Matthew Trueblood

This time, there wasn't even a dilemma. There was no agonizing over whether the Brewers should trade Jake Bauers or hold onto him. There was no discourse about whether they could be considered a serious organization if they simply traded away all their great players every time they approached free agency. Just a handful of months ago, no one thought Bauers was that caliber of player. The same controversies that swirled around Corbin Burnes, Willy Adames, Devin Williams and Freddy Peralta heading into their final seasons of team control were absent with Bauers, because no one expected him to fetch a significant amount via trade, and no one was worried about the Brewers losing him for nothing. Now, even if Bauers has played his last game in a Brewers uniform, the team will get something good for him. They extended Bauers the one-year, $23.15-million qualifying offer Monday afternoon, ahead of the 4 PM CT deadline to do so at the official start of MLB free agency. Bauers will probably reject that offer and sign a multi-year deal this winter, and if (as we should expect) he signs it with some other team and earns north of $50 million in total, the Brewers will receive a pick after the end of the first round in the 2027 MLB Draft. Being a small-market, revenue-sharing-receiving team comes in handy this time of year, because the Brewers stand to receive a better pick than a richer team would if Bauers departs. Every year, the team's challenge is to find controllable talent that can make them better for multiple seasons. They get some help from the rules, in that (in addition to better compensation when top free agents leave) the Crew gets a competitive-balance draft pick after either the first or the second round every year. To make the most of those advantages, though, they also try to find opportunities to trade players nearing free agency for prospects who can be valuable for half a decade or more. The downside of letting a player reach free agency and leave, even if they leave behind a high pick via the QO, is that often, that player came with a high acquisition cost and/or used up a substantial share of the payroll in their final season before doing so. None of that is true in Bauers's case. This is almost free value for the Brewers, who neither gave up much to acquire Bauers nor paid him handsomely (by big-league standards) during his tenure with the club. They should get a good prospect for him if he goes to a wealthier team this winter, making Matt Arnold's job easier as he tries to keep Milwaukee's perpetual winning machine in motion. Image courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images View full article

The Brewers' most likely future Hall of Famer is Jackson Chourio. Their most valuable player in 2026 was the dominant Jacob Misiorowski. They have the top prospect in baseball, in Jesús Made, who looks likely to join a stout positional corps some time next summer. The heartbeat of the team, though—the one player who would be hardest to replace, not only this offseason but in recent memory—is catcher William Contreras. The World Series MVP was so important to the team's success in all facets, and has been such a warrior for his squad since arriving in a trade over the offseason between 2022 and 2023, that even if the team had an elite catching prospect on hand, they'd have to take extra care before moving Contreras. Since Jeferson Quero is no longer that caliber of youngster, it's essential that the team explore retaining Contreras for the long term. As the offseason begins, Contreras has just one season of team control remaining, whether the team elects to exercise its option on him for 2027 or to go through arbitration with him a final time. Next year will be his age-29 season; he's due to hit free agency ahead of his age-30 campaign. That puts Contreras in much the same position Phillies All-Star J.T. Realmuto was in after the 2020 season, when he hit free agency at the same age. Though it took a long staredown (one lengthened, perhaps, by the financial uncertainty many teams faced due to the COVID-shortened season and the associated loss of revenue), Realmuto and Philadelphia reunited on a five-year deal worth $115.5 million in guaranteed money. The deal was backloaded, so its actual value was slightly lower than the face value, but in essence, it paid Realmuto $23 million a year on a long-term contract, placing him at the top of the market for catchers. That $23 million figure, in fact, is a bit of a magic number for catchers. When Joe Mauer was far and away the top backstop in the game and on the verge of free agency, over 15 years ago, he signed an eight-year, $184-million deal, which comes out to $23 million per year. In the back half of the extension Cal Raleigh signed with the Mariners last March, he'll earn $23 million per year, though that's obviously slightly below the market rate; it's part of a deal in which Raleigh surrendered some of his earning power in exchange for certainty. As the Brewers and Contreras ponder what's next, it's pretty easy to sketch out the terms of an extension the catcher would find reasonable. He wears No. 24—a uniform number that might someday be retired in his honor by the team, if he sticks around. The annual average value of a fair deal for Contreras is the easy part to figure: $24 million. That would make him the highest-paid catcher of all time, among those signing long-term deals. There are two tougher questions to answer. The first, more obvious one is how long the deal would have to be. There's no way Contreras would accept a term of fewer than five years, which would make the base value of the deal $120 million. It's possible that he would demand six years, pushing the total starting point to $144 million and making his deal more clearly lucrative than Realmuto's. That would also surpass the total value of Will Smith's deal with the Dodgers, which pays him $140 million (though it's over 10 years). Biting the bullet and paying a catcher that well through age 35 might give the Brewers front office pause, given not only their perennial budget constraints but the dismal aging curve at that position for most players. The other question is how to balance and tack on other considerations. While the Brewers are unlikely to give Contreras an eight-figure raise in 2027 when they don't have to, starting the deal a year early and replacing the team's final year of arbitration control would make a six-year term much more palatable. Alternatively, the team could try to entice Contreras to sign for five years and $120 million beginning in 2028 by adding a healthy signing bonus payable in 2027 and incentives or a vesting option for 2033. That could raise the star backstop's earning power to $150 million or more, without putting the Brewers at much more risk of having a bad contract on their hands. If Contreras wants an even bigger face value (say, $150 million over six years, for a $25-million average salary), the team is in position to afford that, but they'd need to figure out how to best do it—probably via deferrals that pay him a significant portion of his earnings after the contract is over. It's been six and a half years since the Brewers signed Christian Yelich to a long-term deal, which has become a bit expensive and unwieldy as Yelich has aged. However, Yelich has also had some great years on that contract, and on balance, his leadership and value as a face of the franchise more than make up for whatever production shortfalls have come from his injury problems and aging. The team is due to sign another Yelich-like deal, and the windfall they'll realize after winning the World Series makes that very feasible. Contreras is the right player with whom to take that kind of risk. Brice Turang is an almost equally compelling one, but Contreras is the much harder player and person to replace. He'll also cost less than Turang would on a long-term deal. Rather than considering (even for a moment) trading their lion, the Brewers should put themselves in the William Contreras business for years to come. The rest of the offseason decisions will (practically) take care of themselves. Image courtesy of Jonathan Dyer-Imagn Images View full article

He sounded so authentically overjoyed. Hilarious. It sounds like a mean word but it’s a good color on him: dude is a rube.

