Jack Stern

One of Pat Murphy's pet analogies is that winning a World Series is like climbing a mountain. It's a dangerous and tedious endeavor. One wrong step can be deadly, so the safest approach is to stay in the moment and take one deliberate step at a time. Murphy last made the comparison midway through the NLCS, when the Brewers were two games away from the Fall Classic. "You're climbing a mountain, and you're getting really close to the top, and when you are, usually that path narrows a little bit. It's not as wide," Murphy said. "I think, as you get closer, you've just got to keep your footing, keep your head down, make sure you keep your footing, and you can't look too far ahead. When you look up for the prize—'Oh, where's the top?'—you might step in a crack or a pothole. You've got to keep your head down and go forward." When Trevor Megill jammed Richie Palacios with a 99-MPH fastball and Brice Turang tossed it to first base, for once, a season of Milwaukee baseball didn't end in disappointment or despair. Nearly a decade of postseason demons were vanquished. Their eighth bite at the apple in the David Stearns-to-Matt Arnold era was filling. A fanbase so hungry for a title that a massive contingent traveled to St. Petersburg during the work week erupted—at Tropicana Field, at American Family Field, and throughout Wisconsin. For the first time in franchise history, the Brewers are World Series champions. They're on top of the mountain. How's the view? "The view is fantastic," Megill said. "Sensational," Logan Henderson said. "It's just the greatest feeling ever," Christian Yelich said. "I don't even know how to describe it. I wish everybody could experience what that feels like, to run on the field after the third out right there and finally see it." The longest-tenured Brewer except Brandon Woodruff, Yelich has been a constant through the golden age of Milwaukee baseball. That also means he's taken every October gut punch along the way. Chris Taylor snaring his sharp fly ball in Game 7 of the 2018 NLCS. Trent Grisham, filling in for an injured Yelich, misplaying Juan Soto's base hit in right field in the 2019 Wild Card Game meltdown. Freddie Freeman's go-ahead home run off Josh Hader in the 2021 NLDS. Pete Alonso's go-ahead blast in the 2024 Wild Card Series. Last year's sweep at the hands of the Dodgers, when Shohei Ohtani slammed the door with the greatest individual game of all time. It was all necessary. Each heartbreak molded the Brewers into what they are now: the best and most undaunted team in baseball, and one that refused to stop fighting no matter the circumstances. The team that posted baseball's best regular-season record for the second straight year. The team that went 11-2 in one of the best postseasons ever, coming from behind in seven of those wins. "The Alonso homer, I thank him when I see him," Murphy said. "Because it teaches you something. I told the group after that game, I said, 'Hey, I don't know why, but I promise you, this will help you.' And then after the Dodgers last year, I said the same thing." The veteran Brewers learned from those failures. The younger players learned from last year's NLCS dressing-down. They all came back with a sharper edge and a stronger drive to finish the job. After the sweep, Yelich told the room that someday they would be baseball's reigning champion. Murphy claims that he started telling the group this season that 2026 would be that year. "It's all worth it," Megill said. "It's only a failure if you don't learn from it. And this team be damned if we didn't come back this year after what we did last year and finish business." The Brewers kept climbing and never looked back. They led the division for 148 days and won it by 14 games. The wins kept stacking in October, and their usual playoff pitfalls couldn't trip them up. Most of their postseason wins were close, but when the dust settled, the Brewers had throttled all three teams blocking their path to a championship. "My college coach Mitch Thompson always said, 'You can't fall to the top of the mountain,'" Henderson said. "It's true. You start at the bottom, and you climb your way to the top. It's a lot of adversity, but it's very worth it." After a long and strenuous climb, the Brewers reached the top of the mountain. They're the reigning World Series champions. Now, the organization and fanbase can enjoy the scenery. "We fought like hell, and we handled business," Megill said. Image courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images View full article

