For all the noise about the Dodgers, the more revealing problem in MLB right now is Tampa Bay.
That’s the uncomfortable truth sitting underneath the standings and the labor fight ahead. The Dodgers can be cast as the villain because of their $400 million-plus payroll, but the Rays are the team that really complicate the league’s argument - and they’re doing it in a way the Texas Rangers can’t ignore.
Skip Schumaker said Sunday morning that scoreboard-watching is part of the job, even if it doesn’t happen on a fan’s timetable.
“You’re scoreboard-watching as soon as the game ends; there is no doubt about it. I’d be lying if I said we didn’t,” Schumaker said Sunday morning in the dugout, a few hours before the Rangers’ finished their series against the Tampa Bay Rays with a 2-2 split.
“To me, I never look any other score until Sept. 1.
“Fans and [media] can react to [the standings], and that’s great. It’s a good talking point.
Players are focused on their numbers and winning, I don’t want to say in that order. Numbers produce wins.”
That last line gets at the heart of the debate. In baseball, production drives everything, and that’s why the Rays are such a powerful counterpoint to the Dodgers. If MLB owners want to argue that one giant payroll is poisoning the sport, the players can point to Tampa Bay and Milwaukee and say the opposite: smart drafting, player development and efficient roster building can still win.
The Rays are entering play on Sept. 8 with the best record in the American League and a four-game lead over the New York Yankees in the AL East. Their 85 wins are tied for the third-most in MLB. Their payroll, reported at $89 million, ranks 26th.
Milwaukee is right there too. The Brewers lead baseball with 89 wins and rank 19th in payroll.
That’s the kind of evidence players love. It’s proof, at least in their view, that spending the most money is not the only road to winning. And from a union perspective, it is the kind of proof that blows up the league’s case for a hard salary cap.
MLB’s bigger agenda is not hard to read. The league wants the Dodgers to serve as the poster team for why a strict cap should be part of the next collective bargaining agreement, which expires after the season.
MLB is the only major league without a hard salary cap, and the MLB Players Association has held that line for this century. Both sides expect the issue to help drive a lockout in 2027.
But the Dodgers are not the best argument against the current system. They are the best argument for players getting paid more.
The Rays are the sharper challenge. So are the Brewers.
They are the clubs owners hate to see succeed because they undercut the simplest pitch in the sport’s labor war. If a team near the bottom of payroll can keep winning, then the “competitive balance” argument gets a lot messier.
Tampa Bay’s track record makes that point even louder. The Rays are headed to the playoffs for the 10th time since 2008 and are likely to claim their fifth division title in that span.
They’ve reached two World Series. The Brewers have never won one.
Neither has Tampa Bay.
There’s another catch, though, and it matters. Success like this has not translated into a championship in the last decade for a club outside the top 10 in payroll.
That’s where the Rangers sit in the middle of all of it. They’re not built like Tampa Bay, because they haven’t drafted and developed at that level.
They’re not built like Los Angeles, because they don’t want to live among baseball’s biggest spenders. After cutting payroll in the offseason, Texas is currently 14th in MLB.
And in a division that Schumaker effectively described as the AL Worst, the Rangers are still hanging around first place in a race that could produce a winner with a losing record.
That leaves Texas in a familiar and awkward spot: not cheap enough to mimic the Rays, not aggressive enough to chase the Dodgers, and therefore a natural supporter of the kind of salary-cap push MLB is almost certain to make.
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