What this year's final four says about the labor battle -- and the game's future

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MILWAUKEE -- Something very confusing is happening in Major League Baseball. For much of the 2026 season, the league has run a public campaign that paints the game as fundamentally broken, unfair for lower-payroll and smaller-market teams, remedied only by a salary cap and floor system it says would fix such imbalances. Meanwhile, of the four teams remaining in the postseason, one plays in the game's smallest market, another is carrying the game's lowest cash payroll and a third is running out the 26th-highest payroll of the league's 30 teams.

The fourth team, of course, is the Los Angeles Dodgers, the behemoth whose back-to-back championships have underpinned MLB's rhetoric about the game's future upon the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement Dec. 1. The league regularly cites the Dodgers in its polemics on payroll; L.A.'s this year is $340.6 million with an additional $180.8 million in luxury tax payments, according to Ethan Hulihen's payroll tracker. The penalty Los Angeles will pay this season is greater than the full payrolls of the other three championship series clubs, the Milwaukee Brewers ($143.7 million), Tampa Bay Rays ($98.5 million) and Cleveland Guardians ($74.4 million). On cash payroll alone, the Dodgers are outspending the Brewers, Rays and Guardians combined by nearly $25 million.

And yet with the Dodgers losing the first two games of the National League Championship Series, MLB is looking at a reality that directly opposes its narrative: two small market teams in the World Series. And not just any small markets, either: Tampa Bay hasn't won a title in its 29 years of existence, Milwaukee hasn't won a title in its 58 years of existence and Cleveland hasn't won a title since 1948. This October could very easily deliver the sort of World Series that fulfills the desire of commissioner Rob Manfred, who during the All-Star break told reporters that "competitive balance" is "the core of what we're about."

While 2026 doesn't necessarily invalidate MLB's argument -- that moneyed teams over the past decade have dominated the postseason landscape, and any single season that suggests otherwise is an outlier -- it absolutely validates the MLB Players Association's contention that the game's financial landscape doesn't disqualify lower-spending teams from success and does not necessitate a cap-and-floor system. If Milwaukee captures the NL pennant, the combined payrolls of the two World Series team would be the lowest since the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Texas Rangers in 2011.

Even so, owners do not intend to pivot from their contentions. Their insistence on a cap and floor -- backed, the league says, by surveys that show fans want one -- remains firm no matter who wins the Fall Classic, according to sources. Accordingly, collective bargaining talks have been at a standstill since the league in May proposed a 50/50 revenue split with a $245.3 million ceiling and $171.2 million floor. Not only is the union viscerally opposed to a cap, but it also contends players would lose hundreds of millions of dollars in such a system.

Upon delivering the parameters of one to the MLBPA in May, the league said in a statement that "the biggest issue ... is fixing the payroll disparity" and that "too many fans in too many markets have too little hope their team has a fair chance to win."

The players remaining in the postseason have a different story to tell.

FOR THE FIRST six years of his career, Jake Bauers lived the nomadic existence of a player on the fringes. It took him from Tampa Bay to Cleveland to Seattle to New York and, finally, to Milwaukee, where he is now the cleanup hitter for the team that won a major league-best 103 regular-season games.

Bauers' travels have given him a unique perspective on the 2026 season. And he doesn't believe it's an accident that the Rays, Guardians and Brewers are among baseball's final four. Since 2016, they have combined for 22 playoff appearances, eight league championship series berths and two World Series attempts, neither successful. All three are regarded by their peers as model organizations, not just for their ability to win consistently on a tight budget but the style of play they embrace and embody.

"You can't just throw nine guys out there and say, play fundamental baseball and expect to win," Bauers said. "There still has to be a certain amount of talent in the room. And I think if you get the right guys who will buy into what you're preaching, who are also talented, who can hit a homer in a big spot when you need them to, but who can also hit a backside ground ball when you need them to, get a bunt down, play good enough defense and base run well -- that, to me, is what every team left has in common."

The commonalities of the three small-market survivors -- they extend to the Dodgers, too -- are clear with a dive into the numbers. The four teams left all do important things well. Each boasts a strong bullpen. Milwaukee and Tampa Bay rank first and second, respectively, in batting average, and the Brewers also lead MLB in walk rate and on-base percentage. The Rays strike out less than any team in MLB -- with Cleveland not far behind in fifth, and its walk rate is eighth. All three are demons on the basepaths, as Tampa Bay ranks second, Milwaukee fifth and Cleveland seventh in stolen bases. As gauche as the sacrifice bunt has become, the small-market mavens embrace its utility and believe a willingness to use it fosters selflessness -- and with the Rays leading MLB in sacrifices, the Brewers fifth and the Guardians eighth, they practice what they preach.

"Anybody on our team can get the bunt sign and put it down," Brewers All-Star second baseman Brice Turang said, and he illustrated that in Game 1 of the NLCS. With Milwaukee trailing the Dodgers 1-0, Turang somehow powered a low and in sinker from left-hander Tarik Skubal to the opposite field for a solo home run. Two plate appearances later, with Milwaukee clinging to a 2-1 advantage, Turang stepped into the batter's box following a leadoff single from Jackson Chourio. On the first pitch, he laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt.

"That's all I've ever known baseball to be," Turang said. "Being able to bunt guys over, move them over. The situation of the game called me to bunt and move them over. And that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to help the team win in any way I can. So if that's a bunt, a stolen base or whatever, just trying to do that."

