I am prepared for two things ahead of the 2026 World Series.
First? A Fall Classic for the real baseball fan, featuring the teams with the best records in their leagues over 162 games.
Second? All sorts of people reading waaaaay too much into the payrolls of the American League’s Tampa Bay Rays and the National League’s Milwaukee Brewers. I mean, allow me an old man screams-at-cloud moment: not everything is a referendum on something these days, or a “reflection of the broader picture.”
Look: I get that there’s a narrative in the fact that the Rays have the third-lowest payroll in MLB and the Brewers come in 19th out of 30 teams. And, yes, I understand that on the eve of a labour stoppage that would seem to be dominated by a battle over the game’s historic third rail – a salary cap – seeing the Cleveland Guardians also make the final four is bound to place payroll in a prominent place.
But here’s the thing: as much as the payrolls and market sizes of these teams will be part of the public relations war, it will change nothing at the bargaining table.
The Rays and Brewers won’t save baseball.
But right now, that’s OK. Truth is, none of us know what the real pain points are for players and owners. And stuff happens, you know? MLB’s real labour Armageddon – the 232-day-old players strike in 1994 – ended when a U.S. District Court Judge, Sonia Sotomayor, slapped owners with an injunction.
Trust me: I was there covering replacement players in spring training, and not a lot of people saw that coming. And even the most recent lockout, which birthed the current collective bargaining agreement, was resolved after players on MLB teams voted against the recommendation of all eight peers (including Max Scherzer) on their executive subcommittee. 26 of 30 teams went against Scherzer et al.
The game has changed dramatically since Sotomayor dropped the judicial hammer on the commissioner’s office in the spring of 1995.
Franchise values have skyrocketed, revenue streams that were unimagined have emerged and – let us bow our heads and take a moment to remember the Montreal Expos - teams no longer exist or have moved. Playoffs expanded; steroids were injected. Bases were made bigger, defensive restrictions were implemented, openers became a thing, and ABS came about just after Angel Hernandez retired. C’est dommage.
Sotomayor? The woman who gave us baseball back is now a Supreme Court Justice. And since 1995, when baseball emerged from that strike, there have been 16 different World Series champions.
This year, we’ll have a 17th different champion. The Rays and Brewers are World Series outliers, but they’ve been part of the post-season furniture this decade. The Rays have made the post-season in six of the last eight years, and they made the World Series during the COVID year. The Brewers have won the NL Central four years in a row and five of the last six and made the playoffs four of the last five and eight of the last nine years. They are two of the smartest, most cost-efficient organizations – one that builds largely from within (the Brewers) and one that takes players no one else wants and turns them into All-Stars.
Without a doubt, the two marquee players are Junior Caminero of the Rays and Jackson Chourio of the Brewers. But if you’re a real fan, you know this already. And you know about the Miz. So, let’s find six other players to keep an eye on, and sit back and enjoy the games and the teams for what they are: the best over 162, come what may in the off-season.
Six to watch
Aaron Ashby, RP, Brewers: Think back to when the Toronto Blue Jays were in their pomp in 2026, and manager John Schneider would routinely talk about his pitchers' ability to keep a lid on a deficit as being key to their success. One of the reasons that the Brewers are the first team in MLB history with six comeback wins in the first eight games of a post-season is a bullpen that has limited opposing hitters to a .472 OPS. The Brewers are the first team to advance to the World Series with relievers being the pitcher of record in each win since the LCS was established in 1969, and Ashby has emerged as the most important arm. You know about his fastball, but his slider and curve are also Top 10 pitches in whiff rate. If it were up to me, Ashby would have been named National League Championship Series MVP. Game 4 of the NLCS was his second save of at least four outs in the playoffs, and he became the first pitcher to rack up a three-inning save in a series-clinching game since Lance McCullers, Jr. of the 2017 Houston Astros. Ashby has a chance to join Yusmeiro Petit of the 2014 San Francisco Giants as the only pitchers to fire three multiple-inning relief outings in a single post-season without allowing a run. We’ve seen this before: in the 2016 post-season, Cleveland’s Andrew Miller had 10 relief outings of four-plus innings – four of those coming in an ALCS win over the Blue Jays. In a battle of two teams that appear to be mirror images in so many ways, Ashby might be the biggest single difference maker on either team.
