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First of all, and tangentially related to the topic, the Blue Jays are definitely the hot fan favorite as for who people WANT to win the World Series. That was one of the national survey questions this week, and Toronto were the pick of almost three-quarters of people who voted, at 73%. I’m actually a little surprised it was as low a figure as that. Maybe there was a large Japanese contingent voting? I would have expected few people outside of California to vote for the Dodgers, as per the map I shared earlier in the week. And even in the state, I’m pretty sure San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento and the parts of LA closer to Anaheim will be pulling for Toronto.
Of course, the question of who you think will win the World Series is a rather different one. When asked that, the majority did go for the Dodgers, at 58%. Again, I’m a little surprised it’s not a higher number, considering the book makers have Los Angeles as heavy favorites. Before play started in Game 1, the odds had them at about a 68% chance to win the series. I don’t have many previous sets of odds to check, but that seems heavily skewed towards them, considering the Blue Jays won more in the regular season. For comparison, the Rangers were 63.6% favorites over the D-backs in the 2023 World Series, and won six more games before the playoffs.
However, with regard to the topic of discussion in our own poll, part of me wonders if it might be better for baseball in the long run if the Dodgers were to win this year – and maybe again in 2026. It would demolish the claims of “competitive balance” which Rob Manfred used to tout as being superior in baseball to other sports. Even he now seems to be coming round to the point of view that something needs to be done: and that something is most likely going to happen, in the shape of a salary cap. Though good luck getting Manfred to actually admit that will be the end result. Speaking in July, he said:
“When I talk to players, I don’t try to convince them that a salary-cap system would be a good thing. I identify a problem in the media business and explain [to players] that owners need to change to address that problem. I then identify a second problem that we need to work together on, and that is there are fans in a lot of our markets who feel like we have a competitive balance problem.”
A fun fact from the above article: the top ten percent of MLB players earn nearly three-quarters of all the money. So perhaps if a salary cap came in, alongside a proposal to flatten out that income inequality, it might be a way to get the majority of union members on board with it? Anyway, when looking forward to the 2027 season, it seems that most Diamondbacks fans are not exactly optimistic – less about the team specifically, than whether there will be major-league baseball at all. If I felt like the poll results above were lower than expected, I certainly can’t say the same for this one:
Ouch. We are, of course, still more than a year away from that happening – and the Blue Jays are, at time of writing, winning this World Series. If that persists, it might defuse demands somewhat for a cap: though it’s worth pointing out, Toronto are hardly poverty-stricken. Indeed, per Spotrac, this World Series pits the highest payroll in the National League against the highest payroll in the American League. Hardly a ringing endorsement of competitive balance. MLB will happily tout the highest post-season ratings since 2017. But baseball lives or dies by its regular season, and without action, I think interest in that part of the game will continue to dwindle.
The reality is, if there’s no baseball, fans no longer need to stare out the window and wait for its resumption. There have never been more ways for people to amuse themselves, and once you lose a casual consumer, it’s typically hard to win them back. Unlike the previous lockout, it seems like fans will be firmly on the side of the owners if a salary cap proposal is the reason, and that could well mean a long, acrimonious struggle.