This is not to suggest that small-market teams can bunt their way to the World Series. It's more of a mentality that can speak to lower-payroll clubs: If there are inherent financial disadvantages -- and in a capped system, there still would be, though not nearly as distinct -- teams need to forge an identity that can bridge the gap.

"There's no formula to it, and I know this being a kind of guy who doesn't match the idea of slug, homers, all that kind of stuff," said outfielder Stephen Kwan, the second-longest tenured Guardians player behind star third baseman Jose Ramirez. "I think that's a sign that if you play really good baseball, you do the fundamentals, you do the right thing, you can win any kind of baseball game anytime."

Each player queried on the matter mentioned fundamentals, and that goes for the teams' defense as well. The Rays were the earliest adopters of accepting a lesser bat for superior defense. Tampa Bay also has been the industry standard in strike throwing, while the Guardians and Brewers have turned into pitching development machines. Cleveland's ability to develop top-tier starting pitching dates two decades and today includes left-hander Parker Messick and American League Championship Series Game 3 starter Gavin Williams. The Brewers' history goes back about a decade and today has produced Jacob Misiorowski, Logan Henderson and a bevy of other arms.

At the end of the day, all three of the low-payroll teams left recognize just how random the MLB postseason is -- and how regardless of their regular-season successes, they could've just as easily lost in the division series. Milwaukee needed to play a near-perfect series -- and get some luck -- to oust the San Diego Padres. If Aaron Judge is healthy, perhaps the New York Yankees would've pushed Tampa Bay. And Cleveland needed to win three consecutive games, including a capper on the road, to dispatch a plucky Chicago White Sox club.

"There's not one recipe to have a winning team," said Messick, an All-Star this year and likely finalist for AL Rookie of the Year. "I think we are living proof of that."

OVER THE PAST decade, payroll disparity in MLB has grown significantly. The Dodgers, with the largest local TV deal in the game -- and, due to a bankruptcy court settlement, sharing a fraction of their revenue compared to other teams -- in 2026 are spending at least twice as much as 26 clubs, three times as much as 15, four times as much as 11 and five times as much as seven.

At the All-Star Game, when addressing the nearly $450 million chasm between the top and bottom, Manfred said: "It defies human experience to ask a fan to think that the bottom end of that gap has the same opportunity to win as the top."

Well, the Guardians are at the bottom end of that gap. And after splitting the first two games of the ALCS at Tropicana Field, they seemingly have a better opportunity to win, at least in 2016.

"There's not a competition issue. There's truly not," said Guardians first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, who came up in the Rays organization and has played in markets big (Boston and Texas) and small (Cincinnati). "If owners wanted to spend, they would, and teams that might not spend the money on a roster still find a way to win. So look at the four. It's not a payroll issue. It's commitment to winning. And now being on this side of it, having spent time in Tampa, the payroll isn't really the issue. It's just the commitment to winning."

How one quantifies a commitment to winning is the trouble. Payroll is an easy vector, and the numbers MLB cites -- even this year, eight of the top 10 spending teams qualified for the postseason -- have merit. Teams from bottom-10 markets -- Tampa is 19th, Cleveland 25th and Milwaukee 30th, for context -- have comprised less than a quarter of LCS qualifiers dating more than a quarter-century. The last bottom-10 market team to make the World Series was Cleveland in 2016, following back-to-back appearances from the Kansas City Royals, who was the last one to win in 2015.

"The data in our sport is stark," Manfred said. "Your opportunity to make the playoffs if you are a larger-market team is dramatically higher and your opportunity to proceed to the subsequent rounds -- that advantage grows with each round."

Not in 2026. Whether it's anomalous or the beginning of the best-run organizations regularly making deep playoff runs is for the future to tell. But the Rays, Guardians and Brewers all answer the most important questions for teams with financial disadvantages. Where can they improve? What is their identity? As sick as fans in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati and Baltimore and Miami are of the feeling that larger payrolls are an insurmountable hurdle, players, by and large, don't concern themselves with such matters. It's out of their control.

What's within the control of these franchises? In Milwaukee, for example, taking advantage of the money the organization has funneled toward infrastructure, such as building the largest international scouting staff in the game. Or buying into the Rays way of doing things, with the knowledge that no team has done a better job over the long haul of taking players who struggled elsewhere and finding the best in them. Or recognizing the value of stability in Cleveland, where Chris Antonetti has been running baseball operations longer than anyone outside of Brian Cashman with the Yankees.

Nobody knows how long baseball will shutter when the collective bargaining agreement expires at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 1. Discussions could remain at a standstill. The parties could wind up in court. Or on Capitol Hill, meeting with Congress, trying to reach some sort of détente to save the season. It's also eminently possible that Opening Day comes and goes and fans suffer for the mother of all self-inflicted wounds by those in charge of the game.

What's undeniable is that right now, in the year that MLB staked its argument for a cap around the inability to teams with less than to reasonably compete, 75% of the teams left in the postseason -- and at least 50% of those in the World Series -- are more than reasonably competing. They harbor championship dreams, and they don't believe they're where they are by accident.

"There is a right way to play the game of baseball, and if you can commit to that and get an entire team to commit to that, you can overcome a lot of things," Bauers said. "As far as payrolls and all that, you've still got to play the game. And all the talent and all the money in the world can't buy the focus that you need to win baseball games."