Some nights just aren't your night. That had only been the case once for the Brewers this October, but some good old-fashioned baseball cruelty finally caught them on Tuesday night at Tropicana Field, in Game 4 of the World Series. For a team and fanbase starving for its first championship, it was particularly cruel. It started with the Brewers' at-bats against Griffin Jax. Starting an elimination game for the Rays, the veteran got eight whiffs and four strikeouts with his changeup, but Milwaukee hitters crushed most balls in play against him. Nine of the Brewers' 10 batted balls against Jax had an exit velocity of at least 95 miles per hour, but due to poor placement and great Tampa Bay defense, they scratched across just two runs on four hits. That poor luck continued for much of the night. The Brewers hit nine batted balls with an exit velocity of at least 102 MPH for outs, and they had four outs with expected batting averages of at least .700. That included Jake Bauers's sharp third-inning flyout, which Statcast said would have been a two-run home run in 13 ballparks—including American Family Field. The Rays, meanwhile, scored two runs against Dustin May without hitting a ball harder than 87.2 MPH. Exit velocity alone doesn't tell the whole story—Chandler Simpson's RBI double in the second wasn't hit hard, but he pulled a mistake sweeper from May down the right-field line—but the Brewers were hitting better than the Rays. It just wasn't creating more runs. Milwaukee did enough to keep pace with Tampa Bay, tying the game in the fourth on a Cooper Pratt double and again in the fifth on a David Hamilton home run. But without the breakthrough hit, a 2-2 stalemate continued into the late innings. By then, Nick Martinez and the Rays' best relievers were throwing strikes around the edges of the zone and silencing Brewers hitters more convincingly. "I don't think we had poor at-bats at the end," Pat Murphy said. "I think we didn't punch out too much, but we had a couple checked-swing strikeouts. Sometimes that's a result of hitting a ball really, really hard and it gets caught. We're human, too. We've played really good baseball." The Brewers had a chance against Tampa Bay closer Bryan Baker, when Pratt singled for his third hit of the night. After Chandler Simpson made a leaping catch at the left-field wall to snag Garrett Mitchell's hard fly ball, Murphy fired his best bullet off the bench, hitting Andrew Vaughn for David Hamilton. As a four-seam and changeup pitcher with a high arm slot, Baker is precisely the kind of right-hander Vaughn sees well. He only saw two pitches. On the second, Pratt tried to steal second. It made some sense: Baker is slow to the plate, and Pratt needed to be in scoring position for a potential base hit. However, he was ruled out upon review, as an on-the-money throw led second baseman Richie Palacios right into Pratt's trailing hand. The inning was over, and because Joey Ortiz now needed to replace Hamilton at third base, the Brewers had burned Vaughn without getting him an at-bat. The tie stretched into extra innings, as both teams emptied their bullpens. Despite all that went wrong, the Brewers still seemed to answer for good in the 12th. Pratt led off the inning against Ian Seymour, launching a hanging sweeper for a go-ahead home run. The Brewers were three outs away from their first World Series title, and their 22-year-old shortstop had etched a permanent entry in the franchise history book. Instead, things unraveled in the bottom half of the inning. Because Murphy used Trevor Megill for a one-batter matchup with Yandy Díaz in the eighth and Aaron Ashby's velocity dipped in the 11th, Antonio Senzatela and Shane Drohan had to close out a championship. Senzatela jammed Junior Caminero for a leadoff ground ball to third, but Ortiz (in the game because Vaughn pinch-hit) short-hopped a throw Jake Bauers couldn't pick. "I got to make that play," Ortiz said. "There's just no excuse about it." With that, Senzatela gave way to Drohan for the lefties in the middle of the order. But this was the second-half version of Drohan, who traded his once-dominant four-seamer for a new sinker as his primary fastball. The sinker's shape and performance improved down the stretch, but to record crucial October outs, he needed that elevated four-seamer in his back pocket for whiffs. Drohan threw 15 pitches. Thirteen were sinkers, including his first five pitches to Liam Hicks. Drohan induced a ground ball, but it was hit hard and snuck past a shifted Pratt for a single. "With no outs and a guy on, you're trying to get a ground ball," Drohan said. "Got it, it just sucks that we were shifted." With runners on first and third and nobody out on the road, Drohan needed a strikeout. After Johnny DeLuca swung through an elevated sinker, Drohan and William Contreras tried a slider instead of a high four-seamer. He missed his spot, and DeLuca punched it up the middle for a game-tying single. Chandler Simpson and Ben Williamson then saw six straight sinkers, adding two more hits to walk it off. Even though his sinker improved down the stretch, the fact is that Drohan threw his inferior fastball almost exclusively. Even in two-strike counts, he and William Contreras kept throwing