'Offense, in My Mind, is a Mindset': How Pat Murphy is Preparing Brewers Offense for Sustained Success

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Dave Kallmann / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The entire position-player corps departed the Brewers clubhouse in Maryvale early on Friday morning, for a meeting that lasted a full hour. It was a meeting about run production, but the team's trio of hitting coaches barely spoke. The subject wasn't hitting, manager Pat Murphy clarified. It was offense.

"Offense, in my mind, is a mindset," the two-time National League Manager of the Year told reporters in his daily media session. The meeting set key expectations for the year ahead, in everything from mentality in the batter's box and hustle out of it to emotional regulation when things don't go the batter's way.

Murphy led the convocation, but said several hitters weighed in and helped new players get a sense of how the team succeeds on offense. In turn, several of the new faces in the room—including Reese McGuire, David Hamilton and Luis Rengifo—offered an opposing team's viewpoint on how the Brewers operate.

One of the small ways that a lineup can produce more than its component parts would lead you to expect: controlling the pace of the batter-pitcher encounter.

"That's a great concept that, I mean, now you're delving into the parts of the game that I love, you know," Murphy said. "We only have so much control of the game in general, right? You can say pitchers have control. It's more apparent that they do, but how does the hitter gain control? And one of the things you're talking about, the pace, you know, and keeping it on your own pace. Now, granted, [the pitcher] has the ball. He's gonna throw it what he wants to, but the pitch clock has helped the hitters, in my mind. You know, okay, now I got this long to get it done, so I know I'm getting a pitch here. But what do I do the first few seconds to keep myself in rhythm, on pace, in control as much as I can?"

That was a specialty for the Crew in 2025, when they sometimes seemed to force opponents to work at a speed that increased the likelihood of mistakes—be those grooved pitches from a rushed pitcher or errors by overwhelmed defenders. Murphy called the objective "creating chaos," and McGuire and others mentioned that feeling in the aforementioned meeting.

Only Cardinals batters had a shorter average time between pitches with the bases empty than did the Brewers last season. Only the White Sox and Nationals (each of whom spent lots of their seasons playing either blowout games or meaningless contests against other teams going nowhere) had a higher percentage of their pitches categorized by Statcast as having come Fast, in terms of time elapsed since the previous pitch. Milwaukee batters pressed the issue, and it worked like a charm.

There's no shortage of technical hitting instruction taking place. Two hours after the meeting broke up, the Brewers were out in the cage on the field at American Family Fields of Phoenix, with exuberantly profane new hitting coach Dan Vogelbach shouting encouragement when they achieved "the right path" and falling ominously silent when they failed to get off the swing they'd just talked about. For this team to recapture the magic it's often had over the last two years, though, it will need to do more well offensively than just prepare and hone their swings. If that wasn't already clear to them when Friday began, it is now.

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[jay87shot]

With 3 potentially weak lineup spots (0rtiz, Rengifo/Hamilton, and Perk/Mitchell) this mindset will be really put to the test, at least early. I love the mental toughness and grind that our hitters have for sure. The top 6 in this lineup have a chance to be one of the best lineups in the league so hopefully we continue where the path of the last 3/4 months of the year.

[sveumrules]

3 minutes ago, jay87shot said:

With 3 potentially weak lineup spots (0rtiz, Rengifo/Hamilton, and Perk/Mitchell)

24-25 Ortiz (1,017 PA | 4.5 WAR)
86 wRC+ | +2.4 BSR | +25.0 DEF

22-24 Rengifo (1,260 PA | 4.8 WAR)
111 wRC+ | +4.0 BSR | -13.7 DEF

24-25 Hamilton (511 PA | 1.8 WAR)
81 wRC+ | +8.6 BSR | +2.8 DEF

23-25 Perkins (773 PA | 3.1 WAR)
85 wRC+ | +4.3 BSR | +13.8 DEF

22-25 Mitchell (443 PA | 3.3 WAR)
114 wRC+ | +4.8 BSR | +5.2 DEF

The nice thing about the group of players occupying the bottom third of the projected order is that they've combined for something like 17 or 18 wins over the last few years so they have a pretty high floor. I wouldn't be surprised if they chipped in a collective five or six wins this year depending how things shake out.

Something else to keep in mind is that most teams have bad hitters in the bottom third of their lineup with league average wRC+ of 90, 83, and 79 for the seven thru nine spots in batting orders last year. At least our guys can all run the bases and are mostly top notch fielders too.

If Rengifo and Ortiz bounce back with their bats, and Mitchell stays healthy (three big IFS, I know) the bottom third of the order could end up being sneaky good.