The Brewers finished the regular season with the best record in baseball at 103 wins, but October still runs through Los Angeles. The Dodgers have spent like a powerhouse all year, and their payroll gap over the other three teams left standing is impossible to miss.
At $339.32 million, the Dodgers sit second in MLB in adjusted payroll, trailing only the Mets. That figure does not even capture the full picture, since it counts Kyle Tucker at just $1 million while ignoring most of the impact of the $54 million signing bonus he received in February.
That kind of spending dwarfs the rest of the field. The Brewers are at $146.21 million, good for 19th in MLB.
The Rays come in at $95.62 million, 28th. The Guardians are last at $74.46 million.
Tucker’s signing bonus alone is only about $20 million shy of Cleveland’s entire payroll.
The Dodgers also dominate the upper end of the salary scale. Fourteen players in the LCS are making at least $15 million per year, not counting Tucker because his compensation came almost entirely through a signing bonus.
Eleven of those 14 are Dodgers. Of the other three, one is Brandon Woodruff, and he is out for the season because of injury.
Shohei Ohtani leads the group at $70 million, followed by Blake Snell at $36.4 million and Tyler Glasnow at $32.5 million. Tarik Skubal is at $32 million, with Mookie Betts at $30 million and Freddie Freeman at $27 million. The rest of the list includes Christian Yelich at $26 million, Jose Ramirez at $25 million, Woodruff at $22 million, Yoshinobu Yamamoto at $20.3 million, Teoscar Hernandez at $19.7 million, Edwin Diaz at $17 million, and Tanner Scott and Will Smith at $16 million apiece.
For Tampa Bay and Cleveland, the spending ceiling looks very different. The Rays’ highest-paid player is Yandy Diaz at $12 million. The Guardians do not have another player besides Ramirez making even $8 million annually.
Across the playoff bracket, the payroll picture is just as stark. The Yankees are at $308.34 million, the Phillies at $291.95 million, the Braves at $263.46 million, the Cubs at $249.32 million, the Astros at $239.76 million, the Padres at $226.25 million and the Red Sox at $207.99 million. After that come the Brewers, White Sox at $103.33 million, Rays and Guardians.
The bigger-budget teams had the edge in numbers overall: eight of the top 10 payroll clubs reached the postseason. But the field was not perfectly aligned with spending power.
Three of the four teams in the LCS are in the bottom half of the league in payroll, including Cleveland at the very bottom. And the Mets, who rank first in payroll, did not make the postseason at all, with the caveat that the Dodgers have a higher active roster payroll in 2026.
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With the series moving into Game 3, the Dodgers are at least weighing whether a change is needed, though no decision has been finalized. If they do decide to make a move, the ripple effects could be significant, with rookie Josue De Paula emerging as the most likely option to take over at designated hitter and give the lineup a different look against the Brewers. [Read more 🡒]
Dodgers Rivalry Still Shapes One Padres Figures October Rooting Choice
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For Stammen, the Brewers success adds an interesting layer to how San Diegos own postseason path gets judged. If Milwaukee keeps advancing, it can make the Padres October showing look a little more credible in hindsight, even as the old Los Angeles-San Diego divide keeps the Dodgers out of the conversation for him. And if the Brewers keep winning, the larger NL race only gets more tangled for anyone in the division trying to measure where the Padres really stand. [Read more 🡒]
Yamamoto Keeps Giving Dodgers A Huge October Edge
Yoshinobu Yamamoto has already become the kind of October starter the Dodgers can lean on when the margin gets thin. He was sharp enough in the 2024 postseason to look comfortable in the middle of pressure, and his seven-inning, 10-strikeout effort in NLDS Game 3 only added to the sense that Los Angeles has something special in its rotation when the games matter most.
Now the Dodgers are turning to him again as the NLCS shifts into a tougher spot against the Brewers, with the series already tilted by a Game 1 loss. Yamamoto has given Los Angeles a huge edge all month, and the next start carries the familiar postseason weight of seeing just how far that edge can stretch. [Read more 🡒]