a pitch with little swing-and-miss to it, leaving Drohan vulnerable to balls getting through the infield. The sinker induced two ground balls, but both were hard-hit. "Just went at them with good sinkers, and they slapped it around," Drohan said. "If the first guy hits a ground-ball double play, we're not even talking about it," Murphy said of the pitch usage. It was the final blow in a night where little went Milwaukee's way. Hitting the ball hard didn't work. Substitutions didn't work. Drohan's sinker didn't work. A blowout win in Game 3 put the Brewers on the verge of a surprisingly swift World Series sweep, but now, they'll have to work a bit harder. The bullpen is drained. Their approaches have been tested. Their defense cracked again. "I think the guys understand it's going to be hard," Murphy said. "You're playing the best team in the American League. They proved it all year long, and they came up big today. It's going to be hard." Make no mistake, the Brewers remain in the driver's seat. Since the League Championship Series became a best-of-seven in 1985, no team has swept both the LCS and World Series. Tuesday night's debacle only prevented Milwaukee from making history in one trivial way; they're still likely to make a more important kind. In their best season as a franchise, they've handled everything and everyone the year has thrown their way. It's fitting that they'll have to overcome one more gut punch to seal the deal. "I trust our guys. I trust them," Murphy said. "They put themselves in a position to win." Image courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images View full article

To some extent, the Brewers' approach to winning a World Series relies on luck. When two good teams meet in a short October series, the best or most talented roster doesn't always win. A hard-hit ball can bounce the wrong way, while a broken-bat bloop falls in no-man's land. A star player can go cold for a few games as a lesser-known one gets hot. Non-reviewable calls can swing games and even series. With that in mind, the Brewers optimize their teams for the regular season above all else. The idea is that if a team makes the playoffs every year, the stars will eventually align for a World Series championship. That means the Brewers don't load up on big names or build the flashiest roster. Instead, they focus on depth and sustainability, even if it means trading away key players on expiring contracts for controllable talent instead of re-signing them. They don't tie themselves to a competitive window that will eventually expire. Even if the Brewers are never the favorite on paper, they still have a chance to win it all every year. That's the correct strategy, but it's dangerous if taken too far. Attributing all postseason results to chance prevents clubs from identifying and addressing real shortcomings. While no formula guarantees October success, doing certain things well positions teams to win. Teams that hit more home runs rely less on balls in play finding holes for hits. Athletic teams that play great defense don't need balls hit right at fielders to record outs. Before the NLDS, Brewers president of baseball operations and general manager Matt Arnold acknowledged that the front office believes in playoff randomness, but also believes teams can mitigate it by building the right roster and doing the right things on the field. "I do think there's a good amount of randomness," Arnold said. "But also, there's an old quote, 'Luck is a residue of design.' So I feel like we're spending a lot of minutes trying to create our own luck and create our own processes to make sure that we're putting ourselves in a position to have success. So I certainly think you can control some of it, but also, it's baseball, and anything can happen." The Brewers caught a few breaks to reach the World Series; Ty France's redirected flyout off American Family Field's roof in the NLDS will forever be controversial in San Diego. But for the most part, they blazed their way here with excellent offense and excellent pitching. Over and over, they wore down great pitchers with long plate appearances, then punished the resulting mistakes over the heart of the plate. "I think if you try to swing a lot against aces, you're in trouble," assistant hitting coach Daniel Vogelbach said. "They got really good stuff, so you just really have to zone them in." It was a different story on Monday night, against Freddy Peralta in Game 3 of the World Series. The Brewers waited out their former ace—the most recent big name they traded away before free agency to maintain their open-ended window—drawing three walks and chasing just 26% of pitches outside the strike zone. But unlike other starters, Peralta didn't cave. Every time the Brewers backed him into a corner, he threw high-quality strikes. Peralta threw some pitches over the heart of the plate, but he never left any