This one is for Bob Uecker, but you know that. More importantly, you know what that means, underneath the words—around them, and within them, and between them. If this one is for Bob Uecker, it's for every Brewers fan. If it's for Uecker, it's for every underdog. If it's for Uecker, it's for all of Wisconsin. Mark Attanasio once said he felt it his responsibility not to deliver the Brewers fan base a championship, but to give them "a summer of entertainment and passion and a chance for families to come together". No one was satisfied with that mission statement at the time, but the two goals have turned out not to be in conflict with one another. They've turned out to be complementary, and for the franchise emblemized by Uecker, that shouldn't be such a surprise. Uecker's legacy was made of summers of entertainment and passion—of cold beers and brats and slow-roasted jokes. Uecker branded himself, in a way, the crown prince of losers, but those who knew him knew he was all about winning, and not long after the world lost him, his team won what he always craved for them. The Milwaukee Brewers are World Series champions. It didn't come easily, though the history books might end up getting confused on that score. The Brewers were never pushed to the brink of elimination, or even to the brink of the brink. They rolled through the playoffs with an 11-2 record, and they nearly became the first team ever to sweep both a four-game League Championship Series and the World Series. Instead, after a disappointing (but not heartbreaking; there was no need for that kind of melodrama) Game 4 loss Tuesday night, the team simply came back to work on Wednesday night and finished the job. Their resiliency and their relentlessness were equally unsurprising. Those are the defining characteristics of this team. The Tampa Bay Rays were valiant, all things considered. Even the best the American League could offer was no match for these Brewers, and they didn't even make Milwaukee sweat, the way the Padres and Dodgers did at times in the previous series. Tampa didn't give up, though. They fought back from the edge of oblivion in the bottom of the 12th inning Tuesday night, and even though Drew Rasmussen has had his elbow rebuilt three times and he'd been handled carefully all season, manager Kevin Cash gave the ball to Rasmussen to start Game 5, on three days' rest. The AL pennant winners would give the Brewers their best shot. You wouldn't want it to be any other way. Rasmussen was impressive, too. He's a symbol, in a funny way, of the Brewers' genius and excellence. They traded him for Willy Adames in 2021, and for almost any other team, giving up such a great pitcher would be proof of (at least) a shortcoming in self-scouting. In this case, it was no such thing. Adames was phenomenal for the Brewers over his three-and-a-half-year tenure there; he left the place better than he found it. He was a leader and a producer for them. Besides, the Brewers only had Rasmussen to give up because they believed in him, when hardly anyone else did. He'd been operated on twice in college. He was damaged goods before he even reached the threshold of pro ball, but he bet on himself, over and over. The Brewers bet on him, too. Five and a half years after they traded him, running into him again this way felt like kismet. That didn't mean he would make things easy for him. The competitiveness, resourcefulness and talent the team scouted in him and cultivated after bringing him in were still in evidence. He cut through the Crew in the top of the first like a hot knife through an elbow ligament. That made it Jacob Misiorowski's turn, though. Unlike Rasmussen, Misiorowski was on full rest, and though he, too, has had a long season and been handled carefully, he had more left in the tank than his counterpart. There was just one problem: the mound. Reaching back for whatever was left in his body for the year, Misiorowski found better stuff than he'd shown in any of his previous postseason appearances, but he couldn't reliably land on firm footing; the dirt at the bottom of the mound (where only Misiorowski reaches, with his singular stride) was loose and treacherous. Still, he sliced through the Rays almost as surgically as Rasmussen had his own side in the first. Only for that long, though, could the two sides pretend parity. Almost immediately, the game tipped in favor of the better team—indeed, one of the best teams the game has seen in years. From here, instead of narrating moment by moment, let's change things up and go person by person. If Brice Turang's offensive breakout had never happened, he would still play (almost) every day for this team. Sometimes, infielders who seem to suck up everything hit their way are compared to vacuum cleaners, but the metaphor was never more apt than it is with Turang. He moves around the infield like a classic Kirby in the hands of a seasoned housekeeper: quick, gliding, bending effortlessly at hinges you can't even see. He hardly ever dives, but covers more ground than most second baseman do at the edges of their sprawl. With anticipation, quick acceleration and an effortless dip at the waist, he picks grounders breezily and gets rid of the ball almost instantly. He won the Fielding Bible Award this season at second base, and rightfully so. Turang did have an offensive breakout, though, and it raised expectations in a way that made portions of his second half feel almost disappointing. He played through a knee injury, and his numbers suffered. When the postseason curtain rose, he struggled some more. He'd been poor last October, and when he went 2-for-16 in the NLDS, it was easy to worry that he might have either a lingering physical problem or a mental block about the playoffs that would torpedo the team's hopes. Instead, in Game 1 of the NLCS, he hit the home run off Tarik Skubal that announced that this year would be different. He's been on his game ever since, and was instrumental in the team's sweep of the Dodgers. In the top of the second, against a weary Rasmussen, he got a changeup that stayed up and hit it up the gap in left-center field. It could have been a single; Johnny DeLuca got over and cut it off nicely. Turang was fast out of the box and read it all the way, though. He gained second easily. The table was set. After Game 2 of the World Series, Cooper Pratt sat on the dais for the postgame press conference next to teammate Sal Frelick. He looked the way he's looked every day since he got to the majors: big and giddy and a little uneasy, with features that still aren't sure which way to fold when he smiles and shoulders that move more than an easygoing adult's ever would. He's a confident guy, but he's so young, and it's impossible to hide it. He babbles. He giggles, albeit in a husky voice that reminds you he's caught somewhere between late-stage puberty and the gravitas of adulthood. He's trying to do "aw shucks" and "dig me" at the same time, not because he wants to manipulate the way people see him, but because both of those feelings lie authentically alongside one another in him, and he hasn't yet figured out how he might shove one down in favor of the other. Answering a question about the role Frelick has played in helping him adjust to the majors, Pratt's answer went straight to the only moment for which much of the baseball world knew him, until this week: the instance in July when Pat Murphy benched him for failures of effort and focus in a game at Citi Field in New York. He remembered what Frelick said to him, at that moment. "There's standards here. There's a way that we play, and it's okay. You're going to be all right," Pratt recalled. If those weren't the exact words of the message, they were the guts of it. Murphy didn't mean for that benching (a very brief one) to be discouraging—much the opposite. He just wanted a chance to show Pratt just how high the bar is. One thing young players have to learn, when they first reach the majors, is that being great at this level demands more of you—more intensity, more consistency, and more aptitude—than you can imagine, until you butt up against it. For rookies on other teams, it might be ok to let that learning happen slowly and painfully. Not in Milwaukee. Not on the Win Tonight Brewers. Not when the goal and the only acceptable outcome of the season already halfway done was a championship. Pratt would need a crash course, and that would mean some faster, harsher forms of feedback than other teams might give. It could also mean faster development. It could also mean a kind of flame-tempered excellence that makes a Wisconsin legend of a 22-year-old kid from Florida. What Murphy has asked of this team over the last three years is not quite impossible. At last, on Wednesday night, they proved that. It is, however, excruciatingly difficult. It's a challenge that can't be set before the wrong person with any hope of success, and the criteria that define the 'wrong person' aren't as simple as shortfalls of talent. They include those, to be sure. The Brewers needed extraordinarily talented players to create something truly new under the sun: a championship for the franchise that migrated from Seattle in 1970. Pratt is one such player. The team paid $3 million to lure him away from a commitment to play ball for the University of Mississippi, so although he was a sixth-round pick, he entered the professional ranks as well-regarded as many first-rounders. He's tall and strapping, but his swing is short. He won a Minor League Gold Glove Award in 2024, proof of his athleticism at a position usually reserved for smaller players. He's a plus runner. On top of talent, though, the Brewers decided to prize other traits, too, because that enormous challenge—to play a game that keeps the pressure on the opponent all day; to bounce back quickly after losses and to gather steam from wins; to be the deepest and most close-knit team in the league despite fewer resources than other teams had to forge that depth and savor greater stability—places demands on personality, in addition to prodigality. That's why Murphy is insistent and repetitive about the importance of "the right 'who'". That sounds nebulous, and it has to be a little bit so, because if it were too tightly defined, it wouldn't be sufficiently flexible. That doesn't mean it lacks specifics. Pratt had to learn what to expect at the plate, and how to anticipate his own successes and failures. He had to learn what was required of him between games and during them, and knowing that the same things were required of everyone on the team made it possible to get him to buy in. The Rays never did figure out how to get Pratt out. They never even got on the right track. Pratt stepped up for his first at-bat of Game 5 with two on and one out, and on the first pitch he saw, he gave Milwaukee a 1-0 lead. It was no fluke or flare—no mishit that relied on a defender being too slow. He shot a line drive into center field for a no-doubt single, and Turang raced around after getting a perfect read off the bat. Pratt would spark the next scoring rally, too, in the fifth inning. Rasmussen had departed the stage by then. It was Kevin Kelly, becoming the latest Rays arm to try fruitlessly to jam Pratt up and in. The rookie singled, and two singles later, he brought home the Crew's second run. Murphy's pick for a 2026 "quantum leap," as he said it first (with regard to Turang) two and a half years ago, was David Hamilton. That didn't really materialize during the regular season. Hamilton posted a .650 OPS in 2026, and his defense was uneven: there were great plays, but there were also bad ones. In October, though, the dynamism the manager insisted would come out in time finally peeked through. Hamilton had the nail-in-the-coffin homer in Game 4 of the NLCS, to cap a series in which he batted .571. He worked his way out of a timeshare with Joey Ortiz and started all five games of the World Series (though, to be fair, the Rays started right-handed pitchers in all five contests). If October was a story of Hamilton redeeming an unremarkable April through September, he also played out a pair of impressive redemption stories in microcosm in Games 4 and 5 of the Series. On Tuesday night, his error gave the Rays the lead in one half-inning, but he homered to erase it in the next. On Wednesday, at the one moment when Misiorowski wobbled and the Rays threatened to take the lead, Ben Williamson hit a harmless chopper to Hamilton. It was an easy inning-ending grounder, but Hamilton very nearly threw the ball away. Jake Bauers saved his bacon with a stretch, high and up the line, to snare the ball and hold the base. In the top of the fifth, after Pratt and Garrett Mitchell each singled, Hamilton got his chance to redeem himself again, and did it. On a 1-1 changeup from Kelly, he lashed the ball through the right side of the infield, at 107 MPH off the bat. That made it 2-0, and it began to feel like the Brewers could breathe—like the celebration countdown was on in earnest, for the first time. It was the final payoff of a last-second pre-spring training trade that was maligned in Milwaukee at first: Caleb Durbin, Andruw Monasterio and Anthony Seigler for Hamilton, Kyle Harrison and Shane Drohan. In turns, earlier in the year, both Harrison and Drohan did plenty to help the Brewers get this far. This month, though, all the benefits of that deal came from Hamilton. He was a game-changing No. 9 hitter—a symbol of the team's lineup depth and a testament to the number of ways they were willing and able to win games. 