If you’re an MLB fan, and you also have a heart; if you love justice and want to see it done; if you want to see as little harm done to baseball as possible in its labor negotiations this winter, then you will invoke every lucky charm to help the Milwaukee Brewers, Tampa Bay Rays, Cleveland Guardians, Chicago White Sox and San Diego Padres in the MLB playoffs.
You’ll also put every hex on their trust-fund foes, the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees and even the Atlanta Braves.
What we’ve got brewing, starting with four League Division Series on Saturday, is a plot so simple, yet so powerful, that it seems to have been delivered like a sermon by the sport itself.
Go on, tell me that MLB isn’t a living thing which creates plots, then watches fans’ jaws drop as those themes play out.
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Tell me that, through the generations, the game doesn’t defend its own best interests. The sport seems to sense when it is in danger and devises a narrative that leads it toward safety.
For example, for the last few years, a labor war has been brewing with Dec. 2 (when the current collective bargaining agreement runs out) as its detonation date. The central issue has been “competitive balance,” or the lack of it.
At this moment, baseball seems to be expressing its opinion on the subject. (Anthropomorphize much? Sure, why not?)
Five MLB teams have never won a World Series. Three of them are still alive and in the final eight now: the Milwaukee Brewers, Tampa Bay Rays and San Diego Padres.
The Brewers and Rays had the best records in their leagues. They aren’t your typical long-shot underdog modest-to-small budget teams. Both would look logical in this World Series.
In addition, over the last 125 years, two fan bases have specialized in the pain of “No Parade for You” more than anybody else. The Cleveland Guardians and Chicago White Sox have only won the World Series once each in all that time — in 1948 and 2005, respectively.
Guess who meets in the next round of the playoffs, starting Saturday? Yes, the Guardians and White Sox. One of ‘em has got to advance to the final four, even though they have the 26th and 30th lowest payrolls in MLB. Their salaries combined wouldn’t crack the top 15 payrolls.
That’s not all.
Look who else is also now guaranteed by the draw to be in that Final Four? Either the Brewers, a sensible No. 19 in payroll, representing Milwaukee, which hasn’t had a World Series winner since the Milwaukee Braves in 1957. Or San Diego, whose fans have waited in vain for all of the Padres’ 59 seasons.
Usually, the Pads are a laugh line because they’ve wasted fortunes in recent times trying to give their fans a celebration. But, with their No. 9 payroll, at least they’re making a true effort.
So, at least two of MLB’s final four teams are certain to be from our Have Not camp.
But there may be a third interloper.
The baseball gods know good theater when they see it. Right now, they’re showing off. The Rays, as usual, are toward the bottom in league payroll, estimated at under $100 million. Yet over the last 19 years, in which they have reached the playoffs 10 times and won 95 or more games six times, they have been the best illustration of how brains and scientific method, even when burdened with an old stadium, can (almost) compete evenly with filthy lucre and new magnet ballparks.
Who will the Rays’ foe be? Why, the New York Yankees, who are third in spending.
Bwahaha!
And you think Aaron Judge’s teeny tiny injury to his itsy-bitsy soleus muscle in his calf which supports his huge Return of the Mummy frame is anything but an act of baseball fate?
The harsh, real-world key to this postseason is finding somebody to beat the Dodgers (cue the Snidely Whiplash piano track) who are trying to tie Competitive Balance to the railroad tracks by winning a third straight Series.
They may.
But the toughest path to a title that any team could face is the Dodgers if they have to go through 94-win Atlanta, starting on Saturday, then 103-win Milwaukee and the 98-win Rays. The last team to have a road this tough was the Washington Nationals in 2019, against four foes that won 89, 106, 91 and 107 games.
Oh, the poor Dodgers. Gosh, they have injuries. Glorious Shohei Ohtani, in a first hint of mortality, is only able to hit, not pitch. Their pen, which “only” converted a league-average 67% of save chances, worries a fan base accustomed to sunshine on the San Gabriels every day and “we just traded for Tarik Skubal.”
