The Brewers' roster construction strategy is a result of the "brokenness" of baseball, not a cause.
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.