right down the middle. Without damage pitches, the Brewers hit only four hard-hit balls (exit velocity of at least 95 MPH) out of 15 batted balls against Peralta. Trying to barrel fastballs around the edges of the zone almost always hurts more than it helps. They needed to think small. "Barreling balls is great, but staying inside and staying through balls will get you hits," Vogelbach said. "If you start cheating to the fastball, trying to barrel it, you're going to be in trouble." They also needed some good sequencing. They got it in the third inning from Christian Yelich and William Contreras, who got jammed on inside fastballs but looped them to the opposite field for run-scoring singles. Yelich stayed inside the ball enough to hit it on a line, but it left his bat at just 71.3 mph. "He beat me with it a little bit," Yelich said. "I just kind of got lucky." Yelich again made his own luck half an hour later on the bases, setting up a fifth-inning breakthrough. With two outs and runners on first and second, William Contreras hit a hard ground ball that took third baseman Junior Caminero back and to his left. The awkward positioning forced him to spin and redirect his body to make a throw. Caminero had plenty of time to make a play at first. Contreras is a slow runner out of the right-handed batter's box, and he wasn't even halfway down the line when Caminero reached a throwing position. Instead, he took the shorter throw to second, where Yelich was initially called out but ruled safe upon review. "Once I kind of saw him go in the hole and spin, I had a feeling that maybe that was going to be coming that way, but I didn't really know where it was going to be," Yelich said. It was a mistake by Caminero, but Yelich made it costly by getting a head start off first base. Ryan Vilade wasn't holding him on with two runners on base and was playing farther off the base for the right-handed Contreras. Reading the positioning, Yelich took an extra step off first and got a great secondary lead. "You're kind of walking that thin line and trying to make sure that you can extend as far as you can without getting back-picked after the pitch," Yelich said. "You're kind of lengthening your primary [lead] there in case that happens, where there's a ball in the hole or some sort of play happens where you could potentially beat the throw to second base." "We work on those things in spring," Sal Frelick said. "[Yelich is] the guy that's running the meeting saying, 'This is important.' It's his 14th season. He's been an All-Star, Silver Slugger, MVP, and nobody cares about baserunning more than him." That extra step turned an inning-ending groundout into a bases-loading single. "The first baseman, with the right-handed hitter, played way off," Pat Murphy said. "Yeli took advantage of that, got as far out as he could, safe at second. That's a game changer right there. That gives you another pitch, and that's sometimes all you need." The floodgates opened from there. The overturn chased Peralta from the game, as Kevin Cash went to Cam Booser for a string of lefties in the second half of the order. Unlike Peralta, Booser made several mistakes. The Brewers no longer needed to create their own luck. Brice Turang and Garrett Mitchell smashed hard ground-ball singles. Cooper Pratt and Frelick smoked doubles down the left-field line. After another pitching change, David Hamilton and Jackson Chourio drove in two more runs against Cole Sulser. Just like that, the Brewers led 10-0. They became the first team in World Series history to score eight runs with two outs in a single inning. From there, they cruised to their most comfortable postseason victory. Now the Brewers are one win away from their first World Series championship. Their vision is about to come to fruition. Their approach will finally be rewarded. "We're going to treat it like a Game 7," Frelick said. "We obviously know that one more win can get us a nice trophy, but it's really just win every pitch, every inning, every at-bat, and that's what got us here." Image courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images View full article

Pat Murphy loves players who do the little things well. He respects the underdog. He admires the guy who isn’t the most physically gifted, but pours every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears into every pitch to maximize his success. Sal Frelick is the quintessential Pat Murphy Guy. He’s been a productive big-leaguer when everything clicks, but he has real physical limitations. At 5-foot-9, Frelick isn’t the biggest guy. He’s not the strongest guy, posting the eighth-lowest hard-hit rate among qualified hitters since his debut in 2023. This season, he wasn’t the healthiest guy, playing through and eventually spending a month on the injured list with a torn labrum in his right shoulder. The result was a career-worst campaign: Frelick hit