The Dodgers are back in the League Championship Series as the challenging road team against the top-seeded Milwaukee Brewers. Like last year, the Dodgers survived a dogfight in the Division Series round
against an arguably superior opponent.
While the gap between the Dodgers and Phillies was much narrower and less contentious than the 2024 matchup with the San Diego Padres, the series was filled with thrills, chills, and Clayton Kershaw. This essay focuses on a topic that has been gnawing at me for most of the year as the Dodgers return to American Family Field.
As Dodgers fans, be prepared to be inundated with the David vs. Goliath narrative, as it is easy and, honestly, lazy to do. Yes, the Dodgers led baseball in payroll by a significant margin as they have done something unforgivable to most of baseball: try.
To illuminate this point, we return to the conclusion of the offseason, as most fans were gnashing their figurative teeth about the Dodgers $375 million offseason. Why even play the season, as the Dodgers had assembled an unstoppable juggernaut, waiting to be unleashed upon the league?
With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that most of the Dodgers’ expenditures in 2025 did not pan out or even rate as average. Sometimes one builds a juggernaut, other times one builds a lemon.
Spending does not necessarily mean winning — ask the second-highest payroll in 2025, the New York Mets. Still, the Dodgers have turned a source of consternation (a lack of grit, the bullpen) into sources of strength (winning in Philadelphia in October for the first time since I have been alive, Roki “The Monster of the Reiwa Era” Sasaki) as the team finally is living up to its potential, even while being held at bay offensively.
It is easy to see why the Dodgers are favored in this series, but the Dodgers should not expect a cakewalk.
Even though the Brewers swept the Dodgers in the regular season, even though the Brewers had the best record during the regular season by a modest margin, expect to get a healthy diet of “average Joes” versus “Monstars” for up to the next ten days. There’s a folksy and there’s patronizingly folksky, as the below clip indicates.
Badman’s Song
In 2024, the Dodgers unofficially adopted the Kendrick Lamar song Not Like Us as the team’s anthem during the playoff run. I would argue that the team’s current anthem should be Oh Lord by Foxy Shazam, as it literally goes with everything.
The song has caught on with portions of the internet as it has gained prominence from the HBO show Peacemaker. It is a comic book show starring John Cena, who plays an E-list soldier, and it has caught on as an alter ego for Cena’s inherent charm. Each episode usually starts with a cold open that cuts to the song where Cena and the cast dance stone-faced.
I thought I would have more to say about Orion Kerkering becoming the Phillies’ version of Bill Buckner. Honestly, I lived through the frankly stupid ending to Game 4 of the 2020 World Series, where Kenley Jansen, Chris Taylor, Will Smith, and Randy Arozarena combined to do an unscheduled and unauthorized four-man version of a Benny Hill skit.
I can laugh about the play now because ultimately it did not matter. The Dodgers won the next two games in short order. Kerkering’s Blunder will likely live on in Phillie lore for a generation because it served as an ignominious end to a core that likely should have accomplished more.
Had the Dodgers not face-planted in 2022, it might have set off a rivalry renaissance with the team’s early 2000s tormentor. Alas, it was not meant to be. The only way that Kerkering’s Blunder persists league-wide is if the Dodgers finish the job against the Brewers and the American League champion, which brings me to my final point.
Heroes and Villains
Last year’s NLCS was a turkey if you liked competitive baseball, as there was only one lead change throughout the entire series. Dodgers/Brewers will not be as lopsided as Dodgers/Mets was last year. Even though, the Dodgers do not have home field advantage again, there are plenty of factors working in the Dodgers’ favor.
The Brewers were taxed to their limit playing and beating their big brother, the Chicago Cubs, for the first time during the postseason in five games.
Brandon Woodruff will not pitch. Jacob Misiorowski is likely to be used out of the bullpen and sparingly, as he pitched three innings in Game 5. The Brewers are mimicking the 2024 Dodgers’ playbook of three starters: Freddy Peralta, Quinn Priester, and Jose Quintana. The Brewers’ approach of low strikeout, contact-oriented offense, solid defense, just enough relief and starting pitching would likely be more effective against the Dodgers in a short series.
