Twins Video
The Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays are headed to the World Series, and neither team needed a top-10 payroll to get there. Milwaukee entered the 2026 season with the 19th-highest Opening Day payroll in baseball, while Tampa Bay ranked 26th. For the Minnesota Twins, it might be tempting to look at this matchup and conclude that payroll isn't as important as people think. If these smaller-market organizations can compete for a championship without spending big, why can't the Twins?
A well-run organization can overcome financial limitations, but that doesn't mean payroll is unimportant. Three teams in the bottom 11 of Opening Day payrolls reached the League Championship Series this year, and Milwaukee made an especially convincing statement by sweeping the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose payroll was nearly twice as large as the Brewers'. Those are impressive accomplishments, but they don't change what decades of baseball history have shown us.
Teams with top-10 payrolls have won 20 of the last 28 World Series titles. MLB.com has also found that teams in the upper half of spending are roughly 1.7 times more likely to reach the playoffs; three times more likely to reach the ...