'The lion's share' is an expression derived from one of Aesop's Fables. It's often misused, these days. People say it when they mean most of something, but in its original form, the lion's share meant everything. The lion, as absolute ruler of the savanna, meted out justice by arrogating to himself every bit of the kill over which many animals had laid a claim. It was about understanding just how many ways the lion wields power—about how the powerful exert their will in many dimensions, seemingly at once. By the top of the sixth inning, the Rays were a kill, and all that was left was to divide it. The Brewers' lion, William Contreras, stepped forward and claimed it all. That's what he's done ever since coming to Milwaukee. He takes the lion's share of the catching duty, if he can help it. He takes the lion's share of the responsibility for his team's successes and failures. When the Brewers flipped Esteury Ruiz for him in the offseason between 2022 and 2023, Contreras was so much a bat-first catcher that few believed he would stick at the spot. He was as full of talent and passion as his new coaches were full of ideas, though, so they all went to work together, and Contreras changed. The Lion of Milwaukee became, first, a great pitch-framer. Over time, that skill has eroded and had to be rebuilt, but he maintains at least a portion of it. He was already a great thrower, but he's also become a great manager of pitching staffs. His pitchers gush about him. After the game, Misiorowski would credit Contreras with much of the hurler's success throughout the year, and with the shutdown performance in Game 5. Aaron Ashby refused Contreras's offer to share the World Series MVP; he felt too strongly that his catcher deserved it. October saw Contreras collect value in ever more ways, just like Aesop's lion. He went from disastrous to seamless at blocking pitches in the dirt, seemingly flipping a switch between rounds of the playoffs to do so. He also became razor-sharp at ABS challenges, wasting fewer but missing hardly any opportunities to flip balls into strikes. He spread his influence into every possible facet of run prevention, and by the end of the postseason, he was a positive in all of those aspects. Contreras has also reinvented himself at the plate. The guy the Brewers acquired was a lethal but erratic slugger. He's become a much more well-rounded hitter in Milwaukee. Some power has been lost, but he still finds it when he needs it. Contreras crushed three home runs during this postseason, after hitting just 18 during the regular campaign. In Game 5, when he came to bat with Christian Yelich on base in the top of the sixth, he got a slider down and in and dropped the bat head on it. It didn't quite carry out of the park, but it became an RBI double and stretched the lead to 3-0. Two batters later, Pratt flicked a fly ball down the right-field line, and Contreras raced home at top speed to make it a sacrifice fly and move it to 4-0. The Brewers' lion leaped to his feet, his helmet flying off to display his shaggy mane, and roared. Abner Uribe got a ground ball to first base on the first pitch he threw in the bottom of the seventh inning. Jake Bauers fielded it cleanly and threw to Uribe uneventfully; the high-waisted Dominican righty found the bag and went quietly back to his office in the center of the building buzz. It was a tiny, faint echo—only that. It didn't force itself upon you, but if you've watched Uribe's whole career unfold, it was impossible not to connect that ordinary 3-1 groundout to another grounder to the right side induced by Uribe while facing the Rays, back in 2024. On that occasion, something intemperately defending the honor of ejected teammate Freddy Peralta, Uribe picked a fight with Jose Siri (now long gone from Tampa; not a championship-caliber player or person) and derailed his career for a while, That brawl drew a suspension, and soon thereafter, Uribe found himself back at Triple-A Nashville. There, he injured his knee and missed almost the rest of the season. Many around the organization—and plenty within it, including his manager—wondered if Uribe would ever be master of his emotions and his mentality enough to turn his unhittable stuff into consistent value. He did, though. By the following spring, Uribe was working hard to express himself better in English, to help the world better understand him. More importantly, though, he made himself better understood within the clubhouse, and he made extra efforts to understand what the team asked of him, too. He's no shrinking violet, even now; you need look no further than his crotch-chopping provocation of the Cardinals this spring to see that. He's become a better teammate, though, and a more emotionally stable, mature professional. Murphy saw the transformation in him, and trusted it. He made him his relief workhorse from the jump in 2025, and that's remained true almost without interruption since. Uribe was downright workmanlike in Game 5. After one tiny blip amid Contreras's greatness—a throwing error that put a runner into scoring position in the seventh—brought him into the game, Uribe slammed the door on any uprising by the home nine. The countdown was down to six outs. I interviewed Trevor Megill once about his pitch mix. He told me he works diligently to keep his fastball usage around 69%, and his curveball usage around 31%. The delivery was deadpan, and he was being (relatvely) serious. He takes his craft seriously. He just isn't serious about much else. His stomping overhand delivery and the glower that comes with it are just him in work mode. The rest of the time, he can playfully invoke meme culture or sing-song the latest viral video. He catches teammates' home runs in his hat when waiting in the home bullpen, and celebrates like a kid when he does. He smiles like a 13-year-old whose fart you'll smell in about five seconds. He also throws 100 miles per hour, and he mowed down the Rays in the eighth inning without allowing a baserunner. One thing Megill does take seriously, within his job but beyond the simple execution of it, is his role. This spring, he made it extremely and unwaveringly clear: he wanted the ninth inning. In the World Series clincher, he got it. He gave up a run in the ninth and was (perhaps) just one batter from losing the right to close it out, as Ashby warmed in the bullpen, but Megill is a true closer. He wants that right, and that privilege. It was fitting, on a team so well-trained to want the right things, that one player who wanted that specific thing got it. It wouldn't have been so smooth a bottom of the eighth, though, if not for Jackson Chourio. The running, then diving catch Chourio made to rob Taylor Walls leading off the frame will be remembered less than it would have been if the game or the series had been closer, but it was a perfect example of Chourio's vast defensive improvement in left field late this year. He doesn't make that catch last season; he doesn't even make it in June. Chourio, though, has steadily emerged as this team's truest superstar. Contreras is the pounding heart, and Misiorowski might be its face. Turang is one of the game's great well-rounded players. Chourio, though, is the legend in this group. The last Milwaukee team to win a World Series, in 1957, featured 11 hits from a 23-year-old outfielder named Henry Aaron. That was a seven-game Fall Classic, though. Chourio got 11 hits in just five contests. He won't win his league's MVP award this year, as Aaron did in 1957, but that the young Venezuelan got to put his mark on the final stages of the game was inevitable. He will win an MVP someday; he might win another Series, too. One reason why Attanasio's "summer of entertainment and passion" quote was so ill-received is that, for many fans, it was hard to maintain passion for a team that was forever changing. The Josh Hader trade in July 2022 riled and disturbed the fan base; it felt like proof that the Brewers would always make the transactional choice. That meant never Going For It, and for some, it meant that the team would never win a World Series. But it also meant getting rid of great players almost as soon as they got that way. It meant never feeling like a connection would last for as long as you'd wish. That feeling was only compounded, of course, when Craig Counsell left for Chicago. That's part of what makes this team so special. There will be turnover; make no mistake about that. No team stays exactly the same from one year to the next, and no Brewers team will ever border on doing so. Even if there were no rising arbitration price tags or free agencies on the horizon, the team would need to make room for a bevy of young players who need more playing time (or even a roster spot they don't yet have to spare) in 2027 and beyond. But this team is made of players who will stick around for quite a while. Chourio, Pratt and Luis Lara all signed long-term extensions with the team, and all three are under 23 years old. Logan Henderson and Misiorowski are years from free agency, too. Murphy, it's safe to say, will retire as a Brewer, even if that retirement might be coming up sooner than it would ordinarily be for a skipper just three years into their big-league career. The front office committed to this group, because they know they're the right 'who's. Murphy has molded them, and allowed them to mold him. This group of players, coaches, front-office workers and support staff has gelled in a way that even most other great winners can only dream of. They aren't truly done; this doesn't have to mark the end of anything. However, it does mark the end of something important: decades of waiting. For fans (and fans' parents and grandparents) throughout Wisconsin, the wait for this moment has often seemed interminable. It has occasionally seemed hopeless. The Brewers were the league's plaything for far too long—since before they were the Brewers. They floated from Seattle to Milwaukee; from one division to the other in the AL, and then into the newly formed AL Central, and then over to the NL. They were buffeted by chance and purposefully undermined by ownership with dubious motives. They spent a long time lost. No more. The Brewers and their fans have found their place in the league, at last. They're not just underdogs. They can still be underdogs, in some ways, but that's no longer the extent of their identity. They're not cute, anymore. They're great. There are already plenty of fans (especially of other teams) who are tired of Murphy's shtick. It's understandable. He overplays his hand sometimes. In the end, though, it's more than his results that are above reproach. His process, however occasionally cheesy or self-serving, is authentic. He believes what he tells players, and only tells them things they should believe—truths, in short. He didn't pull together a ragged band of misfits and turn them into champions. That's the shorthand narrative for outsiders. We know better. The Brewers' deep and incredibly smart roster of front-office analysts worked with their deep and well-trained cadre of scouts to find great players. Their front-office leaders (yes, Matt Arnold, but others, too) took chances and made savvy moves on the advice of all those talent-finders. The ingredients with which Murphy got the pleasure of cooking were very high-quality. Murphy did something remarkable with them, though. The cohesion and dedication he elicited from all those players was extraordinary. For three years (and especially the last season and a half), the level at which this team has played has been historic. They've played winning baseball, and often, they've played truly beautiful baseball. Under Murphy's guidance, they've felled the giants of the sport, and they've slipped the bonds of history, to boot. When Counsell defected, the vacuum he left in the manager's office at Uecker Field was enormous. The Brewers, however, filled it with the right 'who'. Image courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images View full article

