World Series Matchup: 2 Title-less, Low-Payroll Teams

The Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays will play a Suds vs. Sun World Series that will produce a first-time champion and likely baseball's first all-indoor championship, the AP reports. The best-of-seven showdown between low-payroll pennant winners opens Friday night in Milwaukee. It'll be the first World Series between title-less teams since the Philadelphia Phillies defeated the Kansas City Royals in 1980 and just the second since 1910. One city is known for the television sitcom Laverne & Shirley, the home of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, cheeseheads, and breweries that have included Miller, Pabst, and Schlitz. The other is a vacation destination featuring warm weather, beaches, and art museums.

"They're highly athletic but so are we. I'm excited to see two great teams that play the game a little differently than maybe it's been played the last decade or so," Rays manager Kevin Cash said Monday after his team defeated Cleveland in six games for the AL pennant. "We're going to use our speed. We're going to bunt when it's called for. We'll try to get matchups and I can assure you they're going to do the same." Just five of the current 30 teams have never won a title, with Colorado, San Diego, and Seattle also ringless. "The city is ready. I know that the fans are ready, and I know that we'll be ready," said Milwaukee's Jake Bauers, MVP of the four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL Championship Series. Also notable:

• This will be only the sixth time since the start of the wild-card era in 1995 that teams with the top records in each league meet in the World Series after Atlanta-Cleveland (1995), New York Yankees-Braves (1999), Boston-St. Louis (2013), Dodgers-Rays (2020), and Dodgers-Yankees (2024).
• Milwaukee had MLB's 19th-highest payroll as of Aug. 31. Tampa Bay was 25th. Not since 1991 have both pennant winners been among the bottom 50% in player spending. Minnesota was 15th among 26 teams when it beat Atlanta (19th) in seven games.
• Tampa Bay's ballpark has a fixed roof and Milwaukee's is retractable—it probably will be closed with game-time temperatures predicted to be in the upper 40s or low 50s. When all World Series games were played at retractable-roof ballparks in 2020 (Texas) and 2023 (Texas and Arizona), there were three open-air games each year.