Jack Stern

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images Some changes are coming to the Brewers' coaching staff. The club announced on Thursday afternoon that associate manager Rickie Weeks will transition out of the dugout, taking on a new role as special assistant in baseball operations and domestic/international scouting. The former Milwaukee second baseman returned to the organization in 2022 as part of the player development staff, and the club named him associate manager when it promoted Pat Murphy to manager after the 2023 season. At the time, those moves signaled that Weeks was the long-term successor of Craig Counsell, with former bench coach Murphy serving as a bridge while he learned the ropes of working on a big-league staff. That's not how things played out, though. Murphy will likely win his second consecutive National League Manager of the Year Award next week and should remain in his post for the duration of his original three-year contract. (In fact, an extension for Murphy this winter would be no surprise to anyone.) Weeks, meanwhile, will transition to the front office, where he'll be involved in player acquisition with an emphasis on scouting prospects for the amateur draft and international free agent market. The club notably announced that it will not hire a new associate manager to replace Weeks, instead reassigning his duties to other coaches. It's not the first time they've gone that route. After former run prevention coordinator Walker McKinven left for a gig with the Chicago White Sox, assistant pitching coach Jim Henderson and assistant coach Daniel de Mondesert assumed his responsibilities this year. Between de Mondesert, major league field coordinator and catching guru Nestor Corredor, infield coach Matt Erickson, and base coaches Julio Borbón and Jason Lane, the Brewers have ample in-house candidates to take on Weeks's responsibilities, assuming most of them remain with the team for 2026. Even so, it's notable that they will carry on without a traditional dugout deputy behind Murphy. Staffs are growing throughout baseball, though, particularly in Milwaukee, and the increased personnel has led to roles evolving beyond the longstanding coaching framework. Weeks's former title was a break from the norm, as was employing two pitching coaches and three hitting coaches. One of those hitting instructors is reportedly headed elsewhere, marking another change to Murphy's staff. Fansided's Robert Murray reported on Wednesday night that the Kansas City Royals are hiring Connor Dawson, who had been with the Brewers since the 2022 season. It's not yet clear whether Milwaukee will hire another coach to work with Eric Theisen under lead hitting coach Al LeBoeuf. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kirby Lee-Imagn Images After slashing .255/.326/.339 with five home runs through his first two big-league seasons, Sal Frelick posted a career-best .288/.351/.405 line with 12 home runs in 2025. With a 114 wRC+, it was his first campaign of above-average offense, elevating him from a capable glove-first right fielder to tying with William Contreras as the Brewers' second-best position player by fWAR. He got there by improving his batted-ball profile, without compromising his contact skills. Frelick increased his average bat speed by 1.9 mph, the 13th-highest gain among qualified hitters from 2024 to 2025, while making what looked like a concerted effort to hit the right pitches further out in front of his body. Those changes allowed him to hit more balls harder to his pull side, boosting his production on contact. As Matt Trueblood wrote last month, he specifically eliminated some of his least valuable batted balls and created more of his best ones. Season Avg. Bat Speed (MPH) Intercept vs. Center of Mass (inches) Attack Angle HardHit% Pull% BABIP wOBAcon 2023 67.1 22.7 6° 23.6% 29.3% .286 .307 2024 66.3 24.8 6° 19.5% 29.5% .306 .301 2025 68.2 27.8 9° 27.4% 41.0% .317 .345 Process-based metrics recognized that Frelick improved, but not to the extent of his results. Baseball Prospectus viewed his offensive performance as average, rather than good, crediting him with a deserved .264/.332/.375 line and a 101 DRC+. Statcast was more bearish, assigning him an expected .263/.332/.351 and a .306 xwOBA that ranked in the 20th percentile of hitters. The issue is that it's still difficult to fully buy into his power surge. For Frelick to sustain it—let alone further improve upon it—he'll likely have to swing the bat even faster and hit the ball even harder more often. Those will never be his greatest strengths, but his improved bat speed and hard-hit rate still ranked in the 7th and 4th percentiles, respectively. It's hard to generate double-digit home-run power with that lack of thump. The average home run in 2025 left the bat at 104.6 mph, but Frelick's 12 of them averaged 101.5 mph. He hit five of his round-trippers (41.7%, the third-highest rate among hitters who went deep at least 10 times) less than 100 mph, meaning a significant chunk of them were struck well but not driven like a standard, surefire blast. Frelick caught those five pitches on the barrel at the perfect time and at the ideal angle, allowing them to travel far enough without generating typical home-run power on his own. That's not a new playbook. Houston Astros third baseman Isaac Paredes has built a career on creating more power than expected from poor bat speed and exit velocities, by pulling the ball at the proper launch angles. Caleb Durbin does it to a lesser extent, too. It's too early to say whether Frelick's excellent bat control affords him that ability, though. Given the razor-thin line between that kind of homer and a routine flyout (and how valuable his on-base ability is to Milwaukee's offense), it probably isn't a gambit he should attempt too often, anyway. If a handful of those pulled fly balls find gloves instead of carrying into the first few rows of seating, Frelick could drop 30 to 50 points of slugging average despite swinging the bat very similarly to how he did in 2025. He'll never be a slugger; nor does he need to be. However, he will likely need another round of growth similar to the one he just experienced to remain a catalyst in the Brewers' lineup, rather than a supporting character. In his fourth big-league season, he should aim to continue raising his floor, even closer to the gear he's flashed when fully unloading his best swing. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kirby Lee-Imagn Images A week after their season ended with the Dodgers unceremoniously sweeping them out of the NLCS, Pat Murphy and the Brewers are in the reflection stage. “There's definitely things to take note of,” Murphy said at a season-ending press conference on Thursday. “The day that we lost in Los Angeles, that was my first day of notes—‘postseason recommendations,’ like, ‘what are things that are apparent here?’” Most apparent was that Milwaukee didn’t just lose the series, but rarely looked competitive throughout those four games. Even though Dodgers starting pitchers would have been tough on any offense, the Brewers could have averaged more than one run per game. Instead, they bore little resemblance to the scrappy group that clawed its way to October’s top seed with the best regular season in franchise history. They looked overmatched, but what’s more, they looked worn out. “We didn't put our best foot forward,” Murphy said. “But there's all sorts of things to learn from it about, how do we get them playing consistent?” One of those potential lessons—and a topic the Brewers must at least discuss over the winter—is enforcing stricter workload management. There were signs that the group was wearing down in the regular season’s final weeks, mainly on the positional side, but also in the bullpen. Several Milwaukee hitters saw their average bat speed decrease in September. Abner Uribe, who was one of eight relievers to pitch in at least 75 games this year, lost a couple of ticks of velocity. Timely home runs and big pitching performances by Jacob Misiorowski and Chad Patrick carried the Brewers through the NLDS in five games, but Murphy acknowledged before the series finale that his players were “pretty drained,” both physically and mentally. While no team is playing at 100% nearly 170 games into the year, he said on Thursday that it continued into the next round. “I think the Cubs series just emotionally took so much out of them, and then to have to come back the next day and play was difficult on the guys,” Murphy said. “But that’s another learning situation for us, so here we go.” While he made more attempts to ease workloads leading into the playoffs, Murphy has been unafraid to push the envelope to win the game in front of him each night, including early in the season. When William Contreras and Sal Frelick fought to remain in the lineup each night while battling hand and knee injuries, he typically obliged. The same was true of Uribe, Nick Mears, and later Aaron Ashby, even as they racked up appearances and innings at unsustainable rates. “Do we know for sure that if Contreras caught 10 [fewer] games, we would have been better [in the playoffs]?” Murphy asked rhetorically. “No. But it speaks to the fact of how big of a grind it is, especially when you play like we play.” To his point, it’s impossible to say how much those earlier workloads affected the Brewers come October. The reality, though, was that the well ran dry nearly two weeks before the World Series, the endgame of the franchise’s competitive aspirations. The way they play and how much they play throughout the regular season seemed to be contributing factors. “We have a bunch of guys that are, for lack of a better term, overachievers, guys that play above their physical talent,” Murphy said. “Is there something about that that crushes them after a while? They play so hard. A [Caleb Durbin], a [Brice Turang], a Sal—is there something to that, that we need to protect them, that they're a little bit fragile while they're young? Do we need to schedule the off days differently?” Murphy’s answer to that question suggested that he remains wary of toning down the aggressive approach that led the Brewers to division titles in each of his first two seasons at the helm. “I hate to lose that 'win tonight' mentality, or show them any signs of not trying to win tonight,” he said. “I think that hurts your team more, and you could end up sitting at home because you're going to rest guys when they've got a lot of fuel left in the tank.” There must be enough fuel left in October, though. It's a challenging balance to strike, but part of the job nonetheless. Whether the adjustments are physical, mental, emotional, or all of the above, the Brewers must leave their players better equipped to play deep into the fall next year. View full article

