The 2026 World Series for Major League Baseball gets underway today. The National League champion Milwaukee Brewers will host the American League champion Tampa Bay Rays in the first game of the best-of-seven series that will determine the ultimate champion of 2026 MLB season.
Both teams deserve to compete in this year's fall classic. There are 30 teams in Major League Baseball, 12 of which were eligible to compete for the world title at the end of the 2026 season. Of those teams, the Brewers and Rays had the best win-loss records in their respective leagues. They beat out the other ten teams to earn their slot in the World Series, so there's no question that the winningest teams in both leagues are playing for 2026's world championship.
Both teams share an unusual characteristic in the modern era of baseball playoffs. The payrolls of both teams fall well below the median of the teams that made it to the postseason.
Visual Capitalist's Jenna Ross explores that unique outcome in the following infographic:
The Milwaukee Brewers' payroll ranked 19th overall in the major leagues, while the Tampa Bay Rays ranked 25th out of 30 teams. Which is especially remarkable because if you were to try to predict which teams would even make it to the MLB playoffs based on how much each team pays its players, you wouldn't pick either to make it to the playoffs, much less the World Series.
In Ross' infographic, the length of the baseball bats indicate each team's payroll, while the blue-colored bats represent the teams that reached the playoffs and the red-colored bats represent the teams that didn't make it. Of the teams with the ten highest payrolls in 2026, eight made it to the postseason.
There's no question that money matters in a team's success, with the sport's most highly paid players also among its best players who can win enough games to make it possible for their teams to qualify for the playoffs. Low-paying teams that make the playoffs are the anomalies in baseball's modern era.
And yet, the final two teams competing for professional baseball's top title in 2026 are low-paying anomalies.
In the early 2000s, Oakland Athletics' general manager Billy Beane found success in the regular season by identifying undervalued but highly talented players, leading to the A's multiple appearances in baseball's postseason despite having among the lowest payrolls in sports. But his teams never made it to the World Series, often because randomness and bad luck would derail them. As he described it, "My s*** doesn’t work in the playoffs.”
Over twenty years later, new generations of general managers have flipped Billy Beane's script for success. They've demonstrated that assembling teams of talented players by offering them high pay can reliably get them into the playoffs. Even so, it doesn't guarantee they'll win the world championship. The same uncontrollable and random factors that derailed Billy Beane's teams' after getting into the playoffs are afflicting them as well.
It's a relief to know the curse of Billy Beane is still alive and well in baseball. Because how boring would baseball be if the thing that really decides who will win the World Series each year was decided before the season even began.
Reference
Jenna Ross. Does Spending More Help MLB Teams Make the Playoffs? Visual Capitalist. [Webp image]. 19 October 2026.
Labels: data visualization, sports
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