As you no doubt know by now, the World Series beginning Friday in Milwaukee between the Brewers and Rays is the first World Series involving two teams that had never won it before since 1980, when the Royals and Phillies met. That one was won by the Phillies, four games to two, and that franchise had been around for nearly a century (starting in 1883) before winning. They’d won only two National League pennants before 1980, in 1915 (losing the World Series to the Red Sox) and 1950 (losing to the Yankees).
The 1980 Royals, meanwhile, were in just their 12th season and had posted seven winning seasons in those 12 years. (Comparison point: From 1969-80 the Cubs had just four winning seasons.)
This World Series isn’t exactly that one, but we do have one team (Milwaukee) that’s won only one pennant previous to this year in its 58 years of existence (1982, when they lost the World Series to the Cardinals as an AL team). The Rays have been in two World Series, losing both (2008 to the Phillies and 2020 to the Dodgers). Both these teams have had multiple postseason appearances over the last decade, eight for Milwaukee and six for Tampa Bay.
Both these teams have been described as “small market” teams. Let’s examine that for a moment. The Brewers do, in fact, inhabit the smallest TV market in Major League Baseball (TV market size generally being the benchmark for such things). This ranking of TV markets shows Milwaukee as No. 38, smallest in MLB. (That will change two years from now when Las Vegas, No. 40, joins MLB.)
But notice another thing about that ranking. Where do you find Tampa-St. Petersburg? No. 11. That’s right, the TV market of the Rays is nearly a Top 10 market, just below the San Francisco Bay Area and just ahead of Phoenix.
So why are the Rays a “small market” team? Likely this comes from their payroll spending, which has been among the lowest in MLB for quite some time. This year, per Spotrac, the Rays’ cash payroll ranks 28th (the Brewers, incidentally, are 18th).
Why is this happening? Most likely, because of the location of their stadium:
The vast majority of the people who live in the Tampa Bay area live east of the bay, in Tampa and its suburbs. Now look how difficult it is to get to the Trop from there. Three bridges, and during rush hour? Forget it. I have been there twice and stayed in St. Petersburg and it’s still hard to get to. Here’s what I wrote about my first visit there in 2017.
The Rays were recently sold and they are finally going to get a new stadium built. It will be in Tampa, near the Raymond James Stadium where the NFL’s Buccaneers play. This, plus their World Series appearance, should help Rays attendance jump significantly. They could almost immediately become a “big market” team.
So if anyone tells you that this matchup will have any effect on the labor negotiations that will follow, you can tell that person that they’re wrong. Nothing that happens in the World Series is going to change ownership’s desire for a salary cap. That is being asked for not for “competitive balance,” as has been stated by some including Commissioner Rob Manfred, but to increase team profit and thus, team valuations.
I seem to have strayed from the baseball aspect of the World Series here, a bit, so let me say that we have a matchup of the teams with the best record in each league since all the way back in … 2024, when the Dodgers and Yankees met. Just the year before, the 84-win Diamondbacks (who swept the 101-win Dodgers in a division series) and 90-win Rangers (who swept the 101-win Orioles in a division series) were the World Series opponents. In my view, the postseason really is random. This year it went in fairly predictable fashion. Other years, it doesn’t.
These teams played very early this year in Milwaukee at the end of March, with the Brewers taking two of three. I doubt that has much predictive value for the World Series.
As far as who I’m rooting for? I don’t think you have to take more than one guess. I respect what the Brewers have accomplished, but I can’t root for them to win. Go Rays, and let’s make this a seven-game series, because, well, more baseball is always good and after this World Series ends, we don’t know when we’ll next see MLB players on the field.
