A World Series without the Dodgers will hurt now, but help MLB later | Bobby Burak

After taking a 2-0 lead in the NLCS, the Milwaukee Brewers now hold the lead in World Series betting over the Los Angeles Dodgers.

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For the first time this season, the Los Angeles Dodgers are not the betting favorites to win the World Series. The Milwaukee Brewers, who lead the Dodgers 2-0 in the NLCS, are the betting favorites to win the World Series.

Despite the funeral arrangements the Dodgers are making, Los Angeles isn't out yet. The Blue Jays went 2-0 in the ALCS and defeated the Mariners last season. Fifteen other teams have done the same.

Those aren't huge odds, but as Dodgers fans kept reminding everyone while assembling their superteam, baseball is inherently random. Teams get hot. Players get cold. Great combinations disappear for a week. Struggling pitchers suddenly look formidable. We're not writing off this Dodgers team until someone writes it off.

Still, the prospect of a World Series without the Dodgers seems real for the first time in a while.

The Dodgers are on the brink after Milwaukee's Bobip Machine picked up another win for the Brewers.

Still, the prospect of a World Series without the Dodgers seems real for the first time in a while.

In the short term, a Brewers-Rays/Guardians World Series is hardly an MLB dream. As those clubs play a pure form of baseball, they are small teams with little national appeal.

By comparison, the last two World Series with the Dodgers, against the Yankees in 2024 and the Blue Jays in 2025, averaged about 15.3 million viewers. In 2023, Texas Rangers-Arizona Diamondbacks World Series games averaged just 9 million. The Brewers-Rays/Guardians matchup would likely be closer to 2,023, barring a long and dramatic seven-game streak.

However, the long-term gains of the Dodgers missing the World Series could be worth less viewership this season.

The Dodgers have been World Series favorites for nearly all of the past three years, dating back to the December 2023 signing of Shohei Ohtani. During Game 7 of last year's World Series when the Dodgers were trailing and the Toronto Blue Jays had shorter live chances. Los Angeles eventually came back to win and win their second straight championship.

The Dodgers enter 2026 as even heavier favorites than the past two years after adding Kyle Tucker and Edwin Diaz in the offseason. Then, in August, they traded for Tarik Skobal, arguably the best pitcher in baseball.

ESPN MLB's Jeff Passan likened the 2026 Dodgers to the Avengers, citing an unprecedented array of star power.

Back-to-back champions are adding more stars while most of the league refrains from spending or trading aggressively, fueling talk of potential lockouts and demands for the salary cap. Various outlets -- including this one and this writer -- have argued that the growing rift between the Dodgers and much of MLB is "ruining baseball."

Clearly, the Dodgers are not to blame for their relentless pursuit of improvement. They are doing exactly what any fan should want from their team. The criticism is of the system that allows such a competitive imbalance to exist in the first place.

As the NFL has shown, fans have to believe their team has a chance. It doesn't even have to be true. The same handful of franchises typically compete for the Super Bowl each year. But the constant turnover of the roster gives most fans reason enough to speak with hope before each season.

Of course, Jets and Dolphins fans are excluded from this demonstration.

That gets harder in baseball when fans suspect their franchise is more likely to trade its homegrown stars to the Dodgers than build around them. The management of the Detroit Tigers with Escobal is a case in point.

There's a reason movie spoilers are considered so abhorrent. People don't want to know the end of the story before it begins.

If the Dodgers overturn a 2-0 deficit, advance to the World Series and win a third straight championship -- still the second most likely postseason outcome, according to the sportsbooks -- MLB will have an increasingly difficult time convincing fans that the rest of the league isn't playing for second place. It will also become harder to argue that stricter wage laws are not necessary.

Technically, MLB writers would rather have the Dodgers come back, reach the World Series, and then dramatically lose Game 7. This makes for short-term television viewing without amplification. The idea that the richest team in baseball is inevitable in the long run.

However, if we're talking strictly about the long-term health of the sport, the small-market Brewers are enough to take down perhaps the biggest team in baseball on paper.

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