The Los Angeles Dodgers will be joined by three small-market teams in one of the most fascinating League Championship Series rounds in MLB history.
The Milwaukee Brewers will play the Dodgers in the NLCS. The Cleveland Guardians and Tampa Bay Rays meet in the ALCS.
The Dodgers are going for a three-peat.
The Brewers, Guardians and Rays are all trying to pull quite the shock ahead of what is going to be quite the contentious collective bargaining negotiation this offseason — and if one of the small-market clubs wins the World Series, it’ll make for quite the extra confusion in what arguments must be made toward the CBA.
Because when you break this all down, the numbers are actually shocking.
The Dodgers have a higher payroll than the other three LCS teams combined.
Dodgers payroll: $339M
Brewers, Guardians and Rays
COMBINED payroll: $316MTurns out you can buy October baseball š https://t.co/SEwSJLBNO8
ā Bovada (@BovadaOfficial) October 11, 2026
Dodgers Payroll
The Dodgers have a total payroll this season of $339,319,244 — according to Spotrac. Fangraphs lists it even higher at an estimated $412 million.
That’s second-most in baseball, ironically just behind the New York Mets, who missed the playoffs entirely.
The leader toward this payroll value is Shohei Ohtani. While his contract has deferred value for almost all of its money, it still gets split up on the books for this discussion as a $70 million expenditure for 2026.
Kyle Tucker is getting in the ballpark of $33 million this season — while his contract is heavily signing bonus, half of the signing bonus for the year then gets allocated into the payroll column.
Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Mookie Betts are all making at least $30 million this season.
Freddie Freeman is at $27 million.
The Dodgers then have Teoscar Hernandez at $19.7 million, Edwin Diaz at $17 million, Yoshinobu Yamamoto with a $16.2 million number against the cap, both Tanner Scott and Will Smith at $16 million, Blake Treinen at $13.5 million and Max Muncy at $10 million.
They aren’t paying Tarik Skubal his full contract value for the season, but Skubal was on a deal for $32 million for this season, so L.A. has gotten a proportion of that on the books.
All told, the Dodgers are expensive, just as everyone already knew.
Brewers Payroll
Since the Spotrac values were used for the math in the X post above, the Brewers on that site show a payroll adjust total for 2026 of $146 million.
Christian Yelich counts the most against that at $26 million.
Dustin May and Antonio Senzatela are both $12 million, the only two other guys with a cap hit of eight figures.
Guardians Payroll
The Guardians check in at $74.5 million by the Spotrac numbers.
They only have one player with a payroll salary of eight figures: Jose Ramirez, at $25 million this year.
Steven Kwan is next on the list at just $7.725 million.
Rays Payroll
The Rays come in at $95.6 million according to Spotrac.
Yandy Diaz leads the way at just $12 million.
Nick Martinez ($9M), Freddy Peralta ($8M) and Steven Matz ($7.5M) count the next most against the cap.
Dodgers’ Payroll Is More Than Brewers, Guardians, Rays Combined in NLCS, ALCS