Even with the league’s best record, the Brewers made only miminal additions to their roster at the trade deadline. Had the Brewers actually expended modest effort to bolster their roster at the deadline, I would be far more concerned for this series.
Even sputtering, the Dodgers looked a hell of a lot sharper playing the Phillies than they did in July during the six-game span, which is why it is foolish to the exact same result in October.
If Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Andy Pages, Max Muncy, and Will Smith replicate their offensive performances in this round, this series could favor Milwaukee. The Cincinnati Reds were a speed bump and if the Dodgers’ bats return to that level of production, this series will likely be a delight. Honestly, at this point, I would expect Freeman and Pages to tee off on Brewers pitching respectively due to history and memes.
The Phillies had arms that the Brewers can only dream of to stifle the Dodgers’ bats. But, in 2025, the Dodgers had a nasty habit of letting soft-tossing pitchers who should have been clobbered off the hook. Aaron Nola was the most recent example in Game 3 of the NLDS.
Regardless, no one outside of Los Angeles and the Dodger faithful will be rooting for the Dodgers in this series. Brewers/Mariners is the sentimental choice of a final to reduce the number of teams without a championship to four and ensure that every team has played in a World Series.
The Dodgers are the absolute villain in this series.
I would invite the team to embrace it and quickly, especially if it leads to a prompt ending in this series.
While the Brewers winning a title for the first time would be a virtually unalloyed good for the city and people of Milwaukee, I argue that the David vs. Goliath talk misses the point.
I argue that if the Brewers prevail in 2025 that it would be a net negative for baseball as a whole.
I am not discussing television ratings, which would be modest at best, but rather the state of play.
For as long as I can remember, teams like the Cleveland Guardians, San Diego Padres, Milwaukee Brewers, Seattle Mariners, and Toronto Blue Jays have comedically underachieved in postseason play. Sometimes, the usual suspects are only there because they manage not to find new and exciting ways to lose.
While the Guardians and Padres were bounced this year with little fanfare and no time to absorb what was in, the Brewers, Mariners, and Blue Jays make up three-fourths of baseball’s final four.
Since the new playoff format was adopted in 2022, there has been a remarkable amount of turnover in the playoff field, with some notable exceptions. The last four playoff fields are listed below, from lowest seed to highest seed, with the league championship participants in bold.
- 2022: Tampa Bay Rays, Seattle Mariners, Toronto Blue Jays, Cleveland Guardians, New York Yankees, Houston Astros, Philadelphia Phillies, San Diego Padres, New York Mets, St. Louis Cardinals, Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Dodgers
- 2023: Toronto Blue Jays, Texas Rangers, Tampa Bay Rays, Minnesota Twins, Houston Astros, Baltimore Orioles, Arizona Diamondbacks, Miami Marlins, Philadelphia Phillies, Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta Braves
- 2024: Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, Baltimore Orioles, Houston Astros, Cleveland Guardians, New York Yankees, New York Mets, Atlanta Braves, San Diego Padres, Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Dodgers
- 2025:Detroit Tigers, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Cleveland Guardians, Seattle Mariners, Toronto Blue Jays, Cincinnati Reds, San Diego Padres, Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Dodgers, Philadelphia Phillies, Milwaukee Brewers
23 of baseball’s 30 teams have been to the postseason in the new format. The teams that have failed to make the playoffs are the San Francisco Giants (last appearance in 2021), Sacramento/Oakland Athletics (2021), Washington Nationals (2019), Colorado Rockies (2018), Pittsburgh Pirates (2015), and Anaheim Angels (2014).
In some real ways, this format is what baseball’s owners want: more teams with a chance to chow down on the postseason trough. Regardless of who advances to the World Series, we will see a final matchup that we have never seen before. Even in a format where the top seed often advances, especially in the American League, it is remarkable that so many teams have been included in postseason play.
