Good morning!
The World Series is set to begin on Friday. The baseball media world is in full gear preparing their preview pieces and retrospectives on the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays.
The clearest throughline connecting much of the pre-World Series writing is a sense that this matchup is between two clubs that any organization in the game could have afforded to field. The question everyone is asking is this: What are these low-payroll teams doing better than everyone else?
The Rockies, for
their part, have started the long trek towards emulating the types of systems that have kept the Brewers and Rays competitive for years. Whether or not they will be successful in mimicking them will take years to determine.
In the meantime, let’s all settle in for some World Series baseball.
Rockies News & Links
What Rockies can learn from 2026 World Series matchup of Brewers, Rays to get back to relevance | The Denver Post ($)
For years, the Brewers and Rays have been held up as model organizations in terms of front office decision making because they have been able to remain competitive without ever running above average player payrolls. Now that they are set to face off against one another in the World Series, Kyle Newman breaks down the areas that the Rockies could potentially look to learn from with these two teams. Spoiler alert: A lot of it comes down to allocating more money into the non-player payroll portions of the organization.
Sullivan all the wiser after ‘wake-up call’ of a debut season | MLB.com
Sean Sullivan’s first short stint with the Rockies this season didn’t go as anyone hoped. The soft tossing left-handed pitcher appears to have taken the setback in stride and entered the offseason with a list of things to work on. This piece from Thomas Harding calls out specifically his need to adjust to the schedule of an MLB rotation, find ways to increase fastball velocity, and diversify his pitch mix.
Should Rockies Re-sign Tomoyuki Sugano? | Yahoo.com
Don Strouble weighs whether a reunion with the Rockies best starting pitcher from this past season would serve the team’s 2027 interests. Given their lack of alternative options and a need to provide some form of stability to the rotation, Strouble argues that another low cost contract with the veteran would be worthwhile.
Why Denver, the Mile High City, is a paradise for sports fans | IrishNews.com
Every once in a while, you need a fresh set of eyes you experience often to realize what you take for granted. David Young does just that in this love letter to the Denver sports scene. If you have any friends that you want to convince to visit Denver, send them this article.
Around Baseball
MLB’s other low-payroll teams are on notice. The Rays and Brewers didn’t spend big to get here | The Athletic ($)
Ken Rosenthal details how this season’s World Series matchup flies in the face of MLB’s insistence that their economic proposals for the upcoming CBA are motivated by competitive balance concerns. Rosenthal argues that the continued success of the Brewers and Rays should act as a deterrent for other teams trying to blame their own poor performance on the economic disparities in the league. Rosenthal argues that fans of other low payroll teams shouldn’t be asking for a salary cap and instead asking why their favorite team can’t follow the example of the Brewers and Rays.
Savvy trades, sharp scouting key to construction of this year’s World Series rosters | MLB.com
If you want specific breakdowns of how the players on each World Series roster was acquired by their club, Jim Callis has got you covered. This piece breaks down both World Series team and identifies how they were built. This is the blueprint for lower-payroll clubs.
Do catchers age differently? | FanGraphs
This is for anyone who wants to really dive into the nitty gritty numbers. Jonathan Vander Lugt compares the aging curves of catchers versus all other hitters and finds a distinct difference between the two. There’s a pile of charts working through the specifics, but what it comes down to is that catchers appear to peak about a year later than other hitters and then decline at roughly the same rate, just delayed by that year. This may be good news for a player like Hunter Goodman, who may end up maintaining his performance at an older age than you’d otherwise expect.
Do MLB players watch the postseason when they aren’t in it? Here’s what they said | The Athletic ($)
Lastly, just for fun, this is an insightful piece on how plugged into the sport MLB players are when they no longer need to work. Andy McCullough surveyed 101 MLB players and asked if they watched the playoffs when they weren’t in them. The large majority said that they did though with varying levels of attention.
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