Image courtesy of © Kirby Lee-Imagn Images The parallel was striking. With the Brewers needing everything to go right to keep their season alive, they started a pitcher who needed to be nearly perfect to succeed. At this stage of his career, José Quintana is a capable back-of-the-rotation starter—at least in the regular season. His 3.96 ERA this year was deceiving, though. Quintana's strikeout, walk, ground ball, and hard-hit rates were all well below average, translating to a 5.47 Deserved Run Average (DRA). He would need both pinpoint location on the edges of the strike zone and great defense behind him to tame a potent Dodgers lineup. Unsurprisingly, Quintana wasn't perfect. He allowed three runs on six hits, while recording just six outs. He wasn't the reason Milwaukee's storybook 2025 season ended on Friday night, though. He was pitching in a do-or-die situation, after his teammates dropped the first three games of the series. Each moment in a baseball game carries some impact (great or small) on a team's likelihood of winning. Pinning a victory or loss exclusively on any player, group, or play is a futile exercise. The Brewers' most glaring and undeniable shortcoming in the series, though, was their lack of offense. Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, and Shohei Ohtani were fantastic. Most lineups would have fared poorly, given how well each of those four pitched, but many groups (including plenty of alternate-universe versions of this one) would have done better than Milwaukee's .119/.191/.193 line in the series. By OPS, that was the fifth-worst four-game stretch of postseason offense by any team in the modern era. Hanging crooked numbers on those starters may not have been realistic, but averaging one run per game simply was not good enough. Part of the job in the postseason is having competitive plate appearances against great pitchers and making them work for each out. The Brewers did precisely that for much of the regular season, inflating pitch counts by refusing to chase and making frequent contact. Those strengths disintegrated in the NLCS, save for a few fleeting moments scattered throughout the series. A similar story played out each night. Milwaukee hitters chased, whiffed, and did not look remotely competitive during the vast majority of their plate appearances. For whatever reason, they continued to swing at torrents of offspeed pitches from Snell and Yamamoto as if they were fastballs, rendering what was already a challenging task impossible. Even after getting into a vulnerable bullpen a bit earlier in Games 3 and 4, they did little to apply pressure to those relievers. For a team that prided itself on playing relentlessly and bouncing back from adversity, it was a jarring finish. The 2025 Brewers overcame the worst 0-4 start in MLB history and a record that remained below .500 until May 28 to win a franchise-record 97 regular-season games and secure home-field advantage throughout the postseason. All of a sudden, they stopped punching back. With the outs ticking down on their season, Ohtani sent Pat Murphy's Average Joes packing with a historic performance. Their season ended as meekly as it began. As he labored for six outs in an elimination game, Quintana was an emblem of the roster flanking him: a group of bona fide big-leaguers that was greater than the sum of its parts in a fantastic regular season, but not good enough in October to reach the postseason finish line. Now the Brewers find themselves in the familiar position of reviewing why things failed to work on a bigger stage, and what (if anything) they should have done differently. That's been the catch associated with Milwaukee's sustained regular-season dominance. When a team punches its ticket to the postseason, it also incurs the high likelihood of a disappointing exit. Any outcome other than a championship will sting, and prompt tough questions. Zooming out, this group still deserves credit for its accomplishments, and next year's team should get another bite at the apple. For many, though, that may not ease the immediate frustration of another season falling short of the ultimate goal. View full article

Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images After Blake Snell left the Brewers looking like an entirely different offense in Game 1 of the NLCS, they looked even worse the following night. After Jackson Chourio’s leadoff home run on Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s first pitch, Yamamoto silenced them the rest of the way, tossing a complete game as the Dodgers breezed to a 5-1 win. Snell needed just 103 pitches to cruise through 24 outs; Yamamoto went the distance on 111 pitches. Against Snell, the Brewers chased 33% of out-of-zone pitches and whiffed on 45% of their swings; they whiffed less against Yamamoto but chased a whopping 40% of pitches outside the zone. “We chased way more than we’ve chased all year,” Pat Murphy said. “We’ve been the best in baseball at not chasing. These pitchers brought out the worst in us.” During Snell’s outing, the Brewers looked unprepared for the changeup-heavy mix he used—one he implemented in the anticipation that they would try to jump on his fastball. Against Yamamoto, it was an even more glaring version of the same issue. Their swing decisions against the right-hander’s four-seam fastball—an aggressive 72% in-zone swing rate and a modest 22% chase rate—were solid. The problem was that Milwaukee hitters looked as though they were seeing a fastball out of the hand on most pitches, even though Yamamoto only threw his four-seamer and two-seamer a combined 32% of the time. That allowed him to carve through their lineup with his splitter and curveball. Several Brewers hitters, perhaps seeing those curveballs as fastballs, gave up on ones that started above the zone and dropped in for strikes. Meanwhile, they chased 52% of splitters outside the zone, seemingly misidentifying them as heaters before they dove beneath their knees. “This guy’s split looks like a heater,” Murphy said. “Comes out of the same tunnel. It looks exactly the same. He’s got an impeccable delivery. He doesn’t miss a lot. And the ball shows up as a heater—bang, goes down.” “It was moving late,” said Christian