Matthew Trueblood

"Playoff-dominant" is a weird phrase in the first place, and I certainly wouldn't put this team forward as a legitimate dynasty; they never even made consecutive postseasons. But the Giants winning the Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014 stands out to me. The way they seized and maintained momentum during each of those runs felt (sometimes strangely) dominant. Lincecum in 2010, MadBum in 2014, there were some legendary performances in there, too.

Image courtesy of Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images Let's be honest: "Win the division" is a level the Brewers have beaten so many times that they no longer feel the same surge or thrill in doing it. In fact, there's a little bit of that tight-jawed impatience that creeps into a video-game player forced to repeatedly thwart some minor boss en route to the one they can never beat. This team and its fan base do enjoy the regular season, but until they finish the game and conquer the final boss that is winning a World Series, the six-month grind will continue to feel like something to be gotten through, in preparation for the real test. Besides, there's little catharsis in winning the way they win it these days. Milwaukee has not only won four straight division titles, but has had each wrapped up well before Game 162. Often, September contains little drama for them. This was true when they won in 2021, too. The only team to beat out Milwaukee in the Central since the lost COVID season, the 2022 Cardinals, was old and forgettable and soon disassembled. It feels like it's been the Crew's division to run as they please for almost a decade, and they've rarely felt the pressure or stress that makes the moment of clinching a division crown so thrilling. Nothing is going to top 2018, when they ran down the Cubs and kicked them out at the finish line. Still, it's important to exult in moments like Tuesday night. The Brewers took care of business against the Pirates, then watched as the Cubs laid an egg late and cinched the title for them, from several hundred miles away. It was a workmanlike Brewers win, but it did demonstrate why this team is great. Jacob Misiorowski steamrolled Pittsburgh over five scoreless innings, then made an early exit to conserve bullets ahead of the postseason. Aaron Ashby delivered two scoreless, stellar innings, because that's what Aaron Ashby does almost every day. The offense didn't hit any balls over the fence, but they had four doubles and got on base 15 times, and five relatively easy runs trickled across the plate. They can beat you in more ways than anyone else can, and they can beat you more comfortably than anyone else can. Always a young team, the Brewers run on the high standards of Pat Murphy and the always-fresh energy of their new guys. The plus side of turning over the roster more than any other similarly good team would do is that there are always players in the mix who haven't yet experienced all of this—guys for whom the stakes of these moments don't feel dimmed by the existence of so many previous, similar ones. They're not bored of winning. They're thrilled about it. They just feel a fierce desire to keep it going, so that their detractors and doubters are forced to stop talking about whether teams like this one can win in the postseason. It's a laughable question; it really is. Only teams like this one can win in the postseason, because this team is great. They have the best pitcher in baseball. They have a remarkably deep bullpen. They have three players (Jackson Chourio, William Contreras and Brice Turang) who are all in their prime, or are just entering it, and who are the best players at their respective positions in baseball when they're going well. They have an All-Star-caliber slugger (Jake Bauers) who has come practically from nowhere, but whose success is not at all a fluke and is likely to continue. They play smart, athletic baseball. They are, to quote their manager and the coded message on the inside of his bicep, "f---ing relentless." There's no important sense in which any other team has a leg up on them. Maybe that will finally yield a pennant and/or a parade this fall. Maybe it won't. It obviously matters, but it would be silly to suggest that that's all that matters. Winning your division is a real and important achievement in Major League Baseball. Doing it for four years in a row—and making the competition look so overmatched along the way—is a remarkable one. The Brewers have been building equity in the Central since that magical September of 2018. Now, they own it outright. The future is bright, but don't overlook what this team has accomplished already. View full article

That's fair! Going past the numbers and watching, to me, the lefty swing is way ahead of the righty one. But maybe he's just unorthodox from the right side, or maybe his approach will carry him from that side.