Jake Bauers, 1B, Brewers: True story. I was at Tropicana Field watching batting practice, and a kid was taking beautiful, lefty hacks in batting practice. Tony LaCava, the long-time scout and Toronto Blue Jays advisor, looked at me and said, “That swing right there? That’s Jake Bauers. He’s going to be killing the rest of us in the AL East for the next 10 years.” The game isn’t always linear: Bauers bounced around, thought about being a stay-at-home dad and is now in the World Series after winning NLCS MVP honours and putting up two of the most remarkable at-bats this post-season – one ending in a home run, the other in a walk. Patience and lack of chase – with or without runners on base – is a hallmark of this Brewers lineup, and even though Bauers has struck out more than any other Brewers hitter in the post-season, his relentlessness has changed games more often than any player in the lineup.
William Contreras, C, Brewers: Somebody forgot to tell the Brewers they can’t hit home runs. They’ve belted 10 over seven games, with six of them either tying the game or giving the Brewers the lead. For a team hitting the second-fewest HRs during the regular season, they’ve had a remarkable knack for meeting the moment and Contreras, their combustible catcher, has hit three of them while catching every inning without allowing a passed ball and throwing out two of four base-stealers. Defence will be a big deal in this one, because there’s a whole lot of Chandler Simpson to the Rays game. Game 6 of the ALCS, for example, was the Rays' fifth multi-stolen base game of the post-season, just two shy of the record held by the 2023 Arizona Diamondbacks, and my Blair & Barker colleague Kevin Barker says: “The bases have never been bigger.” Toss in the fact that this is the first World Series with the ABS challenge in effect, and you wonder how much extra drama we’ll get from Contreras’ aggressive and often surprising use of challenges.
Bonus watching point: will we be blessed with an opportunity to see whose HR trot will be more theatrical, Contreras’ or Junior Caminero’s? We can only hope.
Yandy Diaz, DH, Rays: His six extra-base hits are the most of any player in a post-season dominated by pitching, and his bold guarantee of a Rays win ahead of Game 6 – followed by a two-run home run – is one of the moments of the month. Barker thinks the rest vs. rust argument is real, and the Rays hitters seem to have provided supporting evidence: Diaz and Caminero provided exclamation points late in the ALCS after a schedule that saw them get five days off due to earning a pass through to the ALDS, another four after they swept the Yankees in that series and seeing their ALCS interrupted by a rainout of Game 4. Let’s see if they can carry it over to the World Series, where they will see the hardest-throwing staff in baseball. Nobody throws as many pitches of 97 miles per hour or more than the Brewers and the Rays did not handle elite velocity well this year, with Diaz surprisingly ineffective. If the Brewers focus on not letting Caminero beat them – which would seem logical – Diaz will need to be an even bigger factor.
Drew Rasmussen, SP, Rays: Freddy Peralta is the flavour of the month … but Rasmussen is the reliable classic who is getting the start in Game 2 to give him an extra day. In other words, the Rays have structured their pitching plans around him. He’ll get at least two starts in the World Series, and who knows what happens out of the bullpen in a long series given the Rays' middle relief issues. This series will be a fascinating matchup between a Brewers lineup that doesn’t chase much and a Rays staff with the lowest walk rate in the Majors, led by Rasmussen. Both trends continued into the post-season. Rasmussen, like Peralta, is a former Brewer who has already become the first Rays pitcher to complete eight innings in a playoff game (Game 1 of the AL Division Series against the New York Yankees) and the first Rays pitcher since Shane McClanahan in 2012 to complete seven innings. Coupled with his seven innings again in Game 5 of the ALCS against the Guardians, Rasmussen has been responsible for two of the eight post-season starts of seven innings or better in the Rays' 73 playoff games. His ability to throw three fastballs along with his change-up makes him almost platoon-negligible, an important point at a time when managers are particularly aggressive.
Chandler Simpson, LF, Rays: We had Joe Maddon on Blair & Barker and asked him how the Rays could overcome their issues with pitches of 97 MPH plus in a series in which Jacob Misiorowski will likely throw the four fastest pitches in World Series history in the first inning of Game 1. Contact. Safety and suicide squeeze bunts were a possibility, he noted, although Maddon also added: “It’s not easy to bunt against that type of velocity, either.” I just think in a series that promises lots of stuff in the margins, a player such as Simpson has a chance to write his name large over proceedings with his speed on the basepaths and in the outfield. Manager Kevin Cash hit him sixth, fifth and third in the ALCS. Watching where he is in the lineup on any given day will tell us a great deal about how the Rays manager feels his team will need to approach the Brewers' elite arms.
JEFF BLAIR’S PICK: Rays def. Brewers in 6