Scroll up, Randall. A big chunk of the article is *about* the fact that Bauers should have picked it.

I can make a case that they maybe should trust Harrison OR Patrick, at least a little, but I agree it's pretty clear they trust neither, so the choice some are posing between carrying Harrison and then not using him vs. carrying Patrick is probably a false one. Neither guy was ever gonna be on that mound to close it out. Really, and Murph said this afterward, they were on Plan D already. It was never designed to be a night when they'd win in 12 innings.

No doubt. It's hard, man. At times, the Brewers have made it look otherwise, but the Rays have a good pitching staff. They specialize in changeups; changeups can be hard on the bat paths and in the platoon matchups Bauers and Turang have had this week. Maybe the breakthrough comes tonight. Bauers, especially, has had some better process than results. Crushed a couple balls last night; no joy.

Yup. It's so much fun to watch him hit, man. Beat the PULP out of two of his outs last night, too. You didn't ask, but for anyone visiting this piece now, after he got those two hits in Game 4, he's up to a tie for 271st all-time in playoff hits. Tied with Ronald Acuña Jr., who's had about 50 more PAs. Tied with Keith Hernandez and Tom Herr, villains from 1982. Others, too, obviously. More wood to chop, though.

Down the stretch of this season, the Brewers were extremely careful with Jacob Misiorowski. They gave him extra rest between starts; they throttled back on his pitch counts. In his last three starts of the regular campaign, he threw 82, 44 and 68 pitches, respectively. The middle game in that set came on September 20 in Baltimore, when Misiorowski pitched on four days' rest but only threw three innings, allowing one hit and striking out four. They ramped him down so they could ramp him back up, if needed, in the playoffs. That ramp-up hasn't really happened, though. Misiorowski's pitch counts did climb a bit in his starts in the NLDS (88) and NLCS (94), but Pat Murphy has had chances to stretch his ace a bit, and he's passed them up. In no appearance, so far, has Misiorowski pitched to a 20th batter. Thanks to the Brewers' rapid dispatch of the Dodgers, Misiorowski also hasn't worked on fewer than five days' rest in any of his starts this month. He's had his trusty home mound on which to blast off and land, with his signature, high-extension delivery. He's had the luxury of rest, and the protection of a quick hook. All that might need to change Wednesday night. The Rays' backs are still against the wall. They won Game 4 with a two-run 12th-inning rally, but they used all of the appealing candidates for a Game 5 start (and all of their top relief arms) in the process. The Brewers have a clear advantage in this game, and a big one in the series, even now. All Game 4 really did was provide a stage on which Misiorowski can deliver an encore at the end of his bravura season. It's too early to put any more pressure on this thing than that. If the Brewers do lose in Game 5, they'll simply gain the opportunity to win their first World Series at home, in front of a roaring crowd in Milwaukee. On the other hand, every win by the Rays will wind the spring tighter—and the depth of the Brewers pitching staff is starting to wear thin. In Game 5, it's important that Murphy let the leash out a bit, and that Misiorowski rediscover a modicum of the sharpness that has ebbed away over the last month and change. He hasn't been quite the same lately, in ways that are hard to capture at first, but become evident once you put a few pieces together. He's tired. The utterly unprecedented torrents of energy he used to generate power and command on his fastball in the middle of this season aren't quite there, anymore. He's lost just a hair, in three ways. First, his actual velocity is down about 1 mile per hour from his best readings in June and July. We can think of that, in effect, as fatigue showing up in his arm speed. He's also lost about an inch and a half of extension toward the plate, on average, which is why the gap between his actual and perceived velocity readings are closing a bit. That's fatigue in his legs; it's incredibly difficult to get as far down the mound as he did in the middle of this year, especially under any semblance of control. Finally, there's a little bit more evidence of how hard he's humping up just to get to the velocities we're still seeing: his spin rate is down, even relative to his velocity. He's making his big muscles do big things, but down at the finest extremities, his body isn't responding in the same way. This is where all his dominance has gone. He's still throwing almost impossibly hard, but achieving both control and carry on the fastball is very difficult, because he's working at the edge of his capability more than he was in the summer—even though he was throwing harder and getting down the mound better in the summer. Mechanically, we can see it: he's running out of gas for the year. That's ok. It's normal. And he's still good enough to force hitters to be late. Batters' average attack angle against his heater in October is -1.9°. They're not beating that pitch to its spot, any more than they did in the regular season. On average, hitters are swinging slower against the pitch than they did in the regular season, too. They're making much more contact, though, because they're sitting on the pitch and starting earlier, and because the hitters Misiorowski is seeing this month (including and especially the Rays) are good fastball hitters who hunt that pitch against everyone. Without the extra increments of explosion that his heater had in June, he can't quite throw it over the barrels of hitters who are looking for it, even though they also can't quite beat him on it. That sets up a quandary. Heading into his final start of the year and facing a lineup for the second time in a series for the first time this fall, should Misiorowski trust some of his secondary stuff more? The Rays certainly won't be expecting that. They might give him the whiffs he's been lacking, if he can throw his curveball, cutter and slider close enough to the zone to entice them to swing at them. On the other hand, those are the pitches they can actually get to—not just touch, but hit hard, and maybe pull in the air. On balance, it makes more sense to stick to the heater. Let them run up the pitch count; let them foul off lots of offerings. Eventually, when they're behind in a count and starting too early to hold back, throw them a curveball and hunt a strikeout. Be willing to leave the game after just five innings, but face 22 batters. Get through Junior Caminero the third time. That should be Misiorowski's goal. After that, Murphy can go back to (most of) his horses. Aaron Ashby threw 31 pitches Tuesday night and needs to be on a short assignment, if any at all. DL Hall threw 24 and should also be limited. JoJo Romero only threw 11, though. He can pitch the sixth. Abner Uribe threw 19, but should have one inning in him. Trevor Megill only threw five pitches, and should be the one to stretch, if needed. The bottom line is that Murphy should try to avoid asking his bullpen for more than 12 outs. Ideally, Misiorowski should get them into the sixth, and maybe through it. That might mean letting him throw 100 pitches, which he hasn't done since July. The team should let him, if the fastball doesn't unduly flag in terms of velocity as the start progresses. They should let their soon-to-be Cy Young Award winner finish off the Rays. It probably won't be as pretty as his starts throughout the summer were, but if there's one more set of true fireballs left in him, it's time to ask Misiorowski to unleash them, without holding anything back. Image courtesy of Michael McLoone-Imagn Images View full article