The Dodgers have (honest) 14 players who are past or present All-Stars and a couple of future All-Stars, too. They are just as good as their 100 wins. But not better, no matter how short the star-struck odds that Vegas gives them.
The Brewers, Dodgers and Rays led MLB in wins. Yet Milwaukee and Tampa Bay spent $100 million less combined to get there than L.A. did.
My pick for this post-season — and, please remember my 50 years of picks have been nothing special — is the Brewers. When I fall, I fall hard. My first favorite (winning) team was the ’57 Milwaukee Braves who beat the Yankees in the World Series. I carried baseball cards of Hank Aaron and Warren Spahn in my childhood wallet. Maybe that gives me a sense of how long Milwaukee fans have waited. But anybody can feel the current Brewers’ appeal.
They are both ultra-modern in devotion to advanced metrics and scientific player development yet fundamentally old-fashioned and aesthetically pleasing in how that philosophy plays itself out in an elegantly balanced way.
The Brewers won 103 games and finished second in MLB in runs, yet only one team hit fewer home runs. The Brewers had more steals than homers. Bernie Brewer isn’t blindly worshipping the “Three True Outcomes.”
Instead, Milwaukee led MLB in batting average, that “outdated and meaningless” statistic, and were second in walks. If it were possible, the Brewers would put four men on base at once, and drive ‘em in with a gapper. All that team speed feeds an acrobatic defense.
The Miz – Jacob Misiorowski — has the best stuff I’ve ever seen, and that includes Nolan Ryan when he struck out 383 in 1973 and Sandy Koufax with 382 in 1965. I saw all of both of their primes.
Misiorowski throws as hard, or maybe slightly harder, than Ryan and has vastly better command and variety. The Miz has a cutter, slider and curveball which all move like Slimer, the Class-5 full-roaming vapor in Ghostbusters.
‘Tis said that only rich teams get to October with truly scary power aces. Not this year.
But aside from Miz, the Brewers are as obscure as they are appealing. If second baseman Brice Turang — who leads the team in WAR and could win another Platinum Glove award this year — knocked on your door and said he was running for city council, you’d probably believe him.
Winning with this cast would send a message. So would a title for the Rays, who paid for 98 wins using supermarket coupons.
If such frugality seems to prove that MLB’s competitive balance is awful, then consider that 12 NFL teams have never won a Super Bowl. There’ve been 60 of ‘em. Also, 10 NBA and 10 NHL teams have not won a title in those 60 years.
There’s no perfect apples-to-apples comparison among the major sports, but nobody has any room to brag about “balance.” MLB just catches the most flack because its owners have spent decades moaning in every labor negotiation that they don’t have socialism-for-billionaires in the form of salary caps and revenue-sharing like other sports.
MLB needs to narrow the gap between its highest and lowest spending teams. According to MLB’s own labor relations department, the top five payrolls in ’26 averaged 321 million — more than triple the average of the bottom five (93 million).
What is “sporting” about that?
MLB needs financial fixing this winter. But MLB doesn’t need to be nuked to get NFL 2.0.
If MLB is whispering anything in our ears these days, then October seems to be saying, “The game’s competitive balance” is actually better than its “financial balance.” But if you work on narrowing that economic imbalance, especially by incentivizing smaller markets to try to be competitive, you may get a dazzlingly balanced — and even more profitable — product.
If the public picks up that message, then it will put pressure on both players and owners to find a middle ground in their negotiations. Fans will say, “The game’s bent, but it’s not broke.”
Don’t erode all the progress in recent years with rules changes which have brought the time-of-game down from 3:10 in 2021 to an average of 2:39 the last four years. (In 1985, it was 2:40.)
On the other hand, if the Dodgers or Yankees win this World Series, battle lines, already drawn, will begin to march at each other.
And both sides will claim that what happens the rest of this month somehow proves their point.
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