Image courtesy of USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect Over his first 50 days in the major leagues, Luis Lara got 125 plate appearances. He wasn't quite an everyday player, but he got ample opportunities, thanks in large part to the absence of Sal Frelick. The injured Frelick left a breach into which the team plugged their freshly extended rookie, and Lara's speed, defense and feel for hitting got a chance to shine. In that span, he batted .259/.328/.375, with a 9.6% walk rate and a 19.2% strikeout rate. That was in addition to numerous impressive catches in the outfield. Frelick returned from the injured list on August 26, which was welcome news for the Brewers. Though still young by the standards of most teams, Frelick is a respected part of the Milwaukee clubhouse and a relatively veteran presence in what is always a youth-centered squad. He's not having as good a year as he had in 2025, and Pat Murphy runs his roster as a (moderated) meritocracy, so Frelick hasn't gotten his full-time, no-questions-asked gig back since his activation, but he's been treated almost as a regular. In the last 18 days, he has 48 plate appearances, despite batting .205 with little patience or power. The Brewers' schedule has been peculiarly heavy with left-handed opposing starters, but in the 10 games in which they've seen righties, Frelick has seven starts. That's pushed Lara into a part-time gig. He has more trips to the plate than Frelick over the last not-quite three weeks, but just barely so. More to the point, that playing time has been divided almost perfectly evenly by the handedness of the opposing pitcher. Lara has 26 plate appearances against righties and 25 against lefties since Frelick's return; he had 91 trips against righties and 34 against lefties before that. Normally, a switch-hitter gets about 70% of their plate appearances against righties, unless the league is actively trying to turn them around. In this case, the reason for the egalitarian platoon balance is Frelick, a lefty batter whom Murphy is using mostly against righty pitchers. That Garrett Mitchell (the other candidate for any kind of playing-time reduction in the outfield) is also a lefty bat makes it even more likely that Lara will remain in this unusual role for a player of his profile. If this were a permanent state of affairs, that would be a problem. Lara is a better hitter from the left side. In the majors, he's batting .272/.350/.369 against righties, and .236/.288/.309 against lefties. That's why, since being constricted this way, he's batting just .261 and slugging .283. To his immense credit, though, the rookie has adjusted and developed a working ad hoc plate approach, which has allowed him to maintain a .333 OBP over this span. For a guy whose main source of value is his glove; who has two swings to maintain and much to learn about handling big-league pitching; who isn't playing every day; and who is being asked to bat more often than usual from his weaker side, that's a huge achievement. Some of the credit goes to Murphy and the coaching staff. They consistently outperform the rest of the league when it comes to onboarding rookies and keeping them engaged and successful even when their usage isn't conducive to that, in a vacuum. Lara has profited from the way the team counsels its young batters to be patient and use the opposite field, but he's also shown solid bat speed from his weaker side—particularly given the irregularity of his opportunities. The final fortnight should offer a glimpse into the Brewers' plans for the postseason. Presumably, they'll see a few more right-handed starters over that stretch, and whether Lara gets meaningful run against them (at the expense of Frelick or Mitchell) will be worth watching. For now, though, his high-value role as a late-inning defensive weapon and source of just enough offense to tilt a few games in the Crew's favor casts both the youngster and his organization in a favorable light. View full article

Oh, I don't think they've manipulated the ball on purpose. Quite the opposite. They struggle mightily to keep the big-league ball within ever tighter performance parameters; the minor-league ball is going to fluctuate widely purely because it's hard to maintain manufacturing standards as high as they would need to be for that not to happen. Especially with supply chains being less stable than they used to be, affecting the components the factories work with in the first place.

