Baseball is a numbers game, but when it comes to payroll and the playoffs, teams didn’t simply have to pay to reach the 2026 postseason.
While eight of MLB's final 12 teams are in the top 10 end-of-season payrolls, based on figures from the MLB Labor Relations Department and obtained by USA TODAY, the remaining four are among baseball’s lowest spenders.
That includes the teams with the best records in each league, the Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays. The Brewers’ payroll entering the postseason is $143.5 million, good for 19th in MLB. The Rays’ $98.3 million total is No. 25.
Meanwhile, the Chicago White Sox’s $98 million roster is 26th, while the Cleveland Guardians have the lowest figure at $74.2 million.
The two top 10 payrolls that didn’t
make the playoffs this year are the New York Mets — the highest in pro baseball — and 2025 World Series runner-up Toronto Blue Jays, which have the fifth-most expensive roster.
The two leagues’ postseason stables look drastically different.
Combined, the six National League teams have a total payroll of $1.51 billion — with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Philadelphia Phillies, Atlanta Braves and San Diego Padres all over the $200 million line.
The American League’s makeup is a bit different.
The New York Yankees’ $304.6 million payroll is nearly a third of the league’s $1.03 billion total. And then the three lowest payrolls in the playoffs — the Rays, White Sox and Guardians — are all below $100 million.
On the diamond, though, do payrolls matter as October heats up?
USA TODAY looked back at the 10 previous World Series winners’ opening-day payrolls, per The Baseball Cube, a statistics website founded in 2003 that covers college and professional baseball.
While there has been some variance, seven of the 10 started the season with a payroll of at least $200 million once adjusting to 2026 dollars. And all 10 were above $160 million.
The league’s highest opening-day payroll won the World Series twice — the Dodgers in 2025 and the Boston Red Sox in 2018. While the Mets finished 2026 with baseball’s biggest payroll, Los Angeles entered the season with the biggest payroll on The Baseball Cube’s ledgers and could be the third such instance if they complete the threepeat.
It is worth noting that the 2026 final figures can’t just be directly compared with the historical opening day payrolls. However, after adjusting the previous 10 champions’ opening-day payrolls to 2026 dollars, this year’s opening-day payrolls for Milwaukee, Tampa Bay, the White Sox and Cleveland would all be below every World Series champion since 2016.
This means that if any of those four clubs win this year’s Fall Classic, their opening-day roster would be cheaper, in 2026 dollars, than any other recent champion.
Adjusted for inflation, we'd have to go back to 2005 to find a World Series champion with a smaller opening day payroll than the Brewers' Baseball Cube opening-day $139 million. That year, the Chicago White Sox won the title with a $75.2 million roster that adjusts to about $127 million in 2026.
Methodology: USA TODAY obtained final team payrolls heading into the playoffs from MLB’s Labor Relations Department. Historical opening-day payrolls for World Series champions via The Baseball Cube; inflation adjustments using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U.
2026 MLB postseason payrolls
Final payrolls among playoff teams, via MLB Labor Relations Department
- Los Angeles Dodgers, $338 million
- New York Yankees, $304.6 million
- Philadelphia Phillies, $291.7 million
- Atlanta Braves, $263.9 million
- Houston Astros, $249.5 million
- Chicago Cubs, $248.8 million
- San Diego Padres, $223.9 million
- Boston Red Sox, $210.2 million
- Milwaukee Brewers, $143.5 million
- Tampa Bay Rays, $98.3 million
- Chicago White Sox, $98 million
- Cleveland Guardians, $74.2 million
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: You can't buy a spot in MLB playoffs. Just ask these teams.