We agree on the important part, then. FWIW: People say this A LOT about Hamilton and Ortiz, and it's just not true! Statistically, Hamilton throws harder, and I'll also tell you that scouts in other orgs and the Brewers' own internal system both rate Hamilton's arm as stronger than Ortiz's. I'm not beefing with you, specifically, at all. There's a near-consensus among fans on this, the belief that Ortiz has the better arm. It's not true though!

The Rays don't seem to have any idea how to get Cooper Pratt out. You can see that in his stat line during this World Series: he's 6-for-16 with three extra-base hits and three walks. You can also see it in the at-bats, though. Tuesday night nearly became the sublime moment that altered the Brewers' identity as a franchise for the better, and it was Pratt who stood to become the hero of that contest. Over and over, he delivered the big hit, as he's done all series. He finished off the Rays in Game 2 with an opposite-field single. In Game 4, they tried to jam him up and in, and he was extremely ready for it. Pratt's steep swing produces a style of zone coverage that might surprise you, if all you knew was how much he dips his barrel as he addresses the ball. Many hitters with a steep bat path like the ball down and in, but Pratt prefers to keep his swing short and direct. That means focusing on attacking the ball up and in and adjusting to cover down and away; it often means that you can beat him down and in. The Rays, sometimes trying to set him up for something else and sometimes simply thinking they had a pitch type that would beat him in a given spot, repeatedly tried to get the ball by him in the upper, inner quadrant of the zone, but Pratt punished that strategy. Pratt's game-tying double in the fourth inning came on a near-perfect pitch from Griffin Jax, in terms of execution. It just wasn't a good plan on the Rays' part—a rare miss for a team that usually nails scouting and gameplanning. Pratt also cracked a pair of solid singles, but the defining moment for him—the biggest moment in Brewers history, it briefly seemed, though that wouldn't last—came when Ian Seymour tried a fairly inexplicable offering. His 12th-inning sweeper broke toward Pratt, but stayed above the belt, and Pratt got to it before it could break far enough in to jam him. If it were a misplaced would-be back-foot breakiung ball, you could understand it, but the Rays seemed to want the pitch in that spot. They underestimated Pratt, and paid a dear price. The celebration that homer nearly touched off will have to wait, at least one day. The game got away from the Brewers in the bottom of the 12th. In the scorebook (and in his own heart; he beat himself up in interviews after the game), Joey Ortiz will wear the goat horns. Officially, he committed a throwing error on the first at-bat of the Rays' comeback rally. In truth, though, he made a fine play. Jake Bauers had time and a reliable hop on which to catch Ortiz's long throw. The ball didn't skip unpredictably off the turf; Ortiz got it to the dirt cutout around the base. It came up to about waist height and didn't pull Bauers off the bag. The veteran first baseman just needed to field the bounce. Instead, alas, he was handcuffed by it. Unfortunately, this was as foreseeable as Pratt's success on pitches up and in—but it's not the kind of thing a team can adequately plan for and avoid. On August 19, I wrote the following about Bauers's receiving of low and bounced throws, relative to Andrew Vaughn's good work on the same types of plays. Here's an example I gave at the time: cU9sTmtfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0JRRlhBUVpRVXdRQVdWc0tYd0FIVnc4RUFGaFhXd0FBQndBQVZGSUFCRkVHVmxaZg.mp4.85580aff814951128d9fcc727a42b72c.mp4 It's an unfortunate habit of Bauers's to get too low too early on throws that will bounce before arriving, leaving him unable to make late adjustments other first basemen might. He's been a fine receiver on all other types of throws, but this was the gun over the mantelpiece all along, and it fired at just the wrong time for the Brewers. In theory, when an unlucky ninth-inning sequence forced the Brewers to replace David Hamilton with Ortiz, Pat Murphy could have put Vaughn (who'd been called upon to pinch-hit but didn't really get the chance) into the game at first base, taking out Bauers. Murphy also could have elected to let Hamilton hit in that spot, instead of turning to Vaughn. If Vaughn is there to field Ortiz's throw, the Brewers are probably champions already. That would have required a near-magical level of foresight from Murphy, though. If Hamilton were still in the game, on that particular play, the Brewers probably get an out, but Murphy has plenty of reasons to prefer Ortiz to Hamilton at third defensively, as Hamilton himself had showed earlier in the game. No one is exactly at fault. As we talked about after the Brewers' Game 1 win, the World Series (and the playoffs, in general) will eventually find and expose your weaknesses. The Brewers' weaknesses are few and minor, compared to those of most teams, but the game found a way to shed light on one at a pivotal moment Tuesday night. That needn't be the defining moment of the series, though, just as Pratt's didn't turn out to be. The Brewers have a bevy of advantages heading into Game 5. Emotionally, they'll have to respond. They'll have to ignore the wamble in their gut and the ringing in their ears and come back undeterred—or, as Murphy liked to ask of them in previous years, undaunted. History is obdurate. The Brewers have never won a World Series, and the universe sometimes seems to be trying its hardest to keep it that way. This team is too good to be dragged down by something as simple and foreseeable as extra-innings adversity, though. If they play the same game Wednesday night that they played Tuesday, they can expect to win it this time—warts and all. Image courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images View full article

