Latest Brewers rumors cement Dodgers NLCS victory, payroll arguments

Here's a perfect, post-NLCS question for you. What threatens to "ruin baseball" more: teams willing to spend more than anyone else, or teams unwilling to spend at all? The Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers happen to be examples of those two extremes. One of them is going to the World Series, of course, while the other is reportedly weighing whether $8 million is too burdensome a figure to retain Freddy Peralta.

Before, during, and after the Dodgers swept the Brewers last week, irritable Dodgers haters and Brewers apologists alike leaned into their payroll-related complaints over LA’s star-studded roster.

Brewers manager Pat Murphy was an all-too-willing participant in the narrative, and he watched his mind games backfire. 

Murphy’s Brewers were the best team in baseball during the regular season, a campaign in which they went 6-0 against the Dodgers. They wore their 23-ranked payroll as a badge of honor over 162 games, using it as a sort of masochistic device to craft their own underdog story to their psychological advantage.

But when the lights suddenly turned bright in the NLCS, Milwaukee suddenly looked like the JV team to LA’s varsity, which pointed back to the payroll discrepancy, but in a way that made the Dodgers look smart and the Brewers foolish, even if many still refuse to see it.

Brewers should learn from the Dodgers that paying for star players isn’t wrong; it’s the way to reward fans

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts is well aware that Milwaukee’s weirdly entitled air of underdog frugality makes no sense. To be frank, professional sports are about star players, and star players demand big money. It follows that teams aiming to win championships — the goal of any right-minded organization — must invest big money in star players. Following that blueprint doesn’t mean you are “ruining baseball” or any other pro sport you happen to be competing in. It just means you are trying to win.

If the size of the World Series trophy was adjusted each season and custom-fit to reflect the inverse proportion of the winning team’s payroll, and if teams that won it all while spending hardly at all were written in bold in the annals of MLB history, the Brewers would be onto something.

But that’s not how pro sports work. Winning a title is the north star, and no one really cares how you got there once you do, provided you haven’t broken any rules. What’s more, teams like the Dodgers that assemble a championship-worthy roster by paying top-dollar for elite players are doing their part to increase the entertainment value for the average fan. This is ultimately an entertainment business.

The Brewers know the importance of spending big on stars. They’ve done so before, like with former NL MVP Christian Yelich. But they have their limits ... we just didn't think they were this low.

The Brewers’ frugality is an unnecessary and tiresome act at this point

Within hours of the Brewers getting eliminated by the Dodgers, rumors started circulating that Milwaukee is considering moving on from their ace in Peralta, despite his 2026 player option costing just $8 million to activate.

While these rumors haven’t been verified by anyone affiliated with the Brewers and may be false, the sad part is that they are believable, given how Milwaukee has operated in recent years, and given how Murphy has leaned into a narrative this season that having less-talented players who make less money than everyone else is actually an advantage.

Here’s an idea — maybe Milwaukee’s philosophy comes closer to ruining baseball than LA’s.

Think about it from a fan’s perspective. The Dodgers are giving their supporters something special — a winning, star-studded product to be excited about. And they’re not ashamed to spend big money to build that product. Why should they be? Meanwhile, the Brewers, despite boasting the 12th-ranked average attendance figure in the bigs, won’t give back to their fans in the form of talent acquisition, or in Peralta’s case, talent retention (even less forgivable).

Spending money isn’t a crime in pro sports. It’s the way to win and reward your fanbase, and the Brewers should stop expecting to get an extra award for refusing to acknowledge that reality.