The 2024 Brewers season ended with a bite from the Big Apple, and as the playoffs roll toward the concluding World Series, one thing is apparent--while money cannot buy happiness, it does seem pretty good at buying championships.

The one last hope of all the small-market teams is the Cleveland Guardians, who currently trail the New York Yankees in the ALCS, 3 games to 1. Depending on where you look (Baseball-Reference, USA Today, spotrac, the remaining teams rank 1st/2nd (New York Yankees), 1st/3rd (New York Mets), 3rd/4th/5th (Los Angeles Dodgers), and 23rd/28th (Cleveland Guardians) in league payroll.

It does seem like high-salary teams win it all every year, but how do they rank and more importantly, how do the Brewers compare? I went through all the data from the Wild Card Era (1995-2023) to view the trends.

All data from the Baseball-Reference Miscellaneous Team Info tables.

First, the team payroll rank for each World Series team since 1995.

And how is all of that summarized when we look at the top 5 and top 15 teams by payroll rank?

Since 1995, 48% of the champions and 38% of the contestants in the World Series have had top 5 payrolls. 93% of the champions and 83% of the contestants have been in the top half of payroll. Only two low-payroll teams have won it all -- the 2002 Anaheim Angels and the 2003 Florida Marlins. It has been two decades since that has happened.

The list of losing World Series teams in the bottom half of payroll for the season includes the 2007 Rockies, 2008 and 2020 Rays, 2010 Rangers, 2014 Royals, 2015 Mets, 2016 Indians, and 2023 Diamondbacks.

Only nine times in 29 years (31%), has the team with the lower payroll in the World Series beaten the team with the higher payroll. Of those winners, three of them had top 10 payrolls themselves, and seven were in the top half of the league.

Most World Series champions fare favorably to the top payroll team in the league, with the most notable exceptions that have already been mentioned.

If we search for World Series winning teams with less than 50% of the team with the highest payroll in the league each year, but were still in the top 15 teams by payroll, we do get a few more interesting names (Top Payroll Team): the 2005 White Sox (Yankees), 2006 Cardinals (Yankees), 2008 Phillies (Yankees), 2010 Giants (Yankees), and 2015 Royals (Dodgers). The Yankees have had the top payroll according to Baseball-Reference for 19 of the last 29 years and have turned all of that money into 5 World Series championships.

Finally, how does this apply to the Milwaukee Brewers?

In the Wild Card era, the Brewers have never had a higher payroll than the team which won the World Series. When the 2003 Florida Marlins won it all with $49 million dollars, the Brewers had only $41 million.

In their most recent run of success in the last 15 years, the closest they've come to competing with the championship team on payroll was right at the beginning. In 2008 through 2012 (with the notable exception of 2009), the Brewers had at least 80% of the payroll of the eventual World Series winning team and were firmly near the middle of the league. Since then, the team has only cracked 70% once (78%, 2022), and has otherwise been in the range of 50-70% of the top payroll. They have never been in the top 10 and have ranked at least 15th in payroll just five times, with three of those years ranking exactly 15th.

Since 2008, the 1st and 3rd quartile values for the Brewers payroll percentage of the max team have been 34 - 49%. Their payroll rank interquartile range has been 15-20.

9 teams have managed to make the World Series with similar or worse payrolls and payroll ranks (2003 Marlins, 2007 Rockies, 2008 Rays, 2010 Rangers, 2014 Royals, 2015 Mets, 2016 Indians, 2020 Rays, 2023 Diamondbacks), but only the 2003 Marlins won it all. Interestingly enough, all of those teams actually had much lower payrolls than the Brewers typically  do, with the highest comparative payrolls among them being the 2016 Indians (17th, 41% of max) and last year's Dbacks (21st, 44% of max).

With the ever-shifting landscape of media streaming rights and whispers of tighter budgets next year, the Brewers seem to be caught in a royal bind. We may keep rooting for them, hoping they’ll be next year’s Cinderella. But without that fateful kiss of destiny, they might end up more like Snow White—eternally dormant after one too many poisoned bites of the apple.