The countdown is on. It's 27 outs from here to the parade, if the Brewers can just play it right. The Rays' offense looks dead, which is partially because they're susceptible to stretches in which that happens, but much more because the Brewers' pitching staff has been superb. Pat Murphy spent so much of this season managing tricky questions of health, performance and availability on his pitching staff, but here at the end of it all, his job has gotten alarmingly easy. In a blowout Game 3 win, he didn't have to use Aaron Ashby, Abner Uribe or Trevor Megill. He can't give the ball to either of his ace starters in Game 4, but he has plenty of paths to the 27th out, anyway. The Three-Headed Monster is Rested and Ready The Brewers' sweep of the Dodgers in the NLCS gave them a full week off before the World Series. Between that and their breezy victory in Game 3, they enter Game 4 with Ashby, Uribe and Megill fresh as can be. In the last 14 days, none of the three has thrown even 100 competitive pitches: Ashby: 87 Uribe: 67 Megill: 38 For so long, Ashby and Uribe were two of the hardest-worked pitchers in baseball. Counting regular-season and postseason work, Ashby has gotten more outs as a reliever than anyone else in the league since May 24, 2025, when he made his season debut. Ashby's 19 1/3 innings in the playoffs over the last two years leads the league, and Uribe's 15 innings is second. However, the ease with which the Brewers won each of their first two series has all but canceled out Murphy's heavy usage of them. Ashby's eight appearances and 53 batters faced over the last month are each less than he had in any month of the regular season, save for July, in which he pitched more games but exactly matched the batters faced. Uribe has pitched nine times, but faced only 40 batters. When healthy, he pitched more throughout the regular season. Megill's six appearances and 26 batters faced in October are well below his usual monthly workload. There's still a limit on how much Murphy will use these three Tuesday night, because he won't want to burn any of them out entirely for a potential Game 5. The cap on the number of outs they might record isn't nine, though. It's isn't 12. It might not even be 15. There's every chance that those three hurlers will take the back half of the game, leaving relatively light work for the mélange of arms who slot into the early frames. The Three-Headed Monster's Little Mutant Brother After Robert Gasser gave the Brewers an unexpectedly smooth six innings Monday night, Murphy got two innings from Antonio Senzatela and one from Brandon Woodruff. That allows us to virtually cross those two off for Game 4, unless the game stretches into extra innings. Instead, it sure seems like Murphy will just pivot to four more hurlers who have already proved their mettle this month. Shane Drohan Dustin May faced the top of the Rays order when he pitched in Game 2. He could start Game 4, but it makes more sense to throw another lefty at the confused, platoon-happy Rays and see what it does to their lineup plans. Drohan has the tools to limit damage against Yandy Díaz, and unless Kevin Cash wises up and moves Junior Caminero back to third in the order, the Brewers could get Drohan in and out without his having to face the dangerous third baseman. Though Drohan has a starter's mix and a starter's background, he should be used as a pure opener in this one. If the Rays stack the top of the lineup with righties and push their lefty bats deeper into the order, so be it. The second arm out of the chute can be... JoJo Romero If Cash tries to stash guys like Victor Mesa Jr. and Richie Palacios in the middle of his lineup to prevent Murphy from going to May after Drohan, it's easy to thwart the strategy: just go to Romero. The burly southpaw has seen his stuff play up in October as much as anyone; he's been worthy of Murphy's trust as a mid-game option. However, Cash might instead go with Ben Williamson, Ryan Vilade and Johnny DeLuca in a short sequence, and if he does so, May can come in right after Drohan, Dustin May If possible, I would keep May away from the top of the order. It seems likely that if he gets exposed to it again, that group will include Jonathan Aranda and Liam Hicks, as well as Díaz and Caminero. That's a gauntlet for May, especially with the righties in that set having already seen him recently. He can better buy the team outs against the lower half of the order, but if the Rays go with a right-leaning top half of the card in response to Drohan and Romero follows Drohan into the game, it becomes much more viable to call upon May for the second turn. In some order, it should almost certainly be Drohan, Romero and May over the first 15 batters of the game or so. At that point, it's time for the bridge from the opening group to the closing one. DL Hall Quietly a part of the 'A' bullpen, really, Hall still works in a roving, medium-leverage role. That might well change next year, but for now, all the Brewers will ask of him is to either defend a lead or tie or keep the game close through the middle innings. The goal is to hand a lead to the three-headed monster. Hall is the link between the group that will set the table and the one the Brewers hope will feast on Rays batters at the end of the game. Just Keep Trading All four of the hurlers named above came to the Brewers in notable but different trades. Hall was a centerpiece of the Corbin Burnes trade with Baltimore. Drohan was involved in what amounted to a challenge trade with the Red Sox for Caleb Durbin, which the Brewers have certainly won, in a sense: all three of the players they acquired in that deal made major contributions to this almost-championship team. Romero and May were a package acquired at the trade deadline. If they're the essential pieces who push the Brewers to the very verge of a title, it will be a fitting way to wind things down. They're already emblematic of the team's highly successful, deft approach to adding talent via trades. That takes fearlessness and resilience; not every deal can be a winner. But if you're as smart as the Brewers are, it will eventually pay off. It might be about to pay off in the biggest possible way. Image courtesy of Michael McLoone-Imagn Images View full article

For most of baseball history, there was an important and well-understood distinction between being a good hitter and being a slugger, and another between hitting for average and being a slap hitter. Good hitters often hit mostly singles. The difference between guys like that and the less-valuable punch-and-judy hitters was that the former could punish a mistake or alter their approach to produce more power in a crucial situation. Sluggers understood that their job was to trade contact (and, therefore, batting average) for power. Only the very best players in the league were expected to be a home-run threat almost every time up and contribute an above-average batting average. The evolution of the game has done a bit to diminish the real differences between those player types, and more than a bit to diminish our appreciation of them. We know, now, that guys who only hit singles aren't very useful, but often, we ignore or downplay the fact that people have always known that. We ask more players to trade contact for power, because we better understand how important power is, but we don't fully appreciate the guys who still strike the delicate balance. The most underrated style of hitter, these days, is the one who both hits for average and delivers average-plus power. They're the guys who get vaguely praised, but insufficiently. Fans of their teams often cry out for more power or more walks from them, because those skills are understood to be more durable and more predictive than hitting line drives. On Monday night, Major League Baseball gave out its most prestigious award, named for Roberto Clemente. The award (won, this year, by Francisco Lindor) is for humanitarianism and community service, but it's also an opportunity to celebrate one of the greatest players ever. Clemente was an inner-circle Hall of Famer, and that his namesake prize is now given out at the Fall Classic each year is fitting, because he was one of the best World Series hitters ever. People who watched him play talk about him with a gleam in their eye reserved, otherwise, for Willie Mays and Henry Aaron. He was one of the dozen best players ever. However, he belonged to a class of player that has since become underrated. Not long after Lindor stood on the turf at Tropicana Field and accepted his trophy, Jackson Chourio took the field and reminded everyone that he's that kind of player, too. Chourio entered play in Game 3 with 25 career postseason hits. That tied him with 15 others for 351st on the all-time leaderboard. In the first plate appearance of the game, he got on top of a high fastball from Freddy Peralta in a 2-2 count and slashed a line drive to center. It was a hit all the way, and moved him into a tie with 16 others for 335th all-time. The Brewers threatened in that first frame, but couldn't push Chourio home. When Chourio came up again in the third, the score remained 0-0, and there was one out and nobody on base. Peralta had gone with fastballs (and a stray changeup) in the first against Chourio, and he tried to steal a strike with a first-pitch curveball. Chourio wasn't having it. He was out in front, just a little, but he didn't roll over it. The resulting one-hopper was by even the exquisite Taylor Walls before he could really get moving. No-doubt single. That moved Chourio into a tie with 20 others for 315th in career playoff hits. This time, the dam cracked, and two runs poured through. Chourio was the first to touch the plate for Milwaukee, as he has been three other times this October. Peralta did a fine job of stopping the bleeding, though, so the game was still in the balance when Chourio came up again in the top of the fifth. Again, there was one out and nobody on. Peralta got his former teammate to swing through a first-pitch fastball, but his effort to tempt him into chasing a sweeper off the outside corner failed. On 1-1, he tried a right-on-right changeup, which has become much more a part of his arsenal since he joined the Rays. It's hardly ever the right pitch against Chourio, though, and it didn't work this time, either. If anything, Chourio hit a more vicious liner than in the first, for an equally sure hit. That drew Chourio into a tie with seven others for 308th on the playoff hits leaderboard, at 28. As you already know, after that, the dam gave way. Chourio stole second base, and eventually scored on Brice Turang's game-breaking single. The Brewers kept whaling away on the Rays until Chourio's spot came up again, with the score already 9-0. Peralta was long gone. Cole Sulser worked a 2-2 count, but his own would-be chase sweeper made the opposite of the mistake Peralta's had: it stayed just barely within reach, on the outside corner. Chourio leaned right into it, landing the final blow in a decisive barrage. Chourio's hits started each of Milwaukee's scoring rallies and wrapped up one of them. He was perpetual danger and perpetual pressure. He didn't need to force multiple bad pitches or wait out a hurler to do damage; he took bases by force. He didn't hit a home run or work a 12-pitch at-bat, but he dominated the Rays. With that double in the fifth, Chourio moved into a tie with 14 others for 293rd in playoff hits. It helps, of course, that he's come up in the age of the expanded postseason, and that the Brewers are always there. (Then again, he helps ensure they will be.) Still, this isn't about merely having lots of chances. He's a .312 October hitter. The only players with more hits than Chourio in fewer career postseason plate appearances are: Home Run Baker Bullet Rogan Lou Brock Ketel Marte Ernie Clement He's only 22 years old; this is just the beginning for him. Yet, he already ranks with some of the game's greats. Brock stands out on the list above. His showings in the 1964, 1967 and 1968 World Series were the stuff of legend, and although Brock had extraordinary raw power, it was the way he shot line drives all over the park that captivated fans and fueled the Cardinals' two championships. He blended that power with great speed and aggressiveness on the bases, and with great defense in the outfield. That's exactly what Chourio has done, especially this fall. By modern standards, Chourio isn't yet demonstrating elite power. He did hit 25 home runs this year, despite having the front end of his season lopped off by a hand injury, but he's never slugged .500 in a season, and his .471 career slugging average ranks just 32nd in the league since the start of 2024. His .193 isolated power (ISO) ranks 63rd. Just as it's easy to get numb to the power that has become the baseline throughout the league, though, it's easy to forget how hard it is to hit for average. Chourio batted .291 in 2026, and stands at .278 for his career. That sounds somewhat pedestrian, for a would-be star, but his adjusted average (AVG+) of 113 is the same as (for instance) Cecil Cooper had in his 20s, during which time he batted .296. Rising global strikeout rates are just one factor. Defenses are positioned more astutely than ever, too. It's extremely hard to hit for average in 2026. Chourio finds ways. It's also too easy to overlook the value of singles (and even doubles) in the modern game. If a hitter comes by them in a fashion as indefensible as Chourio's, singles wear down opponents, as surely as walks do. The traffic on the bases, the ability to advance runners multiple bases or force errors, and the threat of a steal once he reaches base all make life difficult for the defense and pitching staff. So does Chourio's ability to hit the ball over the fence, of course, but hitting singles and doubles the way he does is a harder skill to neutralize than hitting homers the way most hitters do. He therefore keeps the line moving and runs a strong on-base percentage, in addition to doing bigger things—like driving home the winning runs in NLDS Game 2 or sparking both rallies in World Series Game 3. The Brewers are very likely to win the World Series for the first time in the next day or two. Chourio will probably be right at the center of it all again. He's an excellent symbol of what makes this team great, too: young, and not going anywhere; versatile and intelligent, as well as explosive and passionate; and easy to underappreciate. His impact on the Brewers was not as immediate or as unsubtle as Ronald Acuña Jr.'s or Elly De La Cruz's were when those players first came to the majors. Modern stats favor those guys over Chourio, too. No matter. Chourio is better, and that has been proven this fall. It will remain true for years to come, just as the Brewers will remain—if not always champions—perpetual contenders for the crown. Perpetual pressure; perpetual danger. That's the Brewers in a nutshell, and the nutshell's name is Jackson Chourio. Image courtesy of Jonathan Dyer-Imagn Images View full article

