Is The Magical Season of the Brewers Coming to a Disappointing End?

The special season for the Milwaukee Brewers probably started on January 16, 2025. That was the day that beloved announcer and very special friend of the Brewers, Bob Uecker, passed away.

Still mourning the loss of ‘Ueck,’ Milwaukee had a good preseason, winning 16 of 30 games in Arizona. Hopes were high for the regular season. They were ready for Opening Day at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees, however, had different ideas, as they swept the Brewers in three games, outscoring the Crew by a combined run total of 36-14. To add insult to injury, the Kansas City Royals beat the Brewers 11-1 on the last day of March, leaving the Brewers with a record of 0-4 as they entered April.

The Brewers held first place in the National League Central for one day in April, but then dropped to the middle of the pack until mid-June. Milwaukee climbed to second place behind the hated Chicago Cubs after a streak that included 21 wins in 28 games from mid-June to mid-July, when they took over the NL Central lead for the first and final time on July 20. Milwaukee won the division title by five games.

Milwaukee faced its NL Central foe, Chicago, for the first time in franchise history in the NL Division Series. The Brewers won the first two games easily at Uecker Field but then dropped a pair at Wrigley Field to knot the NLDS matchup at two apiece. Behind a highly partisan crowd at ‘The Ueck,’ the Brewers earned a trip to the NLCS series with a 3-1 Game 5 victory over Chicago.

That led to a seven-game NLCS with the overpriced Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers' ownership believes in buying championships, with a payroll of $350M this season. Only two other teams exceeded $300M this year: the New York Mets and the New York Yankees. The Brewers' payroll of $121M pales in comparison. The Collective Bargaining Agreement between Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association expires on December 1, 2026. If the Dodgers win another World Series, the owners are going to push hard for a salary cap. But that is a story for another day.

Those hated Dodgers—complete with their little ‘Happy Dance’—have beaten the Brewers three straight times to take a commanding lead in the NLCS. Game 4 is on tap for Friday night in Los Angeles, and if the two squads continue playing like they have been the last few days, Milwaukee will fall short in yet another bid for a World Series appearance.

The Brewers that dominated the Chicago Cubs in the first two games of the NLDS have disappeared. In those contests, Brewers batters batted .343 (24-for-70), scored 16 runs, and hit .450 (9-for-20) with runners in scoring position. In the six games since (three each against Chicago and Los Angeles), the Brewers are batting .140 (25-for-179), scored nine runs, and are batting .125 (3-for-24) with RISP. In the NLCS alone, the Brewers are batting .101 (9-for-89), scored three runs, and are 1-for-8 with RISP.

This series has been completely dominated by Los Angeles. The starting pitching for the Dodgers has been outstanding, with Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Tyler Glasnow combining for 22.2 innings while allowing seven hits, two runs, and four walks. They have struck out 25 Milwaukee batters. The Dodgers have scored only 10 runs in three games, but that has been enough.

It doesn’t get any easier tonight as Shohei Ohtani will take his turn on the mound for Los Angeles. The Brew Crew will counter with left-hander Jose Quintana and hope the 36-year-old can revert to his early-season form.

The Brewers have to figure out a way to get to Game 5 and then must win that one, too. From here on out, every game is an elimination game. The postseason that began with so much promise now has Brewers pitching running on fumes. All the clutch hitting that happened in the Chicago series seems like a distant memory.

For Brewers fans, we can only hope that our team has a little more of the supernatural in them. Anything less means a quick exit from this series and has us saying, ‘wait until next year!’

Again.