Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of James A. Pittman-Imagn Images The completeness of Jacob Misiorowski's 2026 dominance is hard to grasp. Few pitchers in the history of the game have overpowered and overmatched opposing batters this thoroughly. The sheer velocity is one thing; the way he gets down the mound and augments it is another. Having figured out how to fill up the strike zone and developed a sufficient arsenal of other trustworthy pitches to keep hitters honest, Misiorowski has become as close to unhittable as any starter has been in at least a decade. So when I tell you there's a dimension of his greatness this year we might not even be appreciating sufficiently, it will probably prompt skepticism. Of all the things Misiorowski is, these days, it's hard to argue for 'underrated'. Tell that to baserunners. The precious few players who reach base against the Brewers ace this year might as well swap out their shin pads and elbow armor for a big old ball-and-chain, because even if they're lucky enough to get to first, they're not going anywhere. All season, runners have attempted three steals against Misiorowski. Here's one of them—for a long time, the only successful one. It came on April 25, against the Pirates. Konnor Griffin is very fast. He's stolen 22 bases in 25 tries this year, and I don't think William Contreras would have thrown him out even if he had thrown through. That's not the point, though. Stealing the base wasn't even the point of Griffin taking off, from the Pirates' perspective. With No. 9 hitter Henry Davis at the plate and two outs, the reason Griffin ran was to try and bait Contreras into throwing to second, so that Pittsburgh might steal a third run in what was one of Misiorowski's most laborious outings of the year. Contreras didn't bite, and Misiorowski never cared whether Griffin went, anyway. Technically, it's a steal, but it hardly feels like an example of the runner winning a battle with the battery. Here's the second time someone tried running on Misiorowski. WU9WUkRfWGw0TUFRPT1fVWxBREFsQlNBMVFBREFkWEFBQUhWUVZXQUFNRVZsRUFBbFFBQUFBR0J3UUhBQUVD.mp4 Between that last attempt and this one, Misiorowski had gone from opening a lot of eyes with his superb velocity to being understood as the best pitcher in the sport. When you get any chance to create chaos or manufacture a run against him, you have to at least consider it. Yet, Ronald Acuña Jr.—no shrinking violet when it comes to attempting a steal—only did so once he thought he had the drop on friend and countryman Contreras, trying a delayed steal based on Contreras staying on one knee as he prepared to throw the ball back to his ace. It wasn't a bad idea, really. It didn't work, though, and the fact that Acuña judged that a better way to try for second than a straight steal is telling, too. Finally, on September 8, someone actually got him. We probably shouldn't be surprised about who it was. akR3T1dfWGw0TUFRPT1fVndKWUFnQlhVQW9BV2dGVVV3QUhBZzRIQUFNRlVsa0FWMUVDQndwVEFBWUFCd3Rm.mp4 When Misiorowski and Pete Crow-Armstrong are locked in any form of battle on the field this season, the main character energy in the air could power a mid-sized American city. It's only fitting that, despite Misiorowski getting the better of most of their matchups, Crow-Armstrong got some revenge immediately after reaching base in this encounter. Crow-Armstrong isn't just a high-volume basestealer; he's exceptionally good at getting leads and avoiding tags. He's stolen 38 bases in 45 tries. Between him and Griffin, the two guys who have stolen against Misiorowski this year are 60-for-70 in total, and again, only Crow-Armstrong's was even a real steal. Misiorowski doesn't have an elite pickoff move. It's fine, but it's not the type of thing that typically freezes runners. He shuts them down differently. It's partially about time, of course. A Misiorowski heater gets to the plate faster than that of any other pitcher in the game, and Contreras has one of the best pop times among catchers. (He's also quite accurate on his throws.) Even before he releases the ball, Misiorowski's delivery is quick, so although he's big, runners have a hard time getting a good lead as he starts his move. He complicates the equation further by varying the amount of time he holds the ball pretty widely; he's especially comfortable with a long hold. Add to that set of hurdles the fact that few pitchers induce more whiffs than Misiorowski, so no runner who takes off can feel very good about being protected by a hitter if the pitch is in a hittable spot. Teams should want to get every 90 feet they can against Misiorowski, but he has a knack for putting an anchor in the seat of runners' pants. It's helped him strand runners at a higher rate than the league average this year. It's helped him avoid big innings. Little though it might seem to matter, in comparison with the way he flummoxes hitters, Misiorowski stumps runners to an extent that only makes his brilliance more valuable. With one start left, Misiorowski has pitched 169 innings this year. No other hurler set to qualify for the ERA title has allowed fewer steals than he has. Only Parker Messick of the Guardians has been equally stingy (two steals), and he's a lefty. No one's been thrown out trying against him, either. In fact, no one but Messick and Misiorowski has allowed fewer than five steals in that much time on the mound. This is one last way in which, in the Year of Jacob Misiorowski, he just keeps finding ways to amaze. View full article