The stuff is filthy, but Aaron Ashby's raw movement isn't the reason why he flummoxes hitters. It's always been about the fact that that movement comes from, well, that movement—the funky delivery from which each pitch explodes like a starship coming through a wormhole. Walk through the Brewers clubhouse, and Ashby looks perhaps less like an elite athlete than anyone else in the room. He doesn't have rippling biceps, or even broad shoulders. He's not as tall or as thick-thighed as most pitchers (and nearly all power pitchers) are. You know those specs he wears on the mound? He doesn't even wear glasses off the field. To turn into Super-Man, he puts on the Clark Kent glasses. He has just one thing going for him—his superpower—and he's learned to make the absolute most of it: almost nobody can move quite like him. In many athletic endeavors, there are basically two key things that set the constraints for a person, and they work against one another, so it's all about finding a balance. One is strength. Without at least a modicum of strength, you'll fall short in most things. You have to be strong to run fast. You have to be strong to jump high. You have to be strong to throw hard. Building muscle mass and training yourself to turn that strength into explosiveness is vital for any aspiring elite athlete. The other thing, though, is mobility—or flexibility, if that's what you prefer to call it. Almost any athletic endeavor—including the ones I just ticked off, and certainly including more complex ones, like pitching—also requires that one maintain excellent range of motion. Flexibility and strength can get in one another's way, though. Bigger muscles make it harder to move fluidly. To a point, you gladly pay that price, because strength is essential. On the other hand, you can emphasize flexibility and assiduously avoid bulking up, in order to optimize range of motion. That often means more speed, but it means less strength. Ashby is stronger now than when he came into the league. He's added functional strength to reduce the risk of injuries like the major shoulder trouble that sidelined him for a year and threatened to end his career before it really began. That shows up in his delivery, too, in ways that can look small but actually turn out to be big. For instance, look at his lower half in these snapshots of his delivery—from 2021, on the left, and from this season, on the right. With greater core and leg strength, Ashby is staying on line toward the plate better than he used to. Notice the way his back leg is driving more, rather than his foot turning all the way over and his leg leaking out to the left as he comes through. His posture is a bit more upright, too; he's not listing to the right as much. All of that comes from being stronger. Strength isn't the foundation of his brilliance, though. It's just a brace. As you can also see above, mobility is king. Ashby's contortions on the mound are the key to his dominance and to understanding it. His flexibility, which is achieved precisely by not having massive muscles and by keeping a modicum of stringy svelteness about him, is what sets Ashby apart. Here's how. This is a "typical" high-slot left-handed reliever—Yuki Matsui, of the Padres, whom the Brewers saw in the NLDS. He's releasing the ball from his standard arm angle (around 54°), which is nearly identical to Ashby's own season-long average. When you think of an over-the-top hurler, this is what you tend to envision. Good, sturdy posture and a high angle allow the pitcher's hand to stay behind the baseball perfectly, giving them great carry on four-seam fastballs. When they want to throw a breaking ball, this delivery also makes it relatively easy to supinate and impart spin. I've added a red line to show the approximate angle between the midpoint between the shoulder blades and Matsui's hand, and a yellow one to show the angle of his spine. Compare the above to Ashby, shown here pitching against the Cardinals in July. This is a whole different thing. It's enough to make you wonder whether the nominal arm angle listed for Ashby is even a fair representation of the way he pitches. After all this time, is he really a high-slot hurler? The answer is still 'yes', in some important ways, but as the red line shows, it's not so in terms of sheer shoulder abduction. Matsui truly comes over the top. Ashby comes around his body, as much as over it. As the yellow line here shows, he just tilts his spine so much that doing so looks like throwing over the top. From that actual arm angle, pronating is a more natural movement. That allows Ashby to generate heavy action on his sinker, but explains why he doesn't get much carry on his four-seamer (and, thus, why he's never thrown one very much). It's an extremely deceptive way to pitch, but it's only possible because Ashby is exceptionally flexible. Watch that video of him pitching to Lars Nootbaar, instead of just scoping a still, and you can see it. b0d3WkRfWGw0TUFRPT1fQmxJRkJRRldCRmNBV2xZRkJRQUhCMWRYQUFBSFVGTUFWbEFCVmdvR0JnWlNVUW9G.mp4 Because Ashby is a reliever, he always works out of the stretch, so he doesn't have quite as many herks, jerks or oscillations as famously wacky pitchers like Luis Tiant or Johnny Cueto. He's also developed a fast-paced delivery that helps him create more velocity. All of that makes it easy to miss just how idiosyncratic and bendy the motion is. You and I have already seen through that, though. We've seen how long the ball is behind his head, and how late he bends so much to the right as he whips the ball around and cuts it loose. All that deception is why Ashby's stuff looks grosser (and has a greater effect) on batters than pitches with similar raw traits. It was true all year, and all last year, too. It's been especially true this fall, though, for a simple reason: he's gone even more extreme. Compare that screenshot from midseason to this one, from the NLDS. The difference isn't huge—not like between Matsui and Ashby, to be sure—but it's there. He's creating even more tilt, moving faster but bending more. As a result, in practical terms, his arm slot is higher. Postseason adrenaline is unlocking a new level of extreme mobility for him. You can see this in the data, as well as the pictures. Ashby's (nominal) arm angle is up this month: As a result, he's getting more carry on his sinker, and he's gotten some swings underneath it, even though it's still very much a two-seamer and not a Matsui-style rise-ball. Just as importantly, his changeup has found some extra arm-side run, thanks (again) the minute mechanical change. That gives it more separation from his sinker. Ashby has said many times that his changeup is his favorite pitch, but for much of his career, it hasn't been a prominent part of his arsenal. Even throughout this year, it wasn't a major factor. That's changed this month. Ashby's changeup, with its own kick of added October spice, is humming in at 93 miles per hour. It's coming at hitters with six inches of vertical separation from his sinker and two inches of horizontal separation, in addition to 5-6 MPH of velocity differential. That pitch has allowed him to dominate right-handed batters as well as lefties, facilitating his huge workload. The delivery Ashby has fully unlocked this month is one of the most impressive athletic movements anywhere in the sport. It's a testament to his incredible balance between strength and flexibility. It's a matter of talent, because the ability to move the way he does requires the baseball gods to bless you with lots of that. It's also a matter of conditioning and intelligent self-design, though. Ashby doesn't look like one of the best athletes in the sport, but he is. The proof has been all over your screen all month. Image courtesy of USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect View full article