Yelich, who chased back-to-back splitters below the zone in a fourth-inning strikeout as part of an 0-for-4 night. “He did a good job of setting it up a lot, setting up his pitches. It’s good sequencing. He just made it tough on us, keeping everybody off balance. He was doing a really good job of landing it at the bottom and going just below that. Same with the breaking balls.” Through the first four innings, Yamamoto induced a 52% chase rate. The Brewers chased less and showed signs of trying to adjust during their third and fourth turns against him, but they remained caught in between his fastball and splitter pairing. “He kind of approached each at-bat differently,” Yelich said. “It wasn’t really the same attack plan every time.” After dropping the first two games, the odds are stacked heavily against the Brewers as the series moves to Los Angeles. Teams that took a 2-0 lead in a best-of-seven series have gone on to win that series 84% of the time. To advance to the World Series, Milwaukee must buck history while playing three games on the road in three days, and counting on Jacob Misiorowski and José Quintana to record a significant number of outs. “I understand that 90% of teams that have been in this situation don’t win the series,” Murphy said. “But this team has been counted out a lot this year, and I think there’s some fight left in them.” The Brewers showed in Game 1 that they can make life difficult for an unstable Dodgers bullpen, but exploiting that relief corps requires getting past the starter. That won’t get much easier against Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani, who will start Games 3 and 4, respectively. Glasnow does not throw a changeup, but Ohtani has improved his splitter shape this year and could deploy it more than usual after his teammates’ success. “We’ve got to take better at-bats,” Jackson Chourio said through translator Daniel de Mondesert. “That’s kind of where it begins.” “It seems like you can go an entire game without seeing a pitch over the heart of the plate, so obviously, it’s tough,” said Jake Bauers. “That being said, we’ve got to take it upon ourselves to try and do something to disrupt their timing and get them a little bit more uncomfortable on the mound.” View full article

Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images The Brewers pieced together nine innings of two-run baseball from their pitching staff against a vaunted Los Angeles Dodgers lineup in Game 1 of the NLCS, but the hurler on the other side rendered that effort moot. Blake Snell dismantled Milwaukee hitters one by one for most of the night, facing the minimum over eight shutout innings. "I think it's the most dominant performance against us [this season]," Pat Murphy said. It was an assessment shared by the bulk guy who worked (for part of the proceedings) opposite Snell. "Incredible," Quinn Priester said. "He's won two Cy Youngs for a reason." Snell breezed through their lineup of woodpeckers with striking efficiency. It was just the third time all year that a starting pitcher completed eight innings against the Brewers. That's a reflection of their offensive identity, which makes it challenging for opposing starters to work deep into games. Even when a pitcher's stuff and execution make him tough to hit on a given day, the Brewers still do everything they can to grind him down, inflating his pitch count to force an earlier exit. They refuse to chase pitches outside the zone; work deep counts; and put strikes in play when they do swing. Milwaukee's offense finished the regular season with the lowest chase rate and third-highest contact rate in baseball. They chased an opposing starter from the game within five or fewer innings 88 times; only two teams did it more. Snell gave them no opportunities to do that to him, reducing the Brewers to a lineup that bore no resemblance to the group that inflicted death by paper cuts on countless pitchers throughout the season. They whiffed 22 times out of 49 swings. They chased 33% of his out-of-zone pitches. Only 10 at-bats exceeded four pitches, allowing Snell to record 24 outs on just 103 pitches. "His breaking ball was so good, he could flip it in there for a strike and then have the one below [the zone]," Murphy said. "It was really hard to discern, and the changeup was dominant to right-handers. So it was really, really difficult to get a bead on it. "We couldn't get anything going. Those pitches are really hard to bunt. They're really hard to put in play." His hitters had the same praise to share, and the same dearth of real answers. "We faced one of the best pitchers in the game," Christian Yelich said. "He was on. When he's executing like that, it's going to be a tough night. We've got a lot of young guys in here, a lot of these guys' first time facing him." Snell and catcher Will Smith seemed to anticipate that Brewers hitters would try to get on top of his signature riding four-seamer, so they flipped the script on them, using his changeup 37% of the time, the second-highest rate of any outing of his career. It coaxed 14 of those whiffs out of 23 swings, and all five balls in play against it were groundouts. Even that undersells how hard he leaned away from the heat. To righty batters, he threw 35 changeups, nine curveballs and four sliders, against just 14 fastballs. If the Crew were trying to find a fastball to hit, Snell couldn't have confounded their approach much more completely. "I think it's just understanding what they were trying to do," Snell said. "I pitch off what they're telling me. So I just felt like they were really aggressive to a certain pitch, and it seemed to be that way, so I threw differently." Murphy has