Image courtesy of Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images It hasn't been easy, exactly. Life in the majors is not kind to young hitters called up primarily for their glove. Cooper Pratt has only seen an opposing starter for a third time eight times all season. Of his 249 plate appearances, entering Tuesday, 122 have come against relievers. Pratt has already faced 135 different pitchers in the majors. Through his first three seasons, Robin Yount went to the plate 1,661 times and only saw 171 different hurlers. Pratt is being asked to survive a league that's given home no opportunity to get comfortable, partially because he bats at the bottom of one of the league's most potent lineups. He also missed time with a hamstring injury last month, and those he only spent a minimum stint on the shelf, he wasn't quite himself when he returned. Lately, though, he's very much himself. Pratt has hit for almost no power this month, but that's not for a lack of authoritative contact. In fact, he's produced a series of solid line drives and (as a result) a .315/.383/.370 batting line. In 62 trips to the plate, he's struck out just nine times and drawn six walks. It's not just the results that have been pretty. Pratt's process has improved. He's not swinging any faster than he was during the height of summer—if anything, he's slowed down a tick—but he's meeting the ball more squarely and producing more exit velocity as a function of what was possible, given his swing and the speed of the incoming pitch: That recent spike is because, seemingly, Pratt is more confident at the plate. His first-pitch swing rate is down this month, which has allowed him to work into some more favorable counts. When he does swing at that first offering, though, he usually stings it, because he's locked in on one pitch and one spot in those situations. When ahead in the count, Pratt is swinging more often in September than in previous months. When behind, he's swinging less. It's all part of an approach whereby he's gotten more willing to draw walks and to force pitchers into the zone, and more assertive when they do come to him. That maturation is tough for any player to achieve within a season, but it's especially impressive work by a 21-year-old who has gotten so few chances to acclimate to specific pitchers and their plans against him. For reasons both physical and mental, Pratt is much better at delivering the sweet spot to the ball lately than he was when he first came up. His swing speed ticked up after a few weeks in the majors not because he was actively trying to start hitting for power, but because he didn't have a good feel for how he was being pitched, and he needed the extra effort to produce hard-hit balls. Lately, he's looking more like someone who knows what's coming, and that's allowed him to swing smoother and with less conscious effort. He's not jamming himself nearly as much as he was early, and he's on time more often. When he mistimes it, he does so by less than he did earlier in the year. In a perfect world—certainly, in the future the team envisions for Pratt and the one he envisions for himself—he would get a little more bat speed going and start lifting his hard-hit balls to the pull field with some consistency, to give him the power dimension currently missing from his game. That can wait, though. Right now, Pratt is on a roll. He's locked in on what teams are trying to do to him, and he's making sure it doesn't work. He's covering the inner edge of the plate better and using the middle of the diamond. Milwaukee's offense runs more on the strength of the bottom third of its lineup than does any other team's. They need Pratt, Joey Ortiz, Sal Frelick, Luis Lara and/or whoever else is batting in the bottom three spots each day to get on base and create chances for the more well-rounded hitters at the top of the order. Pratt is fulfilling his role beautifully. If this continues into October, he'll be an easy hero to overlook when the team makes a deep run—but very much a hero, nonetheless. View full article

Image courtesy of Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images In August, former Phillies front-office wonk Doyoung-Tom Kim released an open-source method for evaluating pitchers' command, calling it OpenCommand. The model has been a hit in analytical circles, both because it seems to be well-designed and because Kim shared the coding and data he used to produce it, encouraging others to utilize and build on his work. Sure enough, after Kim got the ball rolling, others began doing interesting work with the data. For instance, Joshua Rodrigues of Baseball Prospectus wanted to know how often catchers set their targets in the horizontal center of the zone. Once he found that that varies from one catcher (and team) to another, he also found something unsurprising, but interesting: setting more central targets produces more pitches in the zone. And hey, look at that. The Brewers do that more than any other team in the league, by a fair margin. Catchers William Contreras and Gary Sánchez set up in the middle of the plate over 80% of the time; they're demanding that their hurlers fill up the zone. and the pitchers are obliging. A couple of caveats are worth mentioning here. Obviously, not every target is a real, suggested destination for the ensuing pitch. For multiple reasons, catchers sometimes offer decoy targets, or set their glove where the pitcher should "start" the ball, before letting the