Firestorm around Brewers' Freddy Peralta trade 'ruining baseball' missing key reality

Just before the Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Dodgers squared off in the 2025 National League Championship Series, a conversation was sparked by ESPN's MLB insider Jeff Passan that the series was representative of the ongoing dispute over whether or not baseball was "broken" and needed to be "fixed." Passan's logic was sound: if the Brewers, who play in the smallest market in baseball, could knock off the mighty Dodgers and their bloated payroll, then it would appear that the financial disparity that exists in MLB was a problem that didn't need fixing.

The rhetoric gained steam, and when the Dodgers did ultimately defeat the Brewers and advance to the World Series, Los Angeles' manager, Dave Roberts, vowed to "get four more wins and really ruin baseball." The comments, as controversial as they may have been, thrust this idea that the future of baseball was in danger even further into the spotlight.

See, Roberts and the Dodgers vowing to "ruin baseball" holds more weight than they or fans might realize. MLB's current Collective Bargaining Agreement, which governs the relationship between the league and the Players Association (MLBPA), is set to expire on December 1, 2026, and if a new contract can't be agreed upon prior to that date, a work stoppage will commence, and part of the 2027 season could be sacrificed as a result. The main discussion that will be holding up the passage of a new CBA is whether or not the league should implement a salary cap. A majority of the owners and the commissioner himself are in favor of a salary cap as it would lead to a more competitive league where teams in smaller TV markets aren't disadvantaged. Good luck selling that idea to the teams who would have to sacrifice a large portion of their payrolls -- like the Dodgers -- or the MLBPA who is worried it would negatively impact players' earning power.

The Dodgers' success, which is in large part due to their payroll being three times the size of the Brewers' -- the final team they had to beat to advance to the World Series -- has grown the support for a salary cap, with many siding with the folks who claim that Los Angeles shouldn't be allowed to continue buying the best players every winter. That support got even louder after the Dodgers signed Kyle Tucker to a whopping four-year, $240 million contract earlier this month and had practically every non-Dodger baseball fan screaming that Los Angeles was "ruining baseball."

Then, a few weeks later, when the Brewers traded away their ace, Freddy Peralta, those Dodger fans that were sick of hearing people claim that their team was "ruining baseball" tried to turn the narrative on its head. Without pointing out specific individuals, a sizable conglomerate of fans on social media started arguing that teams like the Brewers trading away their best players and not willing to "pay their stars" is what is really ruining baseball. They claim that if small-market teams would simply spend as much as the big-market teams -- an impossibility in practice unless teams are motivated to lose money -- then more parity would exist in baseball and this need for a salary cap would disappear.

Here's the reality: as difficult as this is to say as a lifelong supporter of the Milwaukee Brewers, the Dodgers are not ruining baseball. And though it's unbelievable that this sentence even needs to be written, the Brewers are absolutely not ruining baseball.

Neither the Milwaukee Brewers nor the Los Angeles Dodgers are ruining baseball

For the sake of clarity, let's first point out what is actually ruining baseball. The Dodgers currently make roughly $334 million a year from TV revenue alone. Meanwhile, in the best-case scenario, the Brewers make roughly $35 million from TV revenue -- that number will almost certainly decrease if MLB takes over the broadcasting duties in Milwaukee, which looks possible given Main Street Sports Group's ongoing financial troubles. Additionally, a recent report noted that when the Dodgers were bailed out by MLB back in 2011 when the team filed for bankruptcy, the league agreed to give Los Angeles a tax break in their TV earnings that nets them an additional $66 million a year more than they otherwise wouldn't have. The following video from independent sports journalist Joon Lee clearly explains how that deal went down.

Therefore, it's not the Dodgers or Brewers who are ruining baseball, it's the inability of MLB to figure out a revenue-sharing plan, similar to one other professional sports leagues have adopted, that truly levels the playing field for all teams regardless of the size of the market that they play in. In other words, MLB allowed baseball to break, and the Dodgers are simply taking advantage of an unfair system because they have been afforded advantages other teams don't have.

You could make the argument that Los Angeles continuing to abuse these privileges only makes the issue worse -- surely they didn't need to add Tucker to their roster this offseason -- but if MLB isn't going to stop them, and the Dodgers continue to make money, why would they put limits on themselves?

In regard to the Brewers, let's make one thing very clear: Milwaukee's roster construction strategy that has led them to trade Peralta, Devin Williams, and Corbin Burnes in the last three offseasons is a result of the brokenness of baseball, not a cause.

The only reason the Brewers operate the way they do is because MLB has allowed the financial disparity to run so rampant in their league that Milwaukee literally can't afford to construct a competitive team via the free agent market. As a result, they are forced to acquire players using the only currency that they share with the rest of the league: player capital. Knowing they can't afford the salaries of Burnes or Peralta once they hit free agency, Milwaukee, because their front office is filled with savvy, forward-thinking minds, knows that if they want to be competitive in the future, they have to sacrifice the final year of their stars' tenures and trade them for prospect talent.

Furthermore, the arguments coming from Dodgers fans that the Brewers are the ones "ruining baseball" simply miss the point. By all accounts, Dodgers fans should be opposed to a salary cap -- it's a large reason why they are the back-to-back defending World Series champions. The team that serves as the best argument against the need for a salary cap is the Milwaukee Brewers. The Brewers have proved that a team doesn't necessarily need a massive payroll to be competitive year after year. If they really don't want MLB to implement a salary cap, Dodgers fans should be praising the Brewers, highlighting the fact that Milwaukee has built a perennial contender without an inflated payroll.

Overall, as much as it pains me to say it, the Dodgers aren't ruining baseball -- they are simply taking advantage of a broken system that has afforded them the ability to spend a ridiculous amount of money while their competition is constrained by the size of their TV market. However, to claim that the Brewers, who have somehow managed to build a consistently competitive team despite being on the wrong side of the unfair system, are the ones "ruining baseball" is simply laughable. It ignores the fact that the precise reason why the Brewers operate the way they do is because of the brokenness of baseball, while creating an enemy that fans who don't want a salary cap should be supporting.