Why This Year's Final Four Could Shape MLB's Next Salary Cap Fight

Much will be said over the Dodgers spending and their end-of-season result for 2026 after pushing a $400+ million payroll for consecutive seasons.

Sep 23, 2026; Los Angeles, California, USA; Los Angeles Dodgers President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman talks with the media prior to the game against the San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

The Los Angeles Dodgers will return home down 0-2 in the National League Championship Series. They're just two losses away from being eliminated by the Milwaukee Brewers.

In that scenario, a smaller market club will take down arguably one of the best teams ever, according to Brewers manager Pat Murphy. CBS Sports' Matt Snyder opines on that possibility and how it proves nothing.

"No, this doesn't prove we don't need a salary cap. And, no, if the Dodgers still win the World Series, it doesn't prove we do need one," Snyder wrote, putting it in bold text for further emphasis.

Snyder brings home a strong point. But given the nature of the postseason, a short series will serve as much as a judgment of every team's season as their regular-season results. In both the Brewers' and Dodgers' cases, it's championship or bust.

Brewers-Dodgers NLCS Looms Large Ahead of CBA Negotations

With the league attempting to push a hard salary cap in its next Collective Bargaining Agreement with the MLB Players Association, there will be a lot of discourse on how much teams spend. Both the league and the players' union will take the result of the Brewers vs. Dodgers NLCS as a negotiation tactic, depending on who wins.

A Dodgers three-peat would give MLB owners the ammo they need to try to force a salary cap. That's been a nonstarter for the union in its entire history, which also led to the 1994-1995 strike that took years to recover from. A win by the Brewers or any of the two American League teams remaining suggests that payroll spending isn't the end-all, be-all for winning a title.

The negotiations between owners and players probably won't ramp up until the conclusion of the World Series. Like the last time the CBA expired, which came after the 2021 season, there's a good chance owners will lock out the players until a new agreement gets reached. The only question will be if a lockout will impact the 2027 season in any way.

There are a lot of questions about baseball's economic model, especially when it comes to broadcast rights and distribution. That is the more pertinent problem MLB has to solve, rather than the Dodgers spending up the wazoo and a third of the league not spending much at all.

Why the Dodgers Spending Does and Doesn't Matter

The Dodgers have the highest Competitive Balance Tax payroll in the league, at $432.8 million, according to Cot's Contracts. The organization has the perfect storm to try to maximize its chances of winning a championship every single year. However, there's always the randomness of a five or seven-game series, and how that can be the one thing that prevents Los Angeles from winning it all.

How much the Dodgers are allowed to spend is just a tool, just like the analytics every baseball operations department uses to evaluate players. More spending means more decisions the club has to make. It also allows them to mitigate bad decisions and acquire more expensive depth.

They easily dispatched the Atlanta Braves, another team that will make luxury tax payments this season, in the NLDS. But they've been outplayed in two games against a team that's paying $300 million less for their roster. The Brewers are at $154.7 million on their CBT payroll for 2026.

In addition, the two teams remaining in the ALCS are bottom-two payroll teams in the American League. Both the Cleveland Guardians and Tampa Bay Rays spend significantly less than the Brewers, clocking in at $93.1 million and $112.9 million.

So why are three teams of the bottom-11 spenders in the championship series? Because the Brewers, Guardians, and Rays are all excellent at squeezing every dollar they spend into wins. The Brewers and Rays won 103 and 98 games this season. But those are also three of the most analytically inclined teams that religiously believe in their process, for obvious reasons.