflict will be whether the owners desire to implement a salary cap, the system used by other major North American sports leagues. The drumbeat started during the offseason.

“The only way to fix baseball is to do a salary cap and a floor,” the owner of the Colorado Rockies, Dick Monfort, who is also the chair of MLB’s labor committee, told The Denver Gazette in March.

Even Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner lamented it is “difficult for most of us owners” to keep up with the Dodgers, who have become ravenous spenders in free agency since signing Shohei Ohtani to a $700 million contract after the 2023 season.

The union fiercely contests the necessity of a cap. “This is not about competitive balance,” Tony Clark, the union’s executive director, said at the All-Star Game. “This is institutionalized collusion.”

The players prefer teams be rewarded for spending rather than punished through the loss of draft picks or the payment of a competitive balance tax. The current agreement set this season’s luxury tax threshold at $241 million; six of the eight teams that surpassed that number will compete in October, with only the Astros and Mets fading out of contention.

No club will pay more in penalties than the Dodgers, who entered the season with an estimated $150.7 million tax bill, as calculated by MLB’s labor relations department. That figure trumped the actual payroll for every team in either Central division besides the Chicago Cubs, who have returned to the postseason for the first time in a full season since 2018.

But the Dodgers are not the only team to benefit from exceeding the tax threshold.

When the Cubs felt compelled to dump Cody Bellinger, a former NL MVP, last winter, the Yankees were one of the few clubs not worried about his $27.5 million salary.

The Toronto Blue Jays are back in October after Rogers Communications authorized a franchise-record $254 million roster.

Philadelphia Phillies owner John Middleton opened his wallet to revive his franchise. He has kept the wallet open as the club has reached the postseason in four consecutive seasons. “My great-great-grandchildren might be angry at me,” he told Sports Illustrated last year. “But I’m not going to know them!”

Spending does not guarantee success. The Mets have averaged 82 victories for the past three seasons despite an average payroll of about $336 million. The club crashed out of contention on the final day of the regular season, despite adding outfielder Juan Soto on a $765 million deal last offseason.

Both the Mets and the Reds finished with 83 victories, with the Reds earning the final wild-card spot through a tiebreaker. For the Mets, the result represented a historic, slow-motion collapse. For the Reds, who have not participated in the postseason after a 162-game season since 2013, the berth elicited joy.

Heading into this season, the Reds were one of nine teams — the Chicago White Sox, Colorado Rockies, Miami Marlins, Brewers, Minnesota Twins, Pittsburgh Pirates, Seattle Mariners and St. Louis Cardinals were the others — who declined to sign any player to a multiyear contract last offseason. Six of those teams will be postseason spectators.

On the surface, the argument for a cap was not strengthened by the 2025 regular season. The best team resides in Milwaukee, the sport’s smallest market. The Guardians and Reds generated hope across the state of Ohio. The Mets are bound for the golf course. The Dodgers finished with their worst record since 2018. The Yankees did not win the American League East.

But at least the Dodgers and Yankees will play postseason baseball, as will the Phillies and the Blue Jays and the majority of clubs in the Top 10. The cries to even the playing field are unlikely to cease between now and the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement.