The winner of the National League Championship Series may determine whether Major League Baseball will be played in 2027.
This may seem far-fetched. It is not. This looks like a best-of-seven baseball series starting Monday milwaukee brewers host the los angeles dodgers Game 1 will be played as a proxy for the coming labor war between MLB and the MLB Players Association.
Owners throughout the game want a salary cap – and if the Dodgers, with their record $500 million-plus payroll, win consecutive World Series, it will only increase the league’s pressure to regulate salaries. For the Brewers, a consistently bottom-third payroll team, the emerging triumph would serve as the latest proof that winners can emerge even in the game’s smallest markets and that the failures of other low-revenue teams have less to do with spending than execution.
Of course, the truth lies somewhere in between. But not in the middle where both sides have staked out their negotiating positions in what is expected to be a brutal battle to determine the future of the sport’s economics. And that’s why whoever emerges victorious will be used as an ally when formal negotiations begin next spring for a collective bargaining agreement that expires on December 1, 2026.
If it’s the Dodgers, MLB owners — who were already vocal publicly and even privately about Los Angeles spending as much as the bottom six teams in payroll this year — will likely scream even louder. Already, MLB is expected to release players upon contract expiration. Back-to-back championships by the Dodgers could energize MLB and add to the group of fans who see a cap as a panacea for the plague of big-money teams that have monopolized championships over the past decade.
Such a scenario would not deter the union from its half-century-old anti-cap stance. The MLBPA has no intention of negotiating if a cap remains on the table, and considering that MLB was on the verge of losing games in 2022 because no cap was included in the negotiations, players have already talked among themselves about how to avoid wasting time in 2027. Sure, a Brewers win wouldn’t ensure avoidance of this, but if in any argument about cap requirements, the union can counter that the juggernaut the Dodgers lost to a team of self-proclaimed average Joes with salaries a quarter of the size, it reinforces that team-building skills can exist regardless of financial strength.
brewers have joined tampa bay rays And cleveland patron as a harbinger of low-revenue success this decade. Over the past eight years, Milwaukee has won five NL Central titles and made the playoffs seven times. At 97-65 this year, the Brewers have the best record in baseball. And they did it with a unique mix of players.
According to ESPN Research, 15 of the 26 players on Milwaukee’s NLCS roster came via trade, including most of its best players (slugger). Christian Yelichcaught by William Contrerasace freddy peralta And trevor megillClose for most of the season). The Brewers drafted four (Bryce Turang, Jakub Misiorowski, sal freelick And Aaron AshbyAll major contributors), three signed as minor league free agents, two brought in via international amateur free agency (their best players). jackson chouriobe close to abner uribe) and snatched one of the minor league portions of the offseason Rule 5 draft.
That leaves one major league free agent. One. And he was a left-hander jose quintanaWho signed a one-year, $4 million deal in March.
Think about it: The MLBPA, which has struggled with free agency since its inception, would introduce a team that doesn’t spend on free agents. Odd partner, yes, but it strengthens the Union’s position: If the current system is beyond repair because of money, how did a team that didn’t spend win championships?
On the other hand, the Dodgers are not as free-agent-heavy as might be assumed. They have also acquired the most players through trade, although only nine, and many of them from mookie bets To tyler glasnow To tommy adman To alex vesia – Play an important role in the team. Los Angeles signed five major league free agents (including shohei ohtani, freddy freeman And blake snell), plus two professional international free agents (yoshinobu yamamoto And Hyesong Kim), two amateur international free agents (roki sasaki And andy pages) and two minor league free agents (max munsey And justin deanThey drafted five of their players – one more than the Brewers, whose development system is considered one of baseball’s best – and completed their roster. jack dreyerAn undrafted free agent.
Dreyer highlights what the Dodgers and Brewers do exceptionally well: extracting talent from players through systems that value a combination of scouting, analytics and superior coaching. It doesn’t matter whether you spend half a billion dollars on the Brewers’ books or $115 million or so currently. If you can be an organization that gets the best out of the players, you will win.
Perhaps if they didn’t stand so end up on opposite ends of the continuum, the league and union could agree that debating around a playoff series is silly. Both sides must understand that, in the grand scheme of things, a seven-game series says very little, especially when it comes to the complex economic system of $30 billion corporations competing in the same space.
But this battle is as much about narrative as it is reality, and if MLB is going to push for the salary cap, it needs as much proof as possible, and the Dodgers becoming the first team to win back-to-back World Series in a quarter century would provide another nugget on top of the areas the league has already cited. was the last team to do so New York Yankees — and the competitive-balance tax, the proto-cap that currently penalizes high-spending teams, came into existence specifically to check what other owners believe was the Yankees’ uncontrolled spending.
The Dodgers are the new Yankees, who have more money than anyone and are willing to spend. They have won the NL West 12 of the last 13 years and captured championships in 2020 and 2024. And despite their inevitability, baseball is not suffering in most areas important to the league. Television ratings have increased. Attendance has increased. The implementation of a pitch clock ahead of the 2024 season modernized the game and it is now almost universally beloved. The game’s appeal will be further enhanced by the addition of an automated ball-strike challenge system next year.
This is NLCS baseball at its best. A well-crafted machine of superstars peaking at the right time is trying to become baseball’s first back-to-back champions since 2000 against a team that plays an enjoyable brand of baseball, is extremely likable, and always seems to succeed. The Brewers have yet to win a championship – not just in this recent stretch of excellence but in their 57-year history – and derailing the Dodgers on the way to doing so would make an even bigger story.
And, yes, despite more wins, the Brewers enter this series as underdogs, and that’s a fair designation. Even though they defeated the Dodgers in six games played in July. Even if their bullpen is full of fire-breathing dirt. Even though they have hit as many home runs as Los Angeles in this postseason, the Dodgers have hit 78 more during the regular season.
There will be plenty of great baseball played in Milwaukee and Los Angeles next week, too, with fans racing along to the Cup matchups that make October the most special month of the year. Ohtani, Bates and Freeman are trying to catch Misiorowski’s fastball and read his slider. Chaurio, Contreras and Turang are trying to solve Snell, Yamamoto, Glasnow and Ohtani. The Brewers’ terrible bullpen, with five relievers who hit a high-octane fastball better than anyone this year, faced off against a team that threw over 97 mph. The Dodgers are trying to figure out if they can rely on any relievers other than Sasaki, and the Brewers, who were the fifth-hardest team to strike out this season, were trying to get at Los Angeles’ bullpen with a barrage of balls in play.
While the baseball itself will be undeniable, this is bigger than just the NLCS game. Its tentacles will reach into the future, with an unknowable but undeniable location far more consequential. Yes, it’s just a series. But this is too much.