Image courtesy of USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect There's no getting around this: striking out a third of the time in the minor leagues is a red flag. Few batters can succeed in the big leagues while whiffing that often, and very few batters go from the minors to the majors without seeing their strikeout rate rise. To punch out as much as Andrew Fischer has during his first full professional season is to flirt with the untenable. That's why, despite a record-breaking season of slugging, Fischer isn't currently riding high on most of the national prospect lists. Forget the top 100 prospects in the sport; FanGraphs ranks Fischer 14th in the Brewers system. The glaring danger of all those strikeouts has turned people off even more than 47 home runs have turned them on. I'm not here to offer any guarantees about Fischer. The concerns about his swing and approach are reasonable. Actuarially, you can't expect to succeed the way he's succeeded this year when you get to the majors and the book is out on you. It's also important to take a little bit of air out of his numbers, because this has been a historic season for offense in the minor leagues. People in the know believe the ball is livelier than it's been in over a decade in multiple affiliate leagues; that's distorting raw numbers. It's not fair or right to compare Fischer's 47 bombs with, say, the 43 Kris Bryant hit in the Cubs system in 2014. In addition to being more balanced in terms of contact and plate discipline, Bryant had 34 doubles and a triple that year. Fischer only has 17 doubles and three triples this season, which is evidence that he's benefited from some balls that would ordinarily hit or one-hop a wall carrying right over it. That said, national outlets dinging Fischer for his strikeout proclivity are going too far right now. There's a dynamic being overlooked. Fischer is slugging 1.136 on contact this year. He's only hitting 20.9% of his batted balls on the ground, and he's pulling the ball 55.7% of the time. He's also drawing walks at a very high rate. The degree of extremity in his process is impossible to overstate. This is a player taking grip-it-and-rip-it to a new endpoint, beyond what anyone else would (and perhaps even what he should) do. That, as much as the environments and level of competition, has fueled his power explosion. To properly evaluate him, you have to place all of his stats in context—the homers and the strikeouts alike. His raw power is not as impressive as the homer total implies, not only because the ball is flying, but because he's totally selling out to get to all of that game power. That same selling out, though, explains his strikeout rate, and it should mitigate your worry about that number somewhat. Here's the final thing, which is subtle and is being underrated by Fischer's loudest doubters right now: the fact that selling out that way has worked speaks to a better hit tool than anyone is giving him credit for. It takes a hitter with some real feel for the barrel to go as hard after pulled power in the air as Fischer has and actually find it. Yes, the run environments of the leagues in which he's played have helped. No, this approach will not work in the majors. If the Brewers didn't want him to do things this way, though, he wouldn't be doing them this way. You can be sure that Milwaukee—the organization least given to this kind of plan for their big-league batters—will have him change tack next year. They had a good developmental reason for letting him cut it loose—even encouraging him to do so—this season. There will be a major adjustment. One thing Fischer can take from this campaign is the proof that he can execute an approach few other hitters can. Therefore, when he moderates that plan and does what comes easier to just about every pro batter, he's likely to strike a more balanced overall profile. This power surge isn't quite real. That slugging average on contact is a video-game number, and video games aren't real life. He'll go through some growing pains and lose some of his pop next year, as he (presumably) ascends to Triple-A Nashville and knocks on the door of the majors. However, he'll also strike out less, surprising many prospect hounds—but not observers who are able to sit with the complex message delivered by interleaved trend arrows pointing in opposite directions. What looks like a player with a huge raw tool but little refinement is actually a more nuanced case of skills interacting strangely while a prospect settles into the long task of becoming a strong big-league hitter. View full article