long admired the man who served as Snell's catcher, and noticed the way he called the game for his star lefty. "Will Smith, the way he called the game, it was unusual the way he did it," Murphy said. "He didn't go back and forth, back and forth. He went changeup, changeup, changeup. The ball was moving so much. It was such a great pitch." The moment Snell left the game, the Brewers reverted to their usual form. They drew three walks and saw 33 pitches in the ninth inning against Roki Sasaki and Blake Treinen, putting the tying run in scoring position before Brice Turang struck out to secure Game 1 for the Dodgers. Ultimately, it was too little, too late. The positive takeaway is that the Dodgers bullpen remains vulnerable, and Milwaukee's approach can amplify and exploit that weakness. They must get into that bullpen sooner, though, which means forcing Snell and the other three high-powered starters they'll face in the series to work for each out. View full article

Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images On the pitching side, the way the Brewers vanquished the Cubs in Game 5 of the NLDS mirrored how they got to this point. Of the 13 pitchers Milwaukee rostered in New York on Opening Day, only five were on the NLDS roster. The team retooled their staff on the fly during the regular season, by promoting players from the minor leagues and making in-season acquisitions. “What you thought about a certain player at the start of the year can certainly evolve,” general manager Matt Arnold said leading into the series. “We’re not always right on guys, and I love being proven wrong in a lot of cases. But you have to find out. I think the big thing is just building up a number of players that have ingredients that you like, and then hopefully that can come together with the coaching that we have and try to get the most out of those players.” Early in the year, the Brewers were forced to piece things together with their pitching staff. They were doing the same with their season on the line on Saturday. In both instances, it worked. “Next man up, right?” said Blake Perkins. In keeping with the season-long theme, Jacob Misiorowski and Chad Patrick combined for 5 ⅔ of the nine innings. Patrick excelled as a first-half fill-in for injured starting pitchers, but was optioned to Triple-A Nashville once the rotation returned to full strength. Eventually, he moved to a swingman role. Misiorowski did not debut until June. It was the second time in the series that Misiorowski stepped up as the centerpiece of an all-hands-on-deck pitching plan. After Seiya Suzuki greeted him with a game-tying home run to open the second inning, he allowed just two singles in four crucial innings, leaning heavily on his cutter-like slider and his curveball. Best known for his outlier fastball, the right-hander used his heater a career-low 31% of the time. “I think it was just an adjustment,” Misiorowski said. “Suzuki jumping on a heater, and kind of realizing, ‘Oh, that’s what they’re going to go with,’ and going with it.” “We’re definitely not winning this series if not for him,” Christian Yelich said. “He pitched a ton of big innings for us in Game 2, and tonight he was really unbelievable. Really settled the game down and set the tone for the rest of the guys out of the pen.” Misiorowski worked seven innings in the series, but Patrick was not far behind, logging 4 ⅔ scoreless frames while pitching in four of the five games. On Saturday, he put out a sixth-inning fire by inducing a Suzuki lineout and striking out Ian Happ looking with a perfectly painted back-door cutter. He then returned for a perfect seventh with two more punchouts, paving the way for Abner Uribe to earn his first career two-inning save. “Chad was big, coming in and getting a bunch of big outs. And Uribe for two in the end there was awesome,” Yelich said. “That’s why you celebrate. You celebrate with your teammates and friends that you’ve got to grind throughout the season with and watch them take huge strides in their career.” On the offensive side, the Brewers got the job done in a manner less emblematic of their usual success, but in a way that was going to be necessary in this particular matchup. Milwaukee’s offense finished the regular season 22nd in home runs and 25th in isolated power, instead scoring many of its runs by grinding out plate appearances, putting the ball in play, and taking more extra bases than any other team. That approach leaves lineups vulnerable to batted-ball luck in short samples, and an excellent Cubs defense could foil it. The Brewers needed to drive enough balls over the fence to combat both of those realities. That’s precisely how the decisive game transpired. The Brewers hit 22 balls within the field of play, but only three went for hits. Instead, they scored all three of their runs on solo homers, each coming from players who boast ample raw power and took turns carrying the lineup throughout the season. William Contreras, who can hit the ball harder than most but often pounds it into the ground, opened the scoring with his first-inning shot. Andrew Vaughn, a midseason acquisition who posted a 141 OPS+ as the replacement for an injured Rhys Hoskins, put the Brewers up for good with his blast in the fourth. “Big moment there,” Vaughn said. “Just swung the momentum in our dugout. It was huge, got everybody fired up.” Brice Turang, who tapped into his impressive raw power during a strong second half but entered the night just 3-for-20 in the series, snapped out of his funk and provided insurance with the longest round-tripper of the night, smacking an outer-third slider 416 feet off the batter’s eye. “We just talked [between