Are the Dodgers ruining baseball? A little, but not in the way that one might initially think. However, this discussion is probably best tabled if and only if the Dodgers repeat as champions.
The playoff field has already been watered down enough that even mediocre teams can have a chance for postseason baseball. Sometimes they serve as speed bumps, but sometimes Cinderella runs happen. If money truly equaled success, we would be raving about the New York Mets in 2025. We are not; instead, the Mets are the league’s biggest punchline after some undeserved success in 2024.
I have long argued that teams do not need to spend like the Dodgers to be successful but rather teams need to spend like the Giants and Mariners — middle of the road clubs. As shown above, over three-quarters of the league has participated in the postseason under the new format. Fans should be clamoring for teams to try and play meaningful fall baseball.
The Brewers are a hodge podge that has jelled into a solid team, which might counter the Dodgers if one was doing it on a restrictive budget, in the face of ownership that has adamantly refused to spend money. Per The Athletic at the start of the year:
The Brewers are not to be confused with low-revenue dregs such as the Pittsburgh Pirates and Miami Marlins. They’re more like the Tampa Bay Rays, repeatedly astonishing the industry with their ability to field contenders on limited funds.
That’s the big picture.
Strictly looking at 2025, the Brewers’ plan is curious at best. [Owner Mark] Attanasio, in a news conference Tuesday, said the team’s payroll is approximately $5 million higher than it was at the start of last season. But at one point, according to multiple sources who were granted anonymity for their candor, he asked his front office to contemplate cost-cutting trades of right-hander Aaron Civale, who is earning $8 million, and reliever Joel Payamps, who is at $2.995 million….
Attanasio’s rationale for the team’s relative inactivity this offseason is the “unprecedented amount” of young talent the Brewers are producing. The trade of [Devin] Williams to the New York Yankees was a trademark Brewers move, enabling the team to land not only left-hander Nestor Cortes Jr., an All-Star in 2022, but also infielder Caleb Durbin, the Breakout Prospect of the Year in the Arizona Fall League. Attanasio also noted that after the Brewers parted with Williams’ predecessor, Josh Hader, they ended up flipping one of the players they acquired, outfielder Esteury Ruiz, in a three-team deal that landed them catcher William Contreras, who has since made two All-Star teams.
Would the Brewers be better if they spent $17 million for Michael Conforto? Actually, no. No one would have been improved for making that the deal the Dodgers made. The Brewers have been an organization that has focused on saving pennies at the expense of dollars.
Yes, they play in MLB’s smallest market — until Las Vegas comes online. Yes, the Brewers receive revenue sharing money. If anything, teams like the Dodgers are subsidizing the frugality of teams like the Brewers, Pirates, and Marlins.
Shohei Ohtani, et al. was never going to play in Milwaukee. I like American Family Field, but Freddie Freeman has notoriously compared American Family Field, then Miller Park, to a little league field. Attanasio famously got the Wisconsin Legislature to pay out $500 million for upgrades under the threat of the team relocating elsewhere.
If the Brewers somehow pull off a championship under these conditions, it will likely embolden those owners who are figuratively salivating for a salary cap and those that will likely cause a lockout at the conclusion of the 2026 season. If the Brewers can mimic the 2021 San Francisco Giants and play to more than the sum of their parts for a pittance of what the Dodgers or Mets pay, why on Earth should anyone put in the effort to try?
Being an MLB owner is a figurative license to make money. But if owners like Mr. Attanasio want to prove me wrong, they need only open their books for financial audit, which is about as likely as a blizzard in hell.
If you see the logical fallacies with the owner’s argument of frugality at all costs (dynasties can exist in a salary cap system, teams like the Dodgers are still generally smarter than everyone else), good; it’s one for a later day. I am all for sentiment, but not at the expense of a sport that I have loved as a fan for almost forty years.