Image courtesy of Michael McLoone-Imagn Images Jackson Chourio faced Jacob Webb in one of the first fistful of games of his career. It was April 2024, and the Brewers were in Baltimore, finishing off a shellacking of the Orioles. When he came to the plate, the Crew led 11-1, and although it was technically an RBI opportunity, there were no stakes; there was no reason to be especially locked-in. Chourio took a big rip at the first pitch and flied out harmlessly. The offering was a changeup, Webb's signature pitch. It wasn't exceptionally well-located, but Chourio got it off the end of his bat. That was a tough matchup for the rookie—you don't see many right-on-right changeups in the minors, and the ones you do see tend to be meatballs. Webb got him out, but neither player is likely to have thought much about that moment since. It was one of those plays that happen when both sides are just trying to get to the final out and go enjoy the postgame meal. TVpSek5fV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0FBZ0hWUVVFWDFBQURsc0xWUUFBQWdNQ0FGa0hWZ1VBQTFBRlVRRlJVZ2RRQVFOZg==.mp4 Webb and Chourio saw each other again earlier this season. During Milwaukee's sweep of Chicago at Wrigley Field in May, Webb was still little more than a mop-up man for the Cubs, so he was pitching in the top of the sixth in a game the visitors led 3-0. That at-bat mattered more than the last time the two squared off, but it still wasn't very high-leverage. It also came after each had had more time to prepare for it. Chourio is no longer a clean-shaven cherub; he's a bearded nightmare for pitchers and a budding superstar. Webb signed with Chicago over the winter, so he was surely one of the pitchers the Brewers loaded into the Trajekt machine for preparatory work before that series. Thus, both players knew something they might not have known (and certainly didn't care much about) in early 2024: Chourio's swing is a scary-good fit for Webb's changeup. Thus, the righty eschewed that offering in the matchup. He missed outside with a high fastball on the first pitch, but found the plate with one on 1-0. After Chourio fouled that pitch off, Webb fired a low heater to steal a called strike and stretch the zone. On 1-2, he finally broke out something totally different—but it was his big-breaking curveball, dipping to the bottom edge of the zone. Chourio had been covering the fastball; he hit the curve off the end of the bat, He did stay on it well enough to hit the ball to right-center field, but without much oomph. R0JyenJfWGw0TUFRPT1fQmdZQUFRVlZYZ1lBWGxCVUFnQUhBZ1pVQUZsWFZ3TUFCMUlCVmxjTVUxVlNDRk1G.mp4 Since then, the two hadn't seen each other at all. Webb went on a long hot streak, and emerged as the Cubs' de facto closer for a while. He's since been bitten by the venomous snake that is regression, but it's been a good season for Webb. He says he's never had better feel for his changeup, and his confidence in that offering helped him become a high-leverage option for Craig Counsell. There's no chance Webb forgot that Chourio's swing suits his changeup in a dangerous way, The Cubs should have had that at the top of their scouting report on that potential matchup. However, pitchers who start to feel a bit of trouble tend to retreat to the pitch they trust most. Webb had gotten the first two batters he faced, and had he retired Christian Yelich, too, he wouldn't have even needed to face Chourio. Yelich singled, though, bringing Chourio to the plate as the tying run. Under immediate pressure, Webb went with a first-pitch changeup. akR3T1dfWGw0TUFRPT1fQUFkWVZ3VldWMVFBV1ZzS0FBQUhBUVJVQUZrQlZWQUFBMUFCQ0FVQ0FsQlFBbEZY.mp4 That offering looked a lot like the one in Baltimore two and a half years ago. In between, Chourio came to bat over 1,600 times, but his reaction to the pitch looked very similar, too. He was early. He caught it off the end of the bat. This time, the lumber even cracked, and he topped it off to the left for a foul ball. Strictly speaking, that swing wasn't good news. Webb had been trying to disrupt Chourio's timing, and he'd succeeded. If Chourio had been fooled less badly, he might well have grounded or flied out to end the game uneventfully. On that one pitch, Webb had won the showdown. Yet, as Chourio went to get a new bat, he had a confident smile on his face, and he seemed to chat lightly and confidently with someone near the dugout as he began to head back to the box. That's because he knew something important: that pitch had gone well enough that Webb would try it again. Chourio's plan on the first pitch was to cover Webb's mid-90s fastball, especially up. Being able to touch the changeup proved to the young slugger that he had both of Webb's key offerings covered, as needed. But because Webb got positive feedback from the first-pitch cambio, Chourio could step back in (with his new lumber) planning to ambush another one. If Webb had executed the next pitch better, things might have gone differently. Instead, this time, he left that pitch up—running in on the edge of the plate, but belt-high, rather than down at the kneecaps. Chourio, whose flat swing has always been perfectly designed to punish mistake offspeed pitches just like that one, was all over it. akR3T1dfWGw0TUFRPT1fRHdVRkFWSlFWUUlBV2dSWEF3QUhBbEJlQUZsV1ZsQUFVQWNIQkZKV0NBZFVWbEZW.mp4 We often look for long sequences to mark great at-bats. We often think of first- or second-pitch slams as mindless ambushes or brutal mistakes. There was a bit of that in this one. But there was also some real hitting genius at work. Chourio, still very young but a savvier player than he used to be, learned a lot in a short time from facing Webb. In May, he learned that the righty didn't want to throw him his changeup. Once he got one, though, he knew to expect the second. He had to let go, a little bit, of the outside fastball. He had to set his sights on the same pitch he'd just seen, rather than committing himself to the ball away. There was time to have those thoughts, and to let the moment build. There was a real sequence in there. It's just made up mostly of negative space. Once Chourio actually swung the bat, that space filled up in a hurry—as always seems to happen, lately, when there's a gap the Brewers need Chourio to fill. View full article