pitch's movement take it elsewhere. It's also true that the Brewers throw more fastballs than any other team in the league, which means setting a relatively central target, because fastballs are usually intended to be in the zone. There's even a Jacob Misiorowski factor, if you will. If you have Misiorowski (or Trevor Megill, or Abner Uribe, or the good version of Kyle Harrison) firing the ball in, there's little reason to get cute. Ask them to hit the center of the plate; hitters will struggle to handle it even if it's middle-middle. Building on Rodrigues's finding, Lau Sze Yui attempted to model the value of catcher targets. The Brewers don't break the scale on this one; they don't even finish first. They're markedly above-average, though. Yui's work has to apply one theoretical plan to every team, though. It can't quite capture the interaction value of the Brewers setting targets with plenty of zone around them, as part of their overall pitching philosophy. For instance, the Brewers' walk rate this year is not one of the best in the league. At 8.7%, they're close to average. For a team to throw as many fastballs as this one does and still walk this many opponents suggests that their real control is worse than average. Setting central targets and calling pitches that are easy to keep on the plate are probably vital to the team getting the great results they've gotten, overall. The more layers you peel away in search of the Brewers' advantages over the league, the simpler their process seems. There's tons of nuance involved, and it all takes the expertise and skillful personal management of Chris Hook, Jim Henderson and others to accomplish, but the team really does find value on the mound from establishing the fastball and having their catchers set clear targets in the zone for their pitchers to hit. That sounds as old-fashioned as seeing the ball deep and hitting it the other way, but hey, that's how the team's offense keeps beating projections and expectations, too. Modern baseball is unavoidably complex and technological. Teams have to keep doing great research, using advanced tools and evolving. However, much of that work can be put toward the goal of simply executing better on principles as old as the game itself. The Brewers do that better than anyone else, and every fancy new model that rolls out only seems to confirm that the club gets most of its edge from their old-school implementation of new-school notions. View full article

Image courtesy of James A. Pittman-Imagn Images Sunday night was the third straight appearance that felt like a trial for Kyle Harrison. The Brewers were hoping to see the lively movement back on his fastball, and to see hitters struggling to identify the slurve early. They wanted to see him challenge batters and win. Instead, he needed a bailout. He's been all but eliminated as a potential starter in the postseason rotation. His previous outing damaged his candidacy for a long-relief bridge role. This one set back his hopes of claiming even a short-relief, matchup-style gig on the playoff roster. That's a sad denouement for a 2026 season that looked (for a bit) like the next great Brewers breakout. Like most people and machines who seem to defy gravity, he eventually paid a price for it, and though he didn't stay long on the injured list or receive an especially worrisome verbal diagnosis on his elbow, it's clear that something is wrong. He might very well avoid the surgeon's table, but he looks increasingly likely to be shelved for October, to rest up and prepare for next year with a bit of extra rest. The only consolation to be taken from this outing is that it was hardly a surprising letdown; it's been underway for quite a while. Not so for Chad Patrick, whose erraticism is beginning to make you tilt your head to the side until you find a crick in your neck, the better to disguise a hand to the throat to wipe away a nervous sweat. He's always been effectively wild, but lately, the emphasis is sliding from the first word toward the latter—slowly, insidiously, but surely. On Sunday night, he got two outs, but he also issued two walks and hit a batter—and he was lucky it wasn't worse. Harrison was bailed out by a teammate; Patrick received grace from the opponents instead. An overeager swing in a bases-loaded plate appearance released the pressure valve for him, but it couldn't erase his shakiness. This is at least the third time in the last month and change that Patrick has taken the mound and been unable to locate the plate, throwing nearly (and, in one case, more than) half his pitches to non-competitive locations. In his last 15 appearances, he has an impressive 2.04 ERA, but that number is a lie. Of the 78 batters he's faced in those outings, he's walked 12 and hit three, and he's uncorked four wild pitches. In only one of those games (August 25 against the Mets, when his mistakes clustered in the strike zone, rather than outside them) has Patrick materially hurt the Brewers' chances to win, but the process doesn't back up the results. For the season as a whole, some disturbing trends are developing around Patrick's combination of stuff and command. He's never been a guy whom most of the stuff models like, and those metrics can underrate him, but this is still worth noting. The following is a heatmap for overall grade from PitchingBot, based on location, for Patrick's whole season. Every pitcher's chart of this type looks vaguely like this. Pitches near the edges of the zone are the most valuable a pitcher can throw. Pitches far from the zone are huge negatives. Those right down the middle are more of a mixed bag, and much depends on your sheer stuff or your deception. Patrick's doesn't look exactly like everyone else's, though. Because his raw stuff doesn't grade overwhelmingly well, he needs to stay out of the middle of the plate more than most hurlers; he hasn't done that successfully this season. He also scatters his pitches more than most pitchers do. Specifically, Patrick serves up a Dangerous Miss (defined on FanGraphs's PitchingBot Visualizer tool as a pitch with below-average command and overall grades that is in the zone) on 6.2% of his pitches, which is above the average of 5.0%. That's not his most worrisome number, though. The average pitcher throws a Waste Miss pitch (one with below-average command and overall scores, outside the strike zone) 36.5% of the time, which is far above the league standard of 30.7%. His Squandered pitch rate (pitches in the top third of his offerings for stuff grade, but in unhelpful locations) is 12.0%, clear of the league's 10.9% mark. These are just numbers, but they tell a story. Patrick has always been more prone than most to the especially wild pitch, and the Brewers can't thrust him into high-leverage postseason situations if he can't mitigate that tendency. For now, they need to deemphasize him within their October pitching plan, just as they're already doing with Harrison. The problem with that dual decision is obvious, though: they need someone to get those outs. The playoff pen can't consist entirely (or even mostly) of Aaron Ashby, Trevor Megill and Abner Uribe. Rightfully, Pat Murphy is loath to hand the game over to the likes of Antonio Senzatela and JoJo Romero when the score is close and the stakes are high. Keeping his starters in for seven innings apiece isn't viable, though. For those reasons (and plenty of his own), DL Hall has emerged as the No. 4 hurler out of the Milwaukee bullpen. Since he came off the injured list at the beginning of August, he's posted a 2.03 ERA that is much more honest. Of the 100 batters he's faced, he's walked just nine, and he's struck out 29. Hall was one of the elite swing disrupters in the game even before hitting the shelf. Since coming off, though, he's been great in a more conventional way. Whether it was a mechanical adjustment (his arm angle is a bit lower) or simple healing, the velocity that went missing for Hall over a year ago is back. Hall always talked about the possibility of finding the heat again. It took so long that even he was beginning to plot out a life without the ability to sit 96 and touch 99, but lo, he's suddenly able to do it again: A new focus on throwing his two main breaking balls (the slider and curve) with power has given them a velocity bump equal to or exceeding the one he's found on the fastballs. That's produced more whiffs and allowed him to attack with those pitches more, leaning on his changeup much less. Hall's PitchingBot Visualizer tells the story of the difference between him and Patrick. Better at finding the edges and staying competitive with his misses, Hall has: a 3.9% Dangerous Miss rate a 34.0% Waste Miss rate a 10.3% Squandered rate As the surface-level numbers suggest, this is a pitcher turning the corner. Because of his background and recent usage, he's also capable of roaming between roles. He should be able to fill the spaces the team has long hoped Patrick might, and the ones into which they tried unsuccessfully to squeeze Harrison over the last fortnight. He can't be the full-fledged starter Harrison is, but there's some real reason for hope that Robert Gasser can now be the team's No. 3 playoff starter. Hall just needs to slot in alongside Ashby and round out the high-leverage suite for Murphy heading into the postseason. In a perfect world, Patrick, Harrison and more would be fully operational with one week left in the season, and there would be less pressure on Hall. This is no perfect world, but the Brewers' depth and their deftness in player instruction and development are paying timely dividends. What Patrick and Harrison can't give the team, at the moment, Hall can. That ought to be enough—assuming, of course, that everything else that has to fall into place to produce a pennant-winning run does so. View full article

Image courtesy of Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images Relentlessness is the Brewers' ethos, and relentless winning is their defining tendency. They haven't been able to help themselves, even since clinching their fourth straight NL Central title earlier this week. With a pair of wins over the Baltimore Orioles already this weekend, Milwaukee has not only all but knocked the O's from their AL Wild Card picture, but positioned themselves to sail comfortably to one of the byes through the first round of the postseason. Right now, the Crew has the best record in baseball, with a two-game edge on the Dodgers for home-field advantage throughout the playoffs and another game over the Rays, the only real threat from the American League to seize the top overall seed in the sport. They lead the team from the suburbs northwest of Atlanta by six games, which is important. To be guaranteed a bye to the NL Division Series, the Brewers just have to avoid giving up six games in that particular race. They won't own the tiebreaker, in the extremely unlikely event that the teams end in a tie, so their magic number to clinch a bye is 2, but there's an