at-bats] about, ‘Hey, Brice, you’re a great hitter, man. This is just a couple games,’” Pat Murphy said. “‘You’re doing great. You’re not getting results, but you’re doing great. Just keep swinging the bat.’” Inexperienced pitchers who emerged as in-season replacements stepped up again under the bright lights. An offense that didn’t slug consistently during the regular season did so when it mattered most. The result was Milwaukee’s first playoff series win since 2018, a trip to the NLCS, and the relief of breaking a hex that spanned five postseasons. “I’ve been on the other end of it. This is a whole lot better,” Perkins said. “Just a big win for us tonight, big win for the organization, for the fanbase, for everybody,” Yelich said. “We really wanted to make sure we were able to deliver tonight and throughout this series. Just a great night overall.” View full article

Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images The evening began with Pat Murphy quoting a Shakespearean tragedy. "To be or not to be, that is the question," Murphy recited to reporters in the Wrigley Field media room two hours before Game 4 of the NLDS. "Whether it's nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of begotten fortune, or bear arms – I'll stop. What is that, Hamlet? Was that pretty good?" Hours later, Murphy and the Brewers were faced with another question, one they were likely to encounter rather quickly in the postseason: to let Joey Ortiz swing the bat in a key situation, or to take it out of his hands? Ortiz's offensive struggles this season were well documented. His bat went especially cold after returning from the injured list for September, as he posted just a .482 OPS in the regular season's final month. The Brewers value his glove highly enough that his starting role was never in question for October, but the question was how eager they would be to substitute a superior hitter in a pivotal run-scoring situation. Murphy pinch-hit for him before the ninth inning 18 times throughout the year, typically replacing him with Andruw Monasterio at shortstop. Such a moment presented itself in the fifth inning on Thursday. Sal Frelick doubled and Blake Perkins walked against Matthew Boyd to open the inning, bringing Ortiz to the plate as the tying run. With nobody out, it wasn't a situation where the Brewers had to replace him with a better hitter. They chose to keep his glove in the game. "We have a choice to make in the game, taking out a guy that's one of the best defensive shortstops," Murphy said. "It's early in the game. It's in the fourth inning. Who do you suggest we pinch-hit there, you know what I mean? And then use two players?" The Brewers didn't let him swing, though. Instead, Ortiz dropped down a sacrifice bunt on the first pitch to advance the runners. Christian Yelich struck out, and Jackson Chourio chased Danny Palencia's first-pitch fastball for a jam-shot popout. A promising inning flamed out quickly with nobody crossing the plate. "I thought putting a bunt down and getting us on the board to get us going," Murphy explained of the thought process. "We've got Yeli coming up. Yeli has hit Boyd well, too, and Boyd made great pitches in that at-bat." In the vast majority of cases, sacrificing does not spur scoring. If anything, it kills big innings. The average number of runs a team scores in an inning decreases when it trades an out for advancing runners. While there is no complete public data for the 2025 season, here are the numbers from 2021 through 2024, as compiled by Ben Clemens of FanGraphs. The before and after scenarios surrounding Ortiz's bunt are highlighted in yellow. After Ortiz's sacrifice, a medium-depth flyout would have scored one run, but the number of total runs the Brewers could expect to score in the inning slightly decreased. The best approach is to give the hitter a chance at producing a positive outcome that will drive in runners and keep the inning going. Murphy knows this, which is why he refused to call for a bunt when a struggling Brice Turang hit with Jackson Chourio on second and no outs while trailing by a run the night before. "In my opinion, you don't give up an out there if it's that type of hitter," Murphy said. "He's our version of a middle-of-the-order guy. You're not going to bunt him. You're going to try to win the game." The calculus changes with Ortiz, whose .276 on-base percentage and .317 slugging percentage forced the Brewers to shift from an opportunistic thought process to a risk-averse one. Had he gotten out while failing to advance the runners or hit into a routine double play, they would have faced one of the run expectancies highlighted in blue. Either of those outcomes would be far more detrimental than a bunt. Of course, counting on Ortiz to get it down was inherently risky. In his two seasons in Milwaukee, he has attempted a bunt 31 times and successfully executed the sacrifice only nine times, a horrendous 29% success rate. Even so, it was still the safest route because a standard Ortiz at-bat posed such a serious threat to the Brewers' scoring odds. Therein lies the dilemma. Ortiz's defense is invaluable, but his poor offense effectively forces the Brewers to forgo an opportunity for a big inning if he comes up to bat with runners on base. Playing for one run or to avoid the worst-case scenario is not the best approach in a multi-run deficit, yet they felt they had no other choice on Thursday. Their best scoring threat quickly evaporated, and the Cubs ultimately shut them out. That cannot happen in an elimination game on Saturday. If Ortiz's spot comes up in a key run-scoring setup in the middle innings, Murphy may need to be more aggressive in hitting for his shortstop at the risk of a worse defender finishing the night at shortstop. With their season on the line, the Brewers can't go down conservatively. View full article

Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman-USA TODAY Network via Imagn Images For the fourth time in as many NLDS games, a Brewers starting pitcher failed to contain the Chicago Cubs in the first inning. For the second straight night, it put Milwaukee in an early multi-run deficit that it could not overcome. This time, that early scoring came against Freddy Peralta—in the form of an Ian Happ three-run homer, on a fastball over the heart of the plate. "I thought it was one pitch in the first inning he'd take back," Pat Murphy said. "He had two outs, and he made a pitch too much down the middle. Happ has been really good for them." "I think it could've been a better pitch," said William Contreras. "But credit to him for connecting on that pitch and putting a good swing on it." Peralta's evaluation differed. "It was just a pitch that he was able to hit, and he hit it exactly how he wanted," he said. "But for me, it wasn't a mistake. It was the pitch that we wanted, and he just was able to hit it really hard." While he could have located it higher, it was not as bad a pitch as it may have appeared in real time. Happ struggles to get on top of elevated velocity as a left-handed batter, slugging just .200 in the regular season against four-seamers in the upper third of the zone. Peralta got his heater just high enough for Statcast to assign it to that region. The location wasn't the main culprit, anyway. Peralta's first inning went sideways because he could not work ahead of hitters with what seemed to be his game plan going in. Peralta is far less fastball-heavy than he was in his early years, but several of his more secondary-dominant outings have been those against the Cubs since the start of the second half. He used his heater 48.2% of the time against them on July 30, 43.2% on August 18, and 43.1% in Game 1 of the NLDS. It wasn't surprising, then, that Peralta continued that trend in Game 4. When Happ stepped to the plate, he had thrown only nine fastballs of his 21 pitches. The problem was that he was erratic early on with those secondaries, particularly with his changeup. It's emerged as his most valuable non-fastball offering over the last two seasons, especially in those Cubs starts. Peralta threw just three in the zone in the first inning, and the other five were not remotely competitive, including the one he bounced in the dirt with his first pitch to Happ. Peralta would land a changeup for a strike with his next pitch, but it wasn't enough to keep Happ from hunting a fastball. When he got one, he was ready. Like the night before, the damage was done, again establishing the wrong tone early for a Brewers team that looked little like the group that jumped out to a commanding 2-0 lead in the series. "The [1-1] pitch to Happ changed the game," Murphy said. Peralta settled in after the first, blanking the Cubs over his next three innings. The game plan worked when he executed pitches. Throwing his fastball just a third of the time, he induced 15 whiffs out of 42 swings and struck out six. "Other than [the home run], I thought he threw the ball really well and gave us a chance, kept them at bay," Murphy said. "There was some momentum in the second inning, and he kept them at bay. I thought he did a really nice job." The Brewers needed that version of him from the get-go, though. Instead, he was not sharp early and put his team in an early hole. It reaffirmed what's been the case for years: Peralta is a very good, highly valuable starting pitcher—a high-percentile outcome for his development and the fruit of the work he's put in over the years—but not a great one. He remains one step shy of fully realizing his tantalizing potential as a top-tier ace. The hope now is that he'll receive more opportunities to start big games this month. After entering Chicago in a great position to advance to the NLCS, the Brewers return home with their backs against the wall and must fight to keep their season alive. "Hopefully, the tables will turn when we get into Game 5 at our place. But we have to find out how bad we're going to fight back," Murphy said. "We have all season." View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images The Brewers made the right call in delaying Quinn Priester's first postseason start to Game 3 of the NLDS. While he blossomed into one of their most dependable starters during the regular season, his arsenal does not match up well against the Cubs. By enacting a bullpen game in Game 2, Milwaukee gave itself the best chance to grab a commanding 2-0 lead in the series. The tradeoff was that Priester would make his playoff debut on the road, in front of a spirited Chicago crowd, but with three opportunities to win one more game, the Brewers were playing with house money. Sure enough, Priester's outing did not go well, but he further complicated his task by spraying the ball all over and catching too much plate when he did throw strikes. The outcome was four runs allowed and just two outs recorded, but he would not have found much success against anyone with pitches to these locations: "I think the moment got to him a little bit," Pat Murphy said postgame. "He's not technically a rookie, but that's his first postseason appearance. He had a long layoff. It's in his hometown. I feel for him, because that's not typically how he's done this year." Priester, meanwhile, took full responsibility for his outing, saying the onus was on him to make an in-game adjustment and work with what he had on Wednesday. Murphy and the Brewers may