The timestamp on the tweet, which I only found out about hours later, was 7:36 PM CT. That's when Kevin Gausman, who pitched most of the last half-decade for the Blue Jays and was dealt to the Cubs just before this year's trade deadline, sent his first social-media missive since a thought about hockey two weeks earlier. It reads like it might have been intended as a direct message—like he was having a conversation already. Maybe that's true; maybe it's not. Either way, it caught the eyes of many fans, but no one made much sense of it. Twitter is a disaster these days. The replies devolved almost immediately into either pointless name-calling or pleas for the beloved veteran to reverse his recent decision to put his house on the market in Toronto, and to re-sign with the Blue Jays. Seriously, what was once Twitter is useless, anymore. Being a relatively healthy human being, though, Gausman seems to spend relatively little time on the app, so maybe he hasn't noticed how futile it is to cast interesting pearls before the bots. Again, maybe it's not even that, but that he has a relationship with someone that runs through Twitter DMs and just entered this thought in the wrong pop-up text box. Anyway, here's what he said: This was just when Logan Henderson was getting done walking Victor Mesa Jr. to lead off the top of the second inning. You can make a case that it was sent at the very lowest moment of the game for the Brewers. Yes, they'd given up four first-inning runs, as the Rays teed off on Henderson, but then they'd responded with a two-run boutade of their own. They needed Henderson to do what Drew Rasmussen hadn't: provide a shutdown inning and maintain the momentum they had just generated. That walk to Mesa was a very bad omen. It reads like Gausman is suggesting that the Rays knew what was coming. Pitch-tipping is a constant topic of conversation around the game these days, and as hard as Tampa battered Henderson to begin the game, maybe they really did have something on him. If he subsequently cleaned that up, it would explain how the Rays went from hammering him to barely touching him (or anyone else) the rest of the night. Gausman is very familiar with the Rays, having pitched so long in the AL East, so there might be a firm foundation for his suspicions along those lines. If you imagine that we parachuted into an ongoing discussion of pitch-tipping in the context of this game, the tweet makes plenty of sense. But Gausman is branching that conversation off in a new direction. The long-time hurler seems to be instinctively defending his brethren. He's implying that even if the Rays have something that's telling them what's coming, it might not be Henderson's fault. The other party involved—the one who might be guilty, since Gausman is exculpating Henderson—is catcher William Contreras. One of baseball's unwritten rules is that batters aren't supposed to peek at the catcher to get a clue about the likely location of the upcoming pitch. Hitters break that rule all the time. Even if they didn't, though, imagine you're in a tense and high-energy environment, and someone is just a few feet behind you, shuffling and leaning and moving. You're going to feel them. You're going to catch a glimpse of their shadow (yes, there are shadows on a big-league field, even ones we don't always see on TV broadcasts and ones cast by stadium lights, rather than the sun). Hitters often know where a catcher is. That's why many catchers set decoy locations or wait as long as possible before getting into their final stance to receive a pitch, even with the bases empty. The gist of Gausman's gossipy note, in my opinion, is that Contreras was giving away either pitch type or location based on his setup for each pitch in the sequence from Henderson to Mesa. Let's test that claim. Let's take a still-frame look at each pitch in the sequence, at the same moment in Henderson's delivery—and then process some information about what Mesa might have gleaned from that moment. Pitch No. 1: Changeup Away - Called Strike This is, for the moment, just our baseline. We're establishing what it all looks like. Pitch No. 2: Changeup Down and Away - Ball Ok, something different is happening here. Both knees are down for this pitch; that's unusual. We'll keep an eye on it. Pitch No. 3: Fastball Up and Away - Ball At first glance, this is very similar to the first pitch, but you can spot some important (though subtle) differences. Contreras is setting a higher target, but sitting lower to the ground. His body position does say, if you're looking for clues, that he's about to try to get on top of a riding fastball and hold it in place at the top of the strike zone. Pitch No. 4: Fastball Inside - Ball The other thing Gausman could have been implying, for what it's worth, is that Henderson losing pitches at the edges of the zone is not necessarily his fault, because Contreras might not be framing them well enough—or that the way he's setting up is not conducive to Henderson throwing strikes. On this pitch, Henderson misses all the way across the plate from his intended target, but it almost nips the inside edge—close enough to doing so that Contreras even challenged the call, albeit unsuccessfully. Note that this is the first pitch of the sequence in which Contreras's left knee is down, but his right one is up. Pitch No. 5: Fastball, Up and Away - Ball 4 Here, we return to the default fastball receiving stance, when the target is up and away from a lefty: down low in the crouch, glove high. There are some very good takes in this sequence by Mesa. Of the four balls, at least two were the type of pitch that often gets a swing. It's possible he had an inkling of what was coming, one way or another. Is Gausman right to suggest that Contreras might be to blame for that? Here's everyone's favorite answer: Maybe. That's the best I can do. I would lean toward 'no,' but 'yes' is on the table, even if it's way down at the other end of it. Here's the essential breakdown. When a lefty batter is at the plate and a righty hurler is throwing them a four-seam fastball, Contreras has his right knee down and his left knee up 78% of the time. It's the other way around 17% of the time. That's a fairly significant shift since 2025, when the split was 66% and 26%—and in the playoffs, it's been much more extreme. In October, right-handed Brewers pitchers have thrown 173 four-seamers to left-handed batters, and Contreras has been in the right-knee-down stance 92% of the time, against just 5% left-knee-down. That's worth knowing. It only matters, though, if there's some separation we can detect between that tendency and the stances Contreras uses on other pitches Henderson might have thrown Mesa. There isn't. When righty hurlers thrown lefty batters changeups, Contreras shifted from a 67/27 split last season to an 82/16 split this year. This month—you'll never guess—the split is 92/5. On cutters, it was a 72/21 split in 2025 and an 88/8 split in 2026. Of the 55 cutters righty Brewers have thrown to lefties in the playoffs, Contreras has gone right-knee-down, left-knee-up 55 times—every single time. Contreras has made a major shift toward using the right-knee-down stance this year, across all pitch types and target locations, so there's not much to read into things in that sense. He does go with both knees down much more often on changeups than on fastballs. Specifically, we might speculate that he goes to that stance when the changeup is supposed to be down below the zone, whereas (as we see on the first pitch, above) he'll keep the left knee up when the goal is to throw it for a strike. He extends his leg farther more often on the changeup than on fastballs. There are subtle differences one could learn to spot, and yes, they can be spotted even by a hitter in the box, if they know what to feel or look for. Contreras isn't giving away the game, either via framing or tipping his pitchers' hands. There's something there, maybe, but it's tiny. This isn't why the Rays were all over Henderson early in Game 2, and it's not a weakness in Contreras's game. There's a tendency that might be very slightly exploitable, but Contreras has become flexible and unpredictable enough to minimize the risk of that exploitation. Whether this is what Gausman was talking about or not, there's very little chance (though not quite none) the Rays were getting the drop on Milwaukee at any point via the man behind the dish. Image courtesy of Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images View full article