When a fan points to the bottom of MLB payroll rankings and says the sport doesn’t need a salary cap, that’s a fair reaction for this October. Milwaukee, Cleveland and Tampa Bay are all still playing after starting the season among the league’s five lowest payrolls.
But that snapshot only tells part of the story.
Looking back over the last 10 World Series, the bigger picture is hard to ignore: the sport’s biggest markets have piled up most of the trips to the Fall Classic. Using the Sports Business Journal’s media market rankings, teams from the top five U.S. markets accounted for 10 of the 20 World Series participants over that span, not counting Toronto. Add Houston at No. 6, and that number jumps to 14 of 20.
The list is a strong one for the sport’s biggest cities. New York produced the Yankees in 2024 and the Mets in 2015, and both lost in the World Series.
Los Angeles has been there five times in all during that stretch, with the Dodgers winning three titles and losing twice. Chicago’s Cubs won in 2016.
Dallas/Fort Worth’s Rangers won the title in 2023. Philadelphia reached the 2022 World Series and lost.
Houston won twice, in 2022 and 2017, and also lost twice, in 2021 and 2019. Atlanta won in 2021.
Washington, D.C., won in 2019. Boston won in 2018.
Beyond that top tier, the list gets thinner. Tampa/St.
Petersburg’s Rays lost in the 2020 World Series. Arizona, in the Phoenix market, lost in the 2023 World Series.
Cleveland lost in the 2016 World Series. Kansas City, a No. 35 market, won the 2015 World Series.
And Milwaukee, ranked No. 39, is headed to this year’s World Series.
Toronto doesn’t fit into the U.S. market rankings, but with a metro area of about 7 million, it would land in the top five in the United States.
That’s the core of the argument: over a 10-year span, the teams reaching baseball’s biggest stage have mostly come from the biggest markets. Only four of the 20 World Series teams came from outside the top 10, and each of those markets showed up just once.
That’s why using this season as proof that small-market teams don’t need a salary cap misses the broader trend.
The point becomes even clearer when you look at the other major sports. MLB is the only one of the four big leagues where fans in some cities openly think, “My team has no chance to win a title because they can’t/won’t spend enough.”
That feeling doesn’t come up the same way in the NFL, NHL or NBA.
The NHL has seen recent champions from Carolina, Florida, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami. The last top-10 media market to win the Stanley Cup was Washington in 2018.
St. Louis won in 2019, and Pittsburgh won back-to-back titles in 2016 and 2017.
In the NFL, Kansas City has been the recent standard, even though it’s a No. 35 market. You don’t hear fans saying their team can’t compete because it can’t spend enough.
The NBA has had eight different title winners since the end of the Cleveland-Golden State run from 2015 through 2018, including Toronto and three teams outside the top 10 media markets: Oklahoma City, Milwaukee and Denver.
That’s the difference. In the other leagues, fans are more likely to blame bad decisions and poor runs of management. In baseball, the economics of the sport still shape the debate in a much different way.
In Other News...
Guardians Put Their Trust In A Risky ALCS Game 4 Plan
Rain has already pushed Game 4 of the American League Championship Series into a delay, but the Guardians are still set on taking a calculated approach once play resumes. Holding a 2-1 edge over the Rays, Cleveland plans to piece together the matchup with a bullpen game, with Shawn Armstrong lined up to get the start in a move that says plenty about how the club views this moment in the series.
Tanner Bibee voiced confidence in the pitching group before the weather intervened, a reassuring note for a team asking a lot of its arms at a high-stakes point in October. The plan leaves little margin for error, especially against a Tampa Bay lineup looking to even the series, but Cleveland has made clear it trusts its depth enough to lean into the gamble rather than back away from it. [Read more 🡒]
Guardians Fans Just Got An ALCS Curveball They Didn't Need
Rain forced a familiar October inconvenience onto the schedule Friday, pushing Game 4 of the ALCS back to Saturday and reshuffling the rest of the series with it. The delay means Game 5 has been moved to Sunday, wiping out what had been an off-day and turning the weekend into a quick turnaround for fans who had already mapped out their plans around the original calendar.
For Cleveland, the timing adds another layer to a series that already feels tense and finely balanced. The Guardians carried momentum from their Game 3 win, sparked by Petey Halpins key home run, and they are planning to go with Shawn Armstrong as an opener in the next game. Now the challenge is not just about matchups on the field, but about handling a schedule that suddenly asks everyone involved to pivot on short notice. [Read more 🡒]
Guardians ALCS Momentum Is Suddenly In MLBs Hands
Rain hung over Progressive Field before first pitch of Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, turning the evening into a waiting game for the Guardians and Rays. League and team officials met to review the weather and field conditions, and with no official start time announced, Clevelands chance to keep the series moving was suddenly in the hands of the forecast.
If the game does not go forward as planned, it would likely be pushed to Sunday, with Saturdays matchup still on the schedule. For the Guardians, who are trying to ride postseason momentum at home, the delay adds another layer of uncertainty to a series that has already become a test of patience as much as execution. [Read more 🡒]