awful lot of baseball left to drop that to zero. It could happen as soon as tonight. Obviously, it'd be great—on multiple levels—to secure home-field advantage for every possible series. Firstly, for fans, home playoff games are a different and more wonderful thing than ones played on the road. The city buzzes in a different way. There are more team colors on the street. There's greater energy around the event. You're less likely to be saddled with an undesirable start time (specifically, a late-night West Coast one). Home playoff games are also worth huge money for Mark Attanasio, and although he could and should invest even more in the team, Attanasio has done a reasonably good job of using rising revenues to sustain his team's success. On the field itself, being at home is a tangible advantage for this year's Brewers team—a huge one. They're 52-26 at Uecker Field this year, outstripping a still-impressive 45-32 on the road. The difference is, if anything, even more pronounced than those records make it appear, though. At home, Milwaukee has scored 430 runs (5.5 per game), compared to 271 allowed (3.5 per game). In away games, they've scored just 369 times (4.8) and allowed 329 opponent tallies (4.3). No team has scored more or allowed fewer at home this year. Four teams have scored more on the road, though, and eight have allowed fewer. The difference between being 2.0 runs per game better than your competition and being 0.5 runs per game better is—well, this is one of those times when I don't have to do any fancy analysis or contextualizing. It's as big as it sounds. So, yes, beating out the Dodgers and Rays for the top overall spot would be terrific. Let's add one more layer to that, too: Jacob Misiorowski and the mound. With his freakish explosion down the mound, Misiorowski lands at a point beyond the reach of almost every other pitcher in the league, and when the Brewers play anywhere but Milwaukee, there are often mound maintenance issues. Misiorowski's RA9 (runs allowed per nine innings; think ERA but with all runs, rather than just "earned" ones) is 2.11 at home and 2.58 on the road. He's struck out 41.4% of opposing batters at The Ueck. Elsewhere, that number is 34.6%. His walk rate is 5.6% at home; it's 7.7% on the road. Typically, we might dismiss these splits as fickle or fluky, but Misiorowski is an atypical pitcher. Don't expect host teams against whom Misiorowski pitches in October to go terribly far out of their way to make sure the mound is perfectly suited to him before a start, either. Once the game begins, the pitcher has the right to ask for work to be done to get the mound right, but a pitcher who feels uncomfortable at first has to choose between looking a bit weak or finicky and pitching through that discomfort. This is a mind game Misiorowski has to be ready to win when he does pitch anywhere but at home this fall, but plainly, the best-case scenario for the Brewers is one in which he pitches as many home games as possible. If Misiorowski starts Game 1 of the NLDS, his second start in that series would come only if it reaches Game 5. If it comes to that (and if he wins that game for the Crew), he won't be available until Game 3 of the NLCS, which will be a home game for the lower-seeded team. If the Brewers win the NLDS in four or fewer, however, Misiorowski could be ready to pitch Game 1 of the NLCS. That's a home game for the higher-seeded side. In either case, his second start in such a series would come in the opposite vanue. The above makes clear how hard it is to predict and assess whether the Brewers should push hard for home-field advantage. If they do go to a Game 5 in the NLDS (as they did last year), it might almost be better if they met the Dodgers in the NLCS and Los Angeles had the home-field advantage. That would put Misiorowski on the mound in Milwaukee for Game 3. That this team plays better at home is above dispute. The crowd at The Ueck is a creature to be feared, especially when there's blood in the water. The fans smell it as sharply as the team does. On balance, though, having the bye is a great enough advantage, and the plan for the Crew the rest of the way should be to take it easy. In all likelihood, they'll coast right into home-field advantage, anyway. Pat Murphy has embedded winning so deeply in the habits and mindset of his team that they hardly ever lose a substantial number of games in a row. They also have (arguably) the deepest roster in baseball. They can and should rest some players over the coming days, not for long stretches, but for a day here and there. Brice Turang has rounded into form nicely since the knee injury through which he played unproductively for a while, but another day or two of rest over the final week would be good. Ditto for William Contreras, and for Jackson Chourio, and for just about everyone on the position-player side of the roster. Murphy is already doing some of this. His lineup Saturday wasn't the one he'd have penned if the game were do-or-die. Nor were his pitching decisions what they otherwise would have been. He's helming the team smoothly toward the regular season's finish line. The real work begins again in 13 days. For now, though the Crew are a much better team at home, they needn't worry about which games they'll play there next month. They just need to keep everyone healthy and get them ready to play as many games as possible in the playoffs, regardless of venue. View full article

"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