just .230/.295/.319 (72 wRC+) and was worth -0.5 fWAR. But Frelick has produced before, and he has the intangibles Murphy prizes. He’s scrappy, gritty, and an emerging clubhouse leader—words that can be vapid cliches, but aren't, here. Before Game 2 of the World Series, the manager reiterated his belief that Frelick brings more to the table than his slash line or physical tools indicate. “He’s just the ultimate competitor, winner,” Murphy said. “He’s got the ‘it’ factor. You think of Joe Montana. You think of people that have—Larry Bird—that have the ‘it’ factor. I’m not saying he’s at that level of talent or has been in a position to do those things, but he has that ‘it’ factor. He can take a team down the field.” A few hours later, Frelick delivered perhaps the biggest swing of his life in another comeback postseason win, hitting a game-tying homer off Rays left-hander Ian Seymour in the bottom of the sixth inning. He torched the ball all night. For the first time this season and the third time in his career, he hit four batted balls over 95 mph in a game. “He hit four lasers tonight,” Murphy said. “He hit four balls right on the screws.” That sixth-inning laser erased an early 4-0 deficit after a shaky first inning that featured Cooper Pratt’s fourth postseason error and another wobbly start by Logan Henderson. It was just Frelick’s fourth career home run against a southpaw, including postseason games. He takes a slightly different approach against them, and has usually reserved his power-oriented swings for matchups where he has the platoon advantage. Seymour posted reverse splits this year, but the Rays have used him as a situational lefty in the postseason, including on Saturday night. He has weapons to retire left-handers, including a running two-seamer and a sweeper with plenty of horizontal movement in opposite directions. That’s what Frelick expected to see when he stepped into the box. On the first pitch, Seymour threw a sinker over the inner third for strike one. He never went to the sweeper, instead alternating sinkers and four-seamers for most of the at-bat. All nine pitches were fastballs (Rays manager Kevin Cash admitted he felt Seymour was “stubborn” in not mixing things up), and Frelick kept spoiling them. “He’s pretty much a sinker guy,” Frelick said. “Was fouling them off, missed a few good ones, and then late in the at-bat, he started throwing four-seams and kind of took me by surprise. Was able to spoil a few of those and was just really hoping, because I had seen the sinker earlier, that he would maybe leave one over the plate.” On pitches seven and eight, Frelick fouled off fastballs that nicked the inside corner. At that point, he was prepared to turn on velocity that leaked a little further over the plate. “Didn’t sell for it, but I just thought, ‘If he executes a good slider here, I’ll try to fight it off,’” Frelick said. “I’m an eight-hole hitter, I’m a lefty, and you assume a guy like that is coming at you.” He got his mistake. Seymour’s ninth pitch was another four-seamer closer to the middle of the zone. Frelick, whose average bat speed of 68.3 mph ranks near the bottom of hitters, unleashed a 75.7-mph swing. He was right on time with enough authority, launching that fastball to center field to bring the Brewers all the way back. The next inning, Pratt redeemed himself with a two-strike single to drive in the winning run. Aaron Ashby continued his yeoman’s work out of the bullpen with another multi-inning save, bringing Milwaukee within two wins of its first World Series championship. This is the formula that’s gotten the Brewers this far against great October pitching: wear them down with long, disciplined plate appearances, then pounce on the inevitable mistake pitch. This team keeps coming back because it’s developed the right blend of scrappiness and timely power. “Our offense is built to kind of chip away and wear on pitchers, which I think can be good when you’re trying to come back,” Frelick said. “At the same time, if we’re up, it’s the same exact approach. I think just having an offense built like that is really good for when you’re down.” Usually, Frelick does the scrapping to set up that big swing. This time, he supplied the power. After a rough regular season, he’s rewarded Murphy’s loyalty and belief, hitting .273/.370/.409 (118 wRC+). “We talked about it when you guys were all here earlier,” Murphy said postgame. “He’s got the ‘it’ factor.” Image courtesy of USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect View full article