Image courtesy of Michael McLoone-Imagn Images When a player comes up at 20 years old, you have to expect their development to continue over their first few years in the big leagues. Bringing a player through the minors that fast requires a team to overlook a few rough edges and accept some on-the-job learning; it's something clubs only do when they have a glaring need or a massive amount of faith in a prospect. In Jackson Chourio's case, the learning curve has never been hard to see. He struggled mightily at the plate for his first two months in the majors. Since then, he's largely been good, and there are nights—hell, there are fortnights—when he seems to take up the whole screen and impose his will on the game. However, there are also at-bats in which he's plainly not seeing the ball well, or when he's up there without a plan and makes dreadful swing decisions. He's run into some outs on the bases; he doesn't yet have the nous to match his elite speed. That shows up on defense, too. Often, it's defense that keeps a team from calling a guy up so young; the subtleties of fielding take time to master. Chourio is gifted enough that the Brewers elected to make a huge investment in him even before they called him up, which accelerated the process of promoting him to the bigs. It also meant they were willing to accept some uneven defense. They had to be, because they'd only converted Chourio from a shortstop to an outfielder two years earlier. As in the batter's box, so in the outfield: there would be learning to do. The good news, of course, is that raw tools play quite well in the outfield. Infielders have to learn the internal clock that governs each play, which changes as one rises through the professional ranks. They have to develop a strong rapport with other infielders, and the physical and mental skills that make building that rapport easy with new people. They have to master a wide variety of plays and the aspects thereof: a quick first step, changes in posture to read tricky hops, and accuracy on throws. That all sounds like stuff you can learn in high school or college; it isn't. The game transforms on you. It gets much, much harder as you progress. The ball is hit harder. Opponents are faster. They more often mishit the ball, but not as many of those mishits are slow, easy-to-read bouncers. The median grounder goes from being a two-hopper to a one-hopper, and from a one-hopper hit slightly downward to one that would be a clean line-drive single at lower levels of baseball. A version of this happens in the outfield, too, but there are fewers components involved in turning a batted ball into an out when it's hit in the air. Just go catch it. Speed can make up for a bad read (sometimes). A late adjustment can produce an out even if you overran the ball. Chourio got by on his speed and his adjustments for a while. He didn't excel in the outfield, but he didn't embarrass himself or cost the Brewers games, either. He looked good in right field (though a bit rougher in left) in 2024. In 2025, circumstances forced him to play more center field, but he handled that relatively well, too. You wouldn't confuse him with Pete Crow-Armstrong or Dwight Evans, but he was fine. That descriptor—'fine'—remained apt for the early part of this season, too. Chourio was sidelined early by the hand injury he suffered in early March, but once he returned, he played roughly average defense. He was average or so in May; he was a bit better in June; he was a bit worse in July. Lately, though, Chourio has turned a corner. He's not guessing and checking anymore. He's not outrunning his mistakes; he's not making as many of them in the first place. And that's opened up a new level for him. He can now make the plays that almost always elude the raw, run-it-down guys. Less than two months ago, Chourio played a lot of balls like this: a slightly late start, and then a slightly early give-up. He didn't have much confidence in his routes or reads—at least, not enough to take any chances on them. WnhxUkdfWGw0TUFRPT1fVlFsV1ZBVlhVZ0FBQ1FZTEJRQUhCd0FGQUZnRFdsRUFCRkFGQUZVRkJnY0dVbFFB.mp4 Lately, though, he's played much more like this: no rush to get the jump, but confidence about the route he chooses and the fearlessness and polish to keep running fast through the catchpoint. NnlNZWRfWGw0TUFRPT1fQUFKVkJWME1Cd0FBRFFFS1ZRQUhVRk5VQUFBQVZWSUFVVndNVVZZRkIxRmRCUVlD.mp4 Chourio has made more difficult catches in the last six weeks than in the entire season before that. According to Statcast, he was worth 4 Outs Above Average in August alone. September isn't even 10 days old, but he's already been worth 3 OAA this month. That newfound excellence became especially vivid at