A Dodgers-less World Series would hurt now, but help MLB later | Bobby Burack

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 demoralized Dodgers are making, Los Angeles isn't eliminated yet. The Blue Jays overcame a 2-0 deficit in the ALCS to defeat the Mariners just last season. Fifteen other teams have done the same.

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

Even so, the prospect of a Dodgers-less World Series feels real for the first time in a while.

DODGERS DYNASTY ON THE BRINK AFTER THE MILWAUKEE BABIP MACHINE DIALS UP ANOTHER WIN FOR BREWERS

That said, the prospect of a Dodgers-less World Series feels real for the first time in a while.

In the short term, a Brewers-Rays/Guardians World Series would hardly be MLB's dream matchup. As pure a form of baseball as those clubs play, they are small-market teams without much national appeal.

For comparison, the past two World Series featuring the Dodgers, against the Yankees in 2024 and Blue Jays in 2025, averaged around 15.3 million viewers. In 2023, the Texas Rangers-Arizona Diamondbacks World Series averaged just 9 million. A Brewers-Rays/Guardians matchup would probably land much closer to the 2023 number, barring a long, dramatic seven-game series.

However, the long-term gains off the Dodgers missing the World Series could prove worth the smaller viewership this season.

The Dodgers have been World Series favorites for nearly the entirety of the past three years, dating back to the signing of Shohei Ohtani in December 2023. There was a brief stretch during Game 7 of last year's World Series when the Dodgers were trailing and the Toronto Blue Jays had shorter live odds. Los Angeles ultimately came back to win, clinching its second straight championship.

The Dodgers entered 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 Skubal, arguably the best pitcher in baseball.

ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan likened the 2026 Dodgers to the Avengers, citing their unprecedented collection of star power.

The back-to-back champions adding more stars while much of the league declines to spend or trade aggressively has intensified discussion about a potential lockout and demands for a salary cap. Various outlets - including this one and this author - have argued that the growing disparity between the Dodgers and much of MLB is "ruining baseball."

To be clear, the Dodgers are not at fault for relentlessly trying to improve. They are doing exactly what every fan should want their team to do. The criticism is directed at a system that allows such a competitive imbalance to develop in the first place.

Or, at least, the perception of one.

As the NFL has demonstrated, fans need to believe their team has a chance. It doesn't even have to be true. The same handful of franchises tend to contend for the Super Bowl every year. But constant roster turnover gives most fanbases enough reason to talk themselves into hope before each season.

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

That becomes harder in baseball when fans suspect their franchise is more likely to trade its homegrown stars to the Dodgers than build around them. The Detroit Tigers' handling of Skubal is an example of that.

There's a reason spoiling movies is considered so obnoxious. People don't want to know the ending before the story begins.

If the Dodgers erase a 2-0 deficit, advance to the World Series and win a third consecutive championship - still the second-most likely outcome of the postseason, according to 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 payroll rules aren't necessary.

Technically, MLB's scriptwriters would prefer the Dodgers to come back, reach the World Series, and then dramatically lose Game 7. That would deliver the television audience in the short term without reinforcing the idea that baseball's richest superteam is inevitable in the long term.

Still, if we're talking strictly about the long-term health of the sport, the small-market Brewers knocking off perhaps the greatest baseball team ever assembled on paper would suffice.