Stop if you’ve heard this before: The World Series will feature two teams with large payrolls.

The Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays will vie for the ultimate prize beginning Friday, and given history, it shouldn’t be a surprise that these two teams are the ones in the Fall Classic.

No one is surprised the big, bad Dodgers are there as they seek to “ruin baseball,” as manager Dave Roberts quipped during the club’s celebration last week. The Blue Jays’ resurgent season might not have been a popular pick in March and their last World Series appearance was in 1993, but recent history shows that they had an upper hand in the factor that’s heavily correlated with winning championships: spending.

The Dodgers entered the season ranked second in MLB with a whopping $321 million payroll. The Blue Jays were fifth at $239 million. With a potential lockout looming in 2027 as owners push for a salary cap, those numbers might look to some as an example of how baseball needs change to benefit small-market teams. To others, it’s the reality of every other free-market enterprise: The ones who spend the most usually win.

That’s how it’s been for more than three decades in MLB. The owners who care the most are the ones whose teams normally hoist trophies.

Of course, spending does not guarantee success. The New York Mets spent $323 million on their team that collapsed in the second half to miss the playoffs. The New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies both spent more than $280 million and didn’t make it to their respective leagues’ championship series. The Orioles added $70 million to their payroll in David Rubenstein’s first offseason as owner for the largest percent increase in MLB, only to see most of that spending go to waste in a disappointing 75-87 season.

Not spending, however, does essentially mean that winning a championship is out of reach. Over the past three decades, no team has won a World Series after opening the season bottom five in payroll, where the Orioles have spent most of the Mike Elias era before 2025. Only three of the past 31 champions have done so while ranking outside the top half in spending.

Where does that leave the Orioles as they enter one of the most important offseasons in franchise history?

It’s not realistic for the Orioles to run $250 million payrolls, though Rubenstein, who Forbes says is worth $4.4 billion, could certainly afford it. But maintaining and augmenting the payroll that was established in 2025 will be imperative to the Orioles’ chances of winning a championship in the future. That goal might seem out of reach, but the Blue Jays at this time last year were in a similar position as the Orioles are in right now.

The opportunity is there for Elias and Rubenstein to markedly improve a roster that didn’t live up to expectations in 2025. The Orioles ranked 15th in payroll last season at a healthy $162 million — narrowly the largest in franchise history — but about half of that is coming off the books this offseason. According to MLB Spreadsheets, the Orioles’ current projected 2026 payroll (not including free agents they’ll sign this offseason) is 25th in MLB at $86 million. That means there is ample opportunity for Elias to add several marquee players this winter through free agency or trades and keep payroll in line with what it was in 2025 — or even go beyond it.

“I’ll say what I’ve been saying very consistently: I’m extremely impressed with this ownership group, the people that are in it, the way that it’s set up, the wherewithal financially but also business acumen that they have,” Elias said at his end-of-season news conference. “And I’ve been a part of a lot of good ones — St. Louis, Houston — [and] I’ve seen a lot of high-performing, well-regarded ownership groups, and this group has a chance to be very elite and impactful for Baltimore. So I’m excited about it. It’s a plus, and they’re going to make available everything that we need to responsibly invest in the team and the baseball operation and the stadium and the facilities.

“You don’t want to be wasteful, and you don’t do it for its own sake. But these guys are a huge positive for us, and I’m very blessed to have that behind me.”

Have a news tip? Contact Jacob Calvin Meyer at jameyer@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/JCalvinMeyer.