the end of Monday's win over the Cubs, when he maintained his speed and got to a ball that would have fallen in front of him before about a month ago. d2V3ckFfWGw0TUFRPT1fQjFKUUFGVUdCQVVBV1Z0UVVnQUhCRkJWQUZoWFVWVUFWMU5RQlFVREF3QUJDUUpT.mp4 Watch Chourio in isolation on plays like these, and you can see him brace himself the same way each time. He gets into a wide base just as the ball passes through the hitting zone, and leans into the same hip each time, no matter what. Sometimes, that produces a slightly late start, but it always produces a powerful one. It also forces him to hold an extra quarter-second, so he can read the angle and take off with greater confidence. That's why we're seeing him barrel through the point where he intercepts the flight of the ball—sometimes diving, sometimes sliding fast and smooth, sometimes getting to within a step of the wall before slowing down, but never pulling up shy or needing to make a big, late bend in his route to get there. This is the latest evidence that Chourio is going from hugely talented work in progress to bona fide superstar. He's gotten more consistent and more lethal at the plate. He can cover more pitches, as he demonstrated by swatting the game-winning single on a high fastball in the bottom of the eighth Monday. Now, he's also demonstrating that polish (and that capacity to dominate, by denying opponents a rally rather than generating one himself) in the field. Over the last few years, Milwaukee's defense has been elite. That's been slightly less true this year. If Chourio is now an elite left fielder, though, the team is one step closer to a complete, elite unit—and one that can finally make it through the gauntlet of October. View full article

Image courtesy of Katie Stratman-Imagn Images For the first time, this season has permitted the conversation around Garrett Mitchell to move beyond and away from his constant injury trouble. Mitchell has suffered two major shoulder injuries on slides into bases, and in between, he's also lost time to a broken finger and an oblique strain. He never seemed to get long enough between trips to the injured list for anyone to properly evaluate whether his extreme offensive profile could work in a full-time role. That made him a constant object of unwelcome debate: Is he good, or is he doomed to be a constant source of frustration? No longer. As of last week, Mitchell has amassed more plate appearances—the number is now 464—than he had over his first four partial big-league seasons, combined. For some, however, the jury is still out. The consensus among fans was that if Mitchell ever played this much in a single campaign, we'd see him veer either toward stardom or toward doom. Instead, his .770 OPS this year matches his career mark prior to this year (.766) almost perfectly. That's because (as we've talked about so many times before) Mitchell has an unusual amount of swing-and-miss in his game, for a good hitter—especially one who also lacks applicable power. Few players on the Brewers have less raw bat speed than Mitchell, but he's one of the least likely hitters in baseball to hit a ball in the air to the pull field. His batted-ball profile is as extreme (and discouraging) as Christian Yelich's. His contact rate is as near-calamitous as pre-2026 Jake Bauers's. Here's what his spray chart for this season looks like, according to Statcast: To isolate ground balls and liners for a minute, here's his infield slice chart. It looks an awful lot like you can neutralize Mitchell with a good second baseman: In reality, though, the athletic lefty batter keeps finding hits. He's only managed nine home runs, because he hits so many ground balls and so many of his fly balls the other way, but the sheer volume of hard contact keeps him afloat—despite a strikeout rate that continues to hover around 30%. As all players do, Mitchell has experienced streaks and slumps this year. Pat Murphy has shielded him from left-handed starting pitchers at times, when the roster has permitted it, and that platoon protection has also kept his workload relatively light for a healthy player with so much two-way value. That might be why he's enjoying the healthiest season of his career, but it seems fairer to guess that he's just getting some overdue good luck in the injury department. What role Mitchell will fill as the Brewers hurtle down the stretch and plunge into October is still unclear. Murphy has shown no compunction about playing the players he believes will best move the Brewers toward wins, and that might not be Mitchell at times come the postseason. The club's depth in the outfield has improved as the season has progressed, putting a squeeze on Mitchell. For now, though, he's a solidly above-average regular on the best team in baseball. Whatever his quirks and shortcomings, he's proved himself capable of being that caliber of player over a full season—something that seemed almost like a fantasy even at this time last year. This week was a subtle milestone, but it feels like an important one. Mitchell is no longer defined by his failure to stay on the field. He's been out there pretty much all summer, and he's been pretty good. View full article