This World Series has no Dodgers, no Yankees and two bottom-half payrolls

The World Series opens Friday night in Milwaukee without the sport's two biggest spenders. The Brewers swept the two-time defending champion Dodgers in the NL Championship Series, and the Rays swept the Yankees in an AL Division Series. Game 1 is at 8 p.m. ET on Fox, with Jacob Misiorowski facing Tampa Bay's Nick Martinez.

The money gap is real. The Brewers ranked 19th in payroll as of Aug. 31 and the Rays 25th, the Associated Press reported, which makes this the first Series since 1991 with both teams in the bottom half. Christian Yelich is the highest-paid player in the Series and ranked 44th in the majors on opening day. Yandy Diaz, the Rays' top earner, ranked 154th.

Milwaukee is MLB's smallest market and could be the first small-market champion since Kansas City in 2015, per the AP. Neither franchise has won a title. The Brewers lost the 1982 Series to St. Louis, and the Rays lost in 2008 and 2020.

These teams also don't win with home runs. Milwaukee scored a major league-low 32.1% of its runs on homers and Tampa Bay was second-lowest at 34.4%, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The Rays struck out less than any team and laid down 45 sacrifice bunts.

"I think we already have made bunting cool," Rays manager Kevin Cash said.

Anyone expecting another Dodgers-Yankees Series gets Misiorowski instead, a 24-year-old who threw 1,115 pitches of 100 mph or more this year. The Brewers went 103-59 and are -194 favorites in Game 1, according to ESPN's odds feed.

What to watch: TV numbers for a matchup without a coastal giant, whether Tampa Bay's bunting works against 100 mph heat, and whether the small-budget model gets its first champion since 2015.