It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
I suspect that the Age of Comparison will be upon us shortly.
Free agency seems to be headed for baseball’s past, its own history somewhat shorter than the 94-year imperium of the Reserve Clause itself. Payroll disparities will shrink immensely; decade-plus contracts will seem an absurdity before too long; and the era of billion-dollar pitching contracts will end before it has a chance to really begin.
In the upper Midwest, payroll restrictions dominate organizational decision-making. Last July, Twins ownership traded away the bulk of the bullpen; in February, the Milwaukee Brewers sent Rookie of the Year candidate Caleb Durbin to Boston after a single, impressive season.
Neither team pursued any of the top free agents. Each added a few veterans with fair, modest contracts (Josh Bell in Minnesota, Jake Bauers in Milwaukee).
Such is the way of baseball in Minneapolis/St. Paul and Milwaukee. In 2026, the Minnesota Twins and Brewers sit at 24th and 20th (respectively) in baseball’s franchise spending pecking order. Neither team pays a luxury tax. Neither team has a contract on the books worth over $200 million. If the Los Angeles Dodgers were paying the Twins and the Brewers with their 2026 payroll, Mark Walter would still have enough left over to pay the Cincinnati Reds and Shea Langeliers.
It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity
Last weekend, the Twins and Brewers renewed their now-lapsed AL rivalry during the celebratory weekend that MLB has designated to honor interleague play and regional proximity. The aggregate scoreline after three games: Milwaukee 8, Minnesota 7.
In the end, it was a good, well-played, and close series. It featured a strange, unreviewable play that very well may have been the difference in the series. That makes it tempting to overvalue the competitiveness of the games, to romanticize the tale of the box score, to see the Twins as able — and more importantly, willing — to keep pace organizationally with the Brewers, a team with a seemingly limitless supply of reliable pitchers with a marginally larger (11.8%) payroll. But the head-to-head matchup can only tell us so much.
So, while we can, before the season of Darkness pales over the season of Light, let’s examine what a payroll in the bottom third of the league gets you — and how best to manage that budgetary framework.
It was the spring of hope
Over the past decade, the Brewers have been a picture of divisional consistency. Still (and somewhat shockingly) short of their first pennant since 1982, the Milwaukee nine have found a way to win five division titles and play deep into the playoffs in three of them, stymied only by juggernauts like Pete Alonso and Shohei Ohtani. They’ve been betrayed by their hero-manager only to be rescued by pocket pancakes and back-to-back NL honors for the impossibly pragmatic Pat Murphy. They had to let Josh Hader walk, and welcomed All-Stars Devin Williams and Trevor Megill.
In Milwaukee, the Brewers have built themselves, from the undercroft of American Family Field, by prioritizing a “next man up” approach.
Their draft strategy has gone under the microscope at Baseball America. Like the Twins of the ’80s and ’90s, they value pitching to a fault. As a result, only the Dodgers and Mariners have more prospects on MLB’s top 100 as of May 2026. And despite their clear priority on pitchers, they can develop quickly. After Konnor Griffin arrived in Pittsburgh, the Brewers’ 19-year-old Jesús Made was just named MLB Pipeline’s No. 1 prospect.
A fitting honor for a young shortstop drafted by and developed in Major League Baseball’s best farm system.
Even now, plans for the future coalesce. Jackson Chourio will lead Milwaukee’s efforts until 2031, and the newly signed Cooper Pratt will be around until 2033. Also a shortstop, the Brewers’ biggest problem seems to be managing their deep, deep pool of talent.
If the Brewers have a championship window, it is not likely to be disturbed by a new labor agreement. It’s been open for nearly a decade and doesn’t seem likely to close any time soon.
It was the winter of despair
To the west, anxieties mount as Twins management contemplates how to make the most of the third overall pick in this year’s draft. The right selections could further amplify Minnesota’s respectable place in MLB’s farm system rankings (9th).
That estimation must climb. Minnesota’s best player, Byron Buxton, will be 35 when his contract expires in 2028. The Twins drafted Royce Lewis first overall in 2017, and he continues to search for access to the potential he showed in the second half of 2023. Optimism is high that Walker Jenkins, surging Kaelen Culpepper, Emmanuel Rodriguez, and the costly Eduardo Tait will become the core four of the future. AAA St. Paul may be the shape of things to come.
None of this will matter if the Twins cannot find a way to deepen and specify their organizational approach to pitching.
I’ve written much — and I’m not done — about the devastation of last July’s trade deadline. We spent most of the 2025 offseason reeling and reflecting on those four hours of last July 31. The decision-making of that trade deadline represents the opposite premise as that championed by the Milwaukee Brewers: that pitching is expendable so long as it translates to general value. That myopia has already cost the Twins in the short term; time will tell if the mid- and long-term will also suffer.
It’s not “next man up” in Minneapolis. It’s “who’s coming to save us?”
For good or for evil
I am quite certain that opponents of a salary cap in MLB will look first to the ever-competitive Milwaukee Brewers. On Monday night, they rolled down I-94 and “hung a snowman” on the ivy at Wrigley Field with a 9-3 thumping of the Chicago Cubs, unintimidated by their home record.
They might also look, more selectively, at the Minnesota Twins, at the cannon-cracks of mid-April and the three unlucky lefties whom the Twins treated so poorly at Target Field. Outcomes such as these will provide some warrants for a salary cap in baseball, key charges for those who want to see a salary cap fail.
Worse yet, they’ll compare the Twins and Brewers to the New York Mets. When they do, they’ll have a rather convincing case.
But whenever baseball returns with its new labor agreement, and the chasms between those who have everything before them and those who have nothing before them fill with financial parity, teams will still have to play the games to determine their World Champion. And that will take the kind organizational intention, preparation, and priority that the Milwaukee Brewers embody at every level of their system, and the Minnesota Twins are so desperately seeking.
And, as it has for far longer than any reserve clause or free agency, it will take pitching.
