The World Series matchup between the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays is the kind of small -market showcase baseball hasn't seen in a while. Several New York Mets-related subplots should also interest the Flushing faithful going forward.

One obvious storyline is ALCS MVP Freddy Peralta's turnaround with Tampa Bay, with the Mets serving as a middle man after acquiring him from the Brewers in the offseason. The more compelling angle of interest for the Mets, however, is the fact that Milwaukee reached the World Series on the back of a model built by their current President of Baseball Operations.

David Stearns has had a mixed bag run in New York, reaching the NLCS in his first year before missing the postseason in back-to-back campaigns. Stearns is trying to transform the Mets into a Brewers-like operation, with the added benefit of Steve Cohen's financial resources, so the Brewers' success is a big point in the column for giving him more time to cook.

How the Mets are being built like the Brewers

While Stearns made an unpopular decision to let go of some of the Mets' most popular players last winter, it was done in service of changing the makeup of the ballclub. Even though players like Pete Alonso and Brandon Nimmo are useful options who can help teams win, they do not fit the Brewers' ideal of having a lot of speed and athleticism around the diamond.

When looking at Milwaukee's lineup, they have exciting young players like Jackson Chourio, Brice Turang, Cooper Pratt, Garrett Mitchell, and Joey Ortiz who can influence the game by making contact, using their speed to take extra bases, and defending quite well. The Mets are starting to value those well-rounded position players more, with rookies Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing earning regular roles this season, while another wave of athletes could be coming behind them in the form of infielders Jefferson Rojas, Mitch Voit, and Emilien Pitre.

The Brewers also made strategic strikes to add stars to their lineup when they became available, with Stearns giving up essentially nothing to acquire Christian Yelich from Miami in 2018 and jumping in a three-team trade involving Atlanta and the Athletics to add catcher William Contreras to the core. The Mets similarly have a pair of superstars anchoring their lineup: Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor.

The pitching side of the equation is also an intriguing area to watch, as Milwaukee has become quite good at developing young starting pitchers, allowing them to withstand the losses of stars like Peralta and Corbin Burnes via trade. Jacob Misiorowski, the likely NL Cy Young winner this season, and Logan Henderson are the Brewers' top two starters, who were drafted and developed by the organization.

The Mets do have the makings of a pitching pipeline, as Nolan McLean and Christian Scott graduated to rotation status this year while Zac Thornton made a compelling case for a rotation spot down the stretch. Add in the potential of Jonah Tong and another wave coming behind him that includes Jack Wenninger, Jonathan Santucci, and Will Watson, and it is easy to see a world where the Mets have almost a full rotation of homegrown starters.

The Mets' bullpen is another area that saw them become more Milwaukee-like in the second half, relying on a mix of castoffs, retreads, and youngsters to cobble together an effective unit. None of Milwaukee's elite relievers were highly touted prospects, with closer Trevor Megill coming over in a trade and Abner Uribe being a developmental success story. Lefty Aaron Ashby, who was a Brewers' draft pick in 2018, started in the rotation before converting to the bullpen in 2023.

The current Mets' bullpen has a high-priced closer (ironically, a former Brewer in Devin Williams), but it's loaded with intriguing young options like Daniel Duarte, Dedniel Nunez, Nate Lavender, and Jefry Yan. Most of that crew has minor league options remaining, giving Stearns flexibility to shuffle arms in and out of the unit throughout the season.

Where the Mets still need to catch up to the Brewers

Needless to say, the Brewers are ahead of the Mets in a few areas. One area is their ability to successfully extract value from lesser players. The NLCS MVP was Jake Bauers, a journeyman who nearly retired two years ago before deciding to give it another go to keep his family's health insurance, and he slugged a career-high 26 home runs in the regular season before adding six more in October.

The Mets have tried to jump-start players they think can help but are paying premium prices to do so, giving Jorge Polanco $40 million over two years to be a first baseman or investing salaries in the tens of millions in fix-it starters.

The advantage that Cohen's resources provide Stearns is the ability to supercharge his Brewers build with top-dollar superstars, a strategy that could pay massive dividends since producing your own homegrown talent will make the roster cheaper overall. Signing Tarik Skubal, for example, to a hefty long-term deal would crush Milwaukee's salary structure, but could work in New York since they have McLean, Ewing, Benge, and others contributing to the roster at sub-market value early in their careers.

The brand of baseball that Milwaukee plays is one that can lead to a lot of wins in the regular season since they tend to zig when other teams zag, prioritizing putting the ball in play and utilizing speed as a weapon as opposed to chasing slugging at all costs. The Mets are trying to build in that direction, but there are still a few too many all-or-nothing types in the organization, although they have made progress in that regard so far.

The bottom line is that the Brewers are proof of concept that what Stearns is trying to do can result in a strong contender on a perennial basis. Milwaukee has won the National League Central in five of the past six years and recorded at least 92 regular-season wins in each postseason campaign, a run of success the Mets haven't come close to since the 1980s, when an additional postseason team could have seen them make the playoffs every year between 1983 and 1990.

It has taken the Brewers time to get the mix right to combat the elite pitching you run into in the postseason, which is evident in the difference in the NLCS results of the past two seasons against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Stearns and the Mets feel like they are a year or two behind Milwaukee in team-building strategy, but they can speed that process up with the right pickups, making this World Series important evidence that they should stay the course with Stearns a bit longer.