The 2026 World Series is on the horizon, with Game 1 beginning on Friday and a potential Game 7 taking place next Saturday on Halloween.

The Tampa Bay Rays dispatched the Cleveland Guardians in six games to win the American League pennant, while the Milwaukee Brewers ended the Los Angeles Dodgers’ bid for a three-peat by sweeping the reigning champs to win the National League pennant.

These are two small-market teams, which may not help with the TV ratings and viewership, and that’s a good place to start when looking at the World Series 2026 by the numbers.

47: Total Combined Payroll Rank of the Rays and Brewers

Many are calling this the Moneyball World Series, due to the small-ball, lower-revenue, small market size of the respective squads.

Their payroll ranks certainly back that up as the Brewers rank 19th in payroll, while the Rays rank 28th.

That combined payroll rank of 47 is the highest since payroll numbers became public information 40 years ago.

Before the 2026 World Series, the highest payroll rank was 41, which also involved the Rays (29th) when they faced the Philadelphia Phillies (12th) in 2008.

0: Number of World Series Championships by Either Franchise

We are guaranteed a first-time World Series winner as neither the Brewers nor Rays have ever won the Fall Classic.

The Brewers have been around since 1969 and were swept in their only prior World Series appearance in 1982.

Tampa has existed since 1998 and is making its third trip to this championship series. However, it lost in five games in 2008 and then six games in the 2020 World Series.

The Brewers have the most wins (4,508) of any franchise without a championship, while the Rays have the highest win percentage (.493) of any franchise without a title.

This is only the second World Series over the past 100 years between teams with zero World Series championships.

It joins the 1980 Fall Classic, which saw the Phillies win in six games over the Kansas City Royals.

3: Number of Players With Prior World Series Experience

Not only are these teams relative novices to this stage, but their individual players are as well.

Milwaukee has just one player who has suited up in the Fall Classic: pitcher Dustin May. He’s a World Series champion courtesy of his time with the Los Angeles Dodgers and has appeared in two World Series games, posting a 9.00 ERA across three innings pitched.

Meanwhile, Tampa has two players with World Series experience: designated hitter Yandy Diaz and pitcher Steven Matz.

Diaz is the only Ray still on the team from when it last made the World Series in 2020, in which he hit .333 over 12 at-bats.

Matz, a New York native, played with his hometown team, the Mets, in a 2015 World Series defeat, posting a 3.60 ERA in his lone start.

4: Teams to Win World Series With a Bottom-Three Home Run Total

Milwaukee is the definition of a small-ball team as its 154 regular season home runs were second fewest in MLB, only ahead of the Toronto Blue Jays (152).

However, the Brewers made up for their lack of slugging with a high contact rate as their .258 batting average led the majors.

Since the Live Ball Era (1920), just four teams have finished among the bottom three in home runs and gone on to win the World Series.

The last was the 2012 San Francisco Giants, whose 103 homers ranked dead last in the majors.

18: Years Since Tampa Hosted the World Series

While the Rays were in the Fall Classic earlier this decade in 2020, many may forget that the series was played at a neutral site due to the coronavirus pandemic.

It took place at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, which is home of the Texas Rangers.

Thus, you have to go back to Tampa’s first World Series appearance in 2008 to find the last time the city hosted a World Series game.

6–6: Record Between the Teams Since 2023

The 2023 MLB season marked a notable schedule change, as that was the first year that Major League Baseball scheduled every team to play every other team at some point.

It was the first season in modern MLB history in which all the teams would play each other, as previous years only had certain interleague matchups.

Since that 2023 season, the Rays and Brewers have met 12 times total, with three contests per year.

Interestingly, each of those four 3-game sets has been won 2–1, with the Rays winning the two series played in Tampa (2023, 2025), and the Brewers winning the two series played in Milwaukee (2024, 2026).

Thus, the teams are evenly split with a 6–6 record over their past dozen encounters, making the 2026 World Series, on paper, as evenly a matchup as there could be.