Our experts make their World Series predictions

MILWAUKEE – If you have the constitution for it, running a team in one of baseball’s smaller markets can be a really good time. Sometimes there’s a Nintendo. The 2026 World Series features presidents of baseball operations – the Brewers’ Matt Arnold, 46, and the Rays’ Erik Neander, 43 – who go back all the way to 2007, when Arnold took a job with Tampa Bay as a pro scout and Neander started as an intern. Over the following years, Arnold recalls early mornings in the office at Tropicana Field, sitting around a big table sipping coffee with a group of eager executives that included Arnold, Neander and their boss, Andrew Friedman, plus Chaim Bloom, James Click and, starting in 2009, Peter Bendix, all of whom would someday run their own baseball ops department.