stress the importance of playing the game pitch by pitch regardless of the score, but the reality is that a 53-pitch first inning and an early multi-run deficit set a different tone for a game than promptly jumping out to a lead. Priester was not in control, and that theme seemed to linger for his team the entire evening. The Brewers enjoyed big first innings in each of the first two games, looking like a team in total command of the situation—and of their opponent. While they were competitive enough on Wednesday—the bullpen blanked the Cubs the rest of the way, and the offense chipped back to within one run—they performed like a group trying to play catch-up. That tone left them playing short of their best, resulting in multiple missed opportunities to turn the game around. Jake Bauers's RBI single in the fourth cut the deficit to two runs, put runners on the corners with one out, and brought the go-ahead run to the plate in Brandon Lockridge. With Jameson Taillon on the ropes, the Brewers attempted to apply more pressure with a safety squeeze play. Unfortunately, the play went awry on multiple fronts. With third baseman Matt Shaw playing closer to the bag for a right-on-right matchup, Caleb Durbin had a smaller lead off the bag. Lockridge then bunted the ball too hard to first baseman Michael Busch, who had Durbin dead to rights at the plate, initiating a rundown. Catcher Carson Kelly fired the ball to Shaw, who chased Durbin toward the plate. It seemed Durbin had a chance to beat Shaw or his potential flip to Busch with a dive into home, but he instead turned back to keep the play going and ensure the runners moved up to second and third. He was ultimately tagged out, and Joey Ortiz then grounded out to end the threat. While certainly not an easy play for a baserunner (and a hard one to fault him for, given that he did enable those runners to advance), it stood out as a moment where Durbin made a conservative decision over an aggressive one. His manager preferred that he try to score. "I wish Caleb would've kept going," Murphy said. "I think if he would've just accelerated and believed and dove in there, it would've taken a great throw. Certainly, it's going to be close enough, [Lockridge is] going to be safe at first, and now we've got something going." For much of the night, the Brewers' swing decisions mirrored their typically refined plate discipline. They had some shakier at-bats as the game progressed, though, especially in key situations in the eighth inning. After Jackson Chourio's leadoff double, Brice Turang uncharacteristically chased two breaking balls off the plate for a strikeout. Between William Contreras and Caleb Durbin walks, Sal Frelick bounced into a fielder's choice on the first pitch he saw. Brad Keller then punched out Bauers to end the inning, in a matchup that swung in the pitcher's favor after he landed a 1-1 changeup for a strike. "You've got to get the big hit sometimes," Murphy said. "We didn't get the big hit." The Brewers still find themselves in a favorable position. Thanks to José Quintana and Grant Anderson combining for five innings of scoreless relief, their pitching remains in fine shape with two more opportunities left to close out the series. Even in a game where they were not in control, their opponent narrowly hung on to defeat them by a run. Wednesday was a reminder that the Cubs won't go down quietly, though, and that the Brewers are much better off establishing their own tone early against a worthy opponent. View full article

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images Jacob Misiorowski threw fewer than half of his pitches on Monday night in the strike zone, including just over a third of them in his first inning. He issued two walks. He wasn't particularly efficient. It didn't matter. He made enough competitive pitches, and the outcomes of those pitches mattered most. Misiorowski induced 20 swings. Eight were swings and misses, six were foul balls, and the remaining six were balls in play—with an average exit velocity of 83.3 mph. In other words, he overpowered the Cubs, who never came especially close to barreling up his stuff during his three scoreless innings. It demonstrated why the Brewers included Misiorowski on their NLDS roster over fellow multi-inning relievers Tobias Myers and DL Hall, both of whom enjoyed more surface-level success and have previous playoff experience. Myers pitched to a 1.91 ERA out of the bullpen in the regular season, but struck out just 18.2% of opponents in that role. Hall posted a 3.49 ERA and excelled at missing barrels, but he benefited from an unsustainably low .202 BABIP to overcome poor strikeout (17.4%) and walk (11.0%) rates. Misiorowski, meanwhile, limped to an unsightly 6.06 ERA over his final eight appearances, but he was closer to his more dominant form than the results indicated. His stuff was still playing well in the strike zone. Whereas Myers and Hall don't blow anyone away, Misiorowski's electric right arm is matchup-proof, and can dismantle even the best hitters. That matters in the playoffs, where having swing-and-miss bullpen arms becomes even more critical. "I think he will help us," Murphy said at the onset of the series. "He's not going to start, but he'll come in the game. He's got great stuff, and I think he'll hone it in and pitch well." The Brewers were right, and the payoff for their belief came quickly. Misiorowski delivered precisely the outing they needed in what Murphy previewed as an "all-hands-on-deck" pitching effort for Game 2. Over the weekend, the club was coy on its plans behind Aaron Ashby, whom it tabbed as a short-range starter to neutralize the best left-handed bats in the top half of