The Brewers are one win closer to their first World Series championship, and once again, William Contreras was at the center of everything. It was Contreras who helped set the tone early. It was Contreras who kept things under control behind the plate when the Rays threatened in the middle innings. That was the story all October as the Brewers bulldozed their way to their first National League pennant. "I feel like he's taken his game to another level this postseason with just how locked in he is," Yelich said. "It seems like he's doing whatever it takes to get the job done." "Contreras was incredible," Pat Murphy said. "He was the player of the game." It started in the first inning, when Contreras's RBI single capped a two-run frame against Tampa Bay starter Nick Martinez. The efficient veteran posted the highest in-zone rate and lowest walk rate among qualified starters this season, so he (and Game 2 starter Drew Rasmussen) posed a challenge for a patient Brewers offense that grinds down pitchers with long plate appearances. They couldn't wait him out, so they had to attack pitches over the plate. WEQ4azNfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X0FRVldWd2NDVTFFQVhWRUFWZ0FIQjFCZkFGZ0NWZ0lBQkZCV1VndFFCUXBSQmdNRQ==.mp4 "That's the cat and mouse of the whole game," Murphy said on Friday afternoon before Game 1. "That's Baseball 101. It's not early takes on noncompetitive pitches. It's being ready every single pitch and then really discerning between balls and strikes and discerning between strikes to hit and strikes to be okay with." The Brewers didn't plan to be mindlessly aggressive, but to react accordingly when Martinez gave them hittable strikes. After running the second-lowest in-zone swing rate in baseball this year, they swung at 80% of his in-zone pitches in Game 1. Four of six hitters in the first inning swung at the first pitch, including Jackson Chourio's leadoff single and Contreras's base hit to plate the second run. "We didn't want to jump him or anything like that," said Yelich, whose one-out triple drove in Chourio to open the scoring. "It was just make sure that you got a good plan, and you were going to stick to it." "After being off for some time, I'm pleased we came out in the first inning ready to go," Murphy said. This was the second time this postseason that Contreras slashed a high-leverage RBI single on the first pitch. ek15ZzdfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X1ZRQUVYRkVCVmdFQVdsWUdBQUFIQ0FJQUFBQU1CUUFBQndBTkJGVUdBZ05XQWxBQw==.mp4 Setting the tone proved critical, as Martinez quickly settled in after that first inning. The Brewers continued to have tough plate appearances for most of the night, being aggressive on strikes and chasing less than most teams against Martinez, but he held them scoreless over his final four innings. "You know it's going to be a battle," Yelich said. "You have to stay disciplined, do a lot of things right. It was nice to get off to a good start there early. We weren't really able to add on off of him, but guys kept having good at-bats." Without those insurance runs, Contreras kept the Rays at bay with his defense. In both the fifth and sixth innings, he threw out the tying run on steal attempts. Victor Mesa Jr. made an ill-advised attempt at third base in the fifth, and Contreras fired a dime to David Hamilton's outstretched glove to throw him out and end the inning. That got Jacob Misiorowski through five innings of one-run ball, even as another playoff opponent continued spoiling his fastball. In the sixth, he threw out Jonathan Aranda at second for a strike-em-out, throw-em-out double play behind Abner Uribe. "I know the game, so I know that the two runners that I was able to throw out today meant a lot in the game and could have been a big difference in the game," Contreras said through interpreter Daniel de Mondesert. That at-bat also featured Contreras's second successful ABS challenge of the night, continuing his late-season turnaround after making too many poor challenges during the summer. Both at-bats ended in strikeouts after he flipped a ball to a strike. "Going through a good moment right now, and I think the ABS is kind of similar to hitting in a season," Contreras said. "You might go through a slump. Right now, I think I'm going through a good moment with it, and I've got to take advantage of that." Contreras has long possessed the talent and competitiveness to be one of baseball's best players, but has not always lived up to that ability during the regular season, often performing like a good catcher instead of a great one. This October, he's elevated his game when it's mattered the most. "This guy has been incredible, and he does both sides of the bal—and the side that you can't measure," Murphy said. "I don't know what his numbers are, but he does so much for the team. He's incredible. That's all I could tell you. He's incredible. We wouldn't be in the position we're in without Contreras." Image courtesy of Benny Sieu-Imagn Images View full article

Image courtesy of Benny Sieu-Imagn Images Injuries and underperformance thinned the back of the Brewers' starting rotation down the stretch, but they still had enough depth to navigate playoff series. Nonetheless, with Kyle Harrison and Dustin May falling from stalwarts to question marks, winning Jacob Misiorowski's postseason starts became even more crucial for setting the tone in the Division Series and the Championship Series. The same is true now, as Misiorowski prepares to pitch in the opener of the World Series. The Brewers have won both of Misiorowski's October starts, but not because he carried them to victories. He's been fine in both outings, but each was a far cry from his dominant regular-season form, when he was the best pitcher in baseball. Misiorowski failed to complete five innings in both starts, and after leading qualified starters in strikeout-minus-walk rate in the regular season, he's been middle-of-the-pack among playoff starters. {C}%3C!%2D%2Dtd%20%7Bborder%3A%201px%20solid%20%23cccccc%3Boverflow%3A%20hidden%3Bpadding%3A%202px%203px%202px%203px%3Bvertical-align%3A%20bottom%3B%7Dbr%20%7Bmso-data-placement%3Asame-cell%3B%7D%2D%2D%3E--> Split ERA xERA CHEESE K-BB% Regular Season 1.80 2.12 2.35 31.3% Postseason 3.24 3.92 3.04 18.9% "Long story [short], he's taken on a lot of responsibility as a young [24]-year-old kid," Pat Murphy said. "I think it's been a lot for him." Misiorowski's fastball has been the culprit for the downturn. In the regular season, it induced whiffs on 40.2% of swings. This October, that number is down to 16.1%. It's gone from the game's best swing-and-miss four-seamer to below average at missing bats. The fastball wasn't going to overpower Misiorowski's first two opponents as it did most teams. Both the Padres and Dodgers were great fastball-hitting lineups this season. When Misiorowski faced the Dodgers in August, they only whiffed on 22.6% of swings against his heater. In the playoffs, both teams targeted the fastball and refused to let it beat them. They took shorter swings, which put them more on time and on plane with the ball. For the most part, they still didn't square it up, but they combined to foul off 40 Misiorowski fastballs, the second-most against any pitcher this October. {C}%3C!%2D%2Dtd%20%7Bborder%3A%201px%20solid%20%23cccccc%3Boverflow%3A%20hidden%3Bpadding%3A%202px%203px%202px%203px%3Bvertical-align%3A%20bottom%3B%7Dbr%20%7Bmso-data-placement%3Asame-cell%3B%7D%2D%2D%3E--> {C}%3C!%2D%2Dtd%20%7Bborder%3A%201px%20solid%20%23cccccc%3Boverflow%3A%20hidden%3Bpadding%3A%202px%203px%202px%203px%3Bvertical-align%3A%20bottom%3B%7Dbr%20%7Bmso-data-placement%3Asame-cell%3B%7D%2D%2D%3E--> Split Bat Speed Swing Length Late% On Time% Under% Regular Season 71.2 6.7 36% 64% 61% Postseason 70.4 6.5 24% 76% 56% "The Padres and Dodgers both had a good approach of just fouling stuff off," Misiorowski said. "I bet Tampa Bay is going to do pretty much the same thing." "They're obviously looking at an area," Murphy said. "They're trying to exploit everything. He's exposed, like all these guys get at some point." Misiorowski isn't at his best, either. No pitcher would admit to it ahead of the biggest start of his life, but he's probably feeling the effects of a career-high in innings. "It's all about Miz and his health and his mental state, and it's not easy," Murphy said. "It's not easy what he's going through. This kid is way over what people would call his innings limit." He's maintained triple-digit velocity into October, but Misiorowski's been physically out of sync in both starts, causing him to spray more fastballs and fall into non-competitive counts. That also alters how his ball moves. If Misiorowski's delivery is off, it's harder for him to get his hand behind the ball and work through it to create backspin. That backspin gives it extreme, deceptive carry from his low arm slot and leaves hitters swinging underneath the ball. The induced vertical break of Misiorowski's fastball dipped at the end of September. In his NLCS start, it fell to 13.7 inches, 1.6 inches below his regular-season average. Non-competitive locations, working behind in counts, and a tick less carry open the door for great hitters to hunt and spoil a great fastball, even if it's still not very hittable. That's how the Padres and Dodgers made Misiorowski grind for most outs in his first two playoff starts. "He hasn't been as crisp," Murphy said. Still, Misiorowski believes he found the feeling he wants during the middle innings of his second start. "I feel good," he said. "I feel like the first one might have been a little under what I expected, but the second one was pretty much right where I wanted to be. I think I finally figured it out in Game 2 of not getting off my end goal and doing what I need to do to succeed and not trying to play their game." His game remains to fire lots of fastballs. Even with diminished movement and control, Misiorowski's velocity and extension still make it a great pitch. It should play much better against the Rays than against the Padres and Dodgers, too. The latter two were among the best in baseball at handling velocity this year, but Tampa Bay was one of the worst offenses against pitches thrown 98 mph or above. {C}%3C!%2D%2Dtd%20%7Bborder%3A%201px%20solid%20%23cccccc%3Boverflow%3A%20hidden%3Bpadding%3A%202px%203px%202px%203px%3Bvertical-align%3A%20bottom%3B%7Dbr%20%7Bmso-data-placement%3Asame-cell%3B%7D%2D%2D%3E--> Team RV/100 WOBA xwOBA Parents -0.34 (4th) .300 (7th) .299 (5th) Dodgers -0.23 (2nd) .298 (8th) .305 (2nd) Rays -2.11 (29th) 234 (29th) .224 (30th) Even when he struggled, Misiorowski and the Brewers got through his first two outings by doubling down on his fastball, throwing it 67% of the time through his two starts. That won't change on Friday, nor should it. Hitters have chipped away at his heater, but they still haven't solved it. Misiorowski can still compete without his best fastball. If he rediscovers it for one more outing, it will boost the Brewers' chances at clinching the first championship in franchise history. "I think I've just got to stick to my strengths and pound the zone," Misiorowski said. View full article

Image courtesy of Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images In the system's inaugural season, no catcher has used ABS challenges more than William Contreras. Contreras challenged 185 calls during the regular season, leading all catchers by 49. The difference between Contreras's challenge total and that of second-place Tyler Stephenson was greater than that between Stephenson and 23rd-place Cal Raleigh. According to Statcast, he challenged 43 more times than the average catcher would have against the same pitches. Only Victor Caratini challenged a greater number of pitches compared to the expected number. It helped that the Brewers typically deferred their challenges to Contreras. Milwaukee hitters challenged just 13% of possible overturns, the lowest rate of any offense. When a catcher has access to both of his team’s challenges, he can challenge more aggressively, and it helps more than it hurts. An incorrect challenge won’t stop him from using a second one at the right moment, so turning a ball into a strike on the next attempt is worth more than the small loss of burning that first challenge. Contreras gained more fractions of a run than expected from challenges in all but one month this year. Still, his approach bordered on mindless aggressiveness for much of the summer. The league success rate on catcher challenges was 58%, but between June and August, Contreras’s was just 49%. In late June, he lost eight consecutive challenges and 14 of 15, and his August success rate bottomed out at 46%. On the verge of costing his team runs with challenges, another catcher might become more conservative, but that’s not how Contreras is wired. He plays the game fiercely, with a relentless drive to be the best at everything. Instead of backing off, he started challenging even more. The difference is that he became opportunistic. That turned Contreras into one of the most valuable challengers in September and into the postseason. Month Challenges Won% % Overturn Runs Gained Net Runs Above Avg March/April 34 53% 35% 0.1 May 33 61% 46% 0.7 June 33 48% 39% -0.2 July 23 52% 40% 0.2 August 26 46% 50% 0.2 September 36 75% 57% 0.9 October 20 60% 61% 0.5 Among catchers with at least five postseason overturn opportunities, Contreras and Liam Hicks are tied for the most net runs above average. He’s second to J.T. Realmuto in percentage of possible overturns challenged. Contreras has also gained two inning-ending strikeouts on challenges. He turned things around by tightening his radius. In August, Contreras challenged seven pitches more than one inch outside the strike zone. In September, he only challenged one. In the postseason, he’s challenged none. Even when home-plate umpire Lance Barrett had 12 calls challenged in Game 2 of the NLDS, Contreras showed restraint. He won three of four challenges, only losing on a first-pitch ball to Xander Bogaerts in the eighth inning that missed by half an inch. Contreras has also become more disciplined at the plate. He’s cut his chase rate from 28.3% in the regular season to 25.7% in October, boosting his walk rate from 9.5% to 14.3%. Just as being opportunistic has helped him enforce the strike zone, it’s also made him the Brewers’ best postseason hitter. Contreras leads the club with three home runs and a 212 wRC+ in October, spearheading the playoff power surge that brought the team to the World Series. That’s been more than enough to mask his remaining shortcomings. Contreras has still been a poor framer and blocker in the postseason, but October has unleashed a sharper version of him. He willed the Brewers to a pennant with his bat, and he's started helping his pitchers on the margins when it matters most. Poor ABS use was one of Milwaukee's few glaring weaknesses entering the postseason, but Contreras fixed his side of it when it mattered most. View full article