Why one small-market champion doesn’t end the case for structural change

As soon as the final out was recorded in the NLCS, a fly ball secured in the glove of Brewers left fielder Jackson Chourio to end the Dodgers’ bid for a three-peat, the floodgates opened on a particular narrative:

“See, baseball doesn’t need a salary cap.”

The message echoed across social media.

For many, it’s a seductive line. The problem? The same structural issues that existed before this postseason -- ones that plague many fan bases and most players -- remain, and they are not going away.

MLB wants to address them with a new vision, not incremental change, in its labor proposal.

For starters, consider sample size.

Of course a small-market team can win, and occasionally does -- though this marks the first small-market champion since the 2015 Royals. Baseball is a sport of probability, not certainty. We want small-market success stories to happen more often and celebrate them. But one World Series trophy is an awfully small sample on which to base an argument about the sport's economic structure.

The argument in favor of the status quo ignores a much larger body of recent history. Zoom out even further, and the final four teams included a team making its first World Series trip since 1982 (Brewers), a team that hasn’t won a title since 1948 (Guardians) and a team that’s never won a World Series (Rays).

This October is something of a historical outlier, but it's not a new order of things, not some new upside-down world where small-market teams suddenly are not disadvantaged.

The logic that this postseason works against structural change is also backward -- more on that in a moment.

First, the longer record.

The bigger picture

Recency bias is powerful but distorts reality. The last thing we witness does not override everything that came before it.

MLB just had its first small-market champion since 2015, but consider that in that time there have been 16 small-market champions combined in the NFL, NBA and NHL, which all have cap-and-floor systems.

In the Wild Card Era, 88% of World Series champions (28 of 32) have ranked in the top half of payrolls. And 23 champions (72%) have ranked in the top 10. A variety of large-market teams winning titles does not represent competitive balance.

Reaching the playoffs is one thing. The ability to push deep into October overwhelmingly favors clubs that can do all the things small markets do well (see: Dodgers) while also acquiring premium talent through free agency and retaining stars by offering nine-figure extensions.

From 2016-26, top-half market teams win the World Series nine times as often as the bottom half, reached the World Series 5.7 times as often, advanced to the LCS at three times the rate -- compared to making the playoffs 1.8 times as often. In other words, as teams advance deeper into October, large-market teams gain a greater advantage.

And it’s not just the postseason where the disparity shows up.

Average wins per season for the top-five and bottom-five payroll groups from 1998–2026 differs dramatically. The top-five average 89 wins, the bottom-five average 75.

History is not kind to the idea that payroll doesn’t matter.

Small-market clubs can cycle through periods of success – the Rays and Guardians have reached the World Series in recent years – but large-market clubs retain a permanent structural advantage rooted in market size and revenue.

Spending does not guarantee success yet it accounts for a meaningful share of variance in wins over large samples. That is a real advantage to begin each season with.

For instance, while the Yankees haven’t won a World Series since 2009, they have reached the postseason in 27 of the last 32 seasons, covering the entire Wild Card Era. The small-market Marlins (3), Royals (3), and Pirates (3) have made the fewest in that span, excluding the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign.

Eleven teams entered this season with a 1% chance (or less) of winning the World Series, according to FanGraphs.com’s end-of-spring playoff projections. The majority—nine of them—resided in medium-to-small markets.

Such chances don’t create much hope or enthusiasm.

That advantage is not static. The resource gulf is growing.

The difference between the average of the top five payrolls to the bottom five reached the largest gulf on record during this Collective Bargaining Agreement: $4.3 spent by top-five payroll clubs for every dollar from the lowest five. The disruption of the RSN model is disproportionately affecting small- and mid-market clubs, widening the divide.

One miracle run does not rewrite that record or reality. And even this October, examined on its own terms, argues against the popular narrative.

Reverse logic

Here is where the “no salary cap-and-floor needed” reactions get the incentives backward.

Four of baseball’s most aggressive research-and-development clubs reached the final four. Only one of them—the Dodgers—is a large-market team.

If one is going to make an argument tied to recent events, the lesson many clubs will take from this October is not that spending is essential, rather, that elite player development and evaluation can produce a champion without a top-tier payroll.

"If everyone operated like Tampa, Cleveland and Milwaukee, I am confident the players would be quite disappointed," one exec said.

That is not a win for players.

That is an argument for a payroll floor, to preserve spending levels.

Teams being interested in efficient player spending is part of a longer trend, too, not just one postseason. This October is just the loudest, most recent data point.

The Guardians, not the A's, ushered in the "Moneyball" era in 2000 when they created DiamondView, the first in-house proprietary database in MLB.

Consider that the Cleveland's payroll was greater in 2000 (and 2001 and 2002) than it is this season.

Those early databases revealed insights on aging curves and the relative value of younger players versus free agents.

Look at the teams still remaining: the Brewers traded Corbin Burnes before he reached free agency. Former Rays pitchers Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow are Dodgers.

The Guardians have never signed a free agent to a nine-figure deal, and routinely trade stars before they hit free agency.

Teams have learned to win more efficiently, and keep learning. Clubs are now capturing performance gains through player development, thanks to new technology and training protocols. They are not always paying for such improvements immediately in salary increases.

Any small-market edge is eventually copied by larger markets (See: Dodgers). But there has always been an edge in adding a superstar in free agency, especially players in their primes. There has always been an advantage in having more resources. But such players are rare.

If the trend of leaning on pre-arbitration players and not paying up for arbitration or middle-tier free agents continues, then players’ share of revenues figures to come under continued pressure.

A salary floor directly counters that by requiring more clubs to put money into major-league payroll. While superstars face reductions under such a plan, there's the possibility for dramatic increases to the minimum salary and more robust middle class.

The majority of players would likely benefit from such a structure.

So would the majority of fan bases.

There’s a reason roughly 79% of avid fans support a cap-and-floor system, according to a Morning Consult poll last fall. They know their favorite team, if it’s not based in a major market, is playing an unfair game.

The benefits go beyond on-the-field performance; it’s the perception of fairness. A team’s success should be determined more by merit than market size. Moreover, smaller-market clubs essentially go silent in the offseason in terms of headline-making transactions. A cap-and-floor creates more transactions, and more interest, in more places.

The central issue for the CBA cycle isn’t trying to create equal outcomes. The efforts behind MLB’s proposal aim to create a more level playing field -- one that can grow interest, which in turn can grow overall revenues, benefiting clubs, players, and fans.

The Brewers winning the World Series makes for a great story but also underlies the problem. A small-market team playing for a World Series, let alone winning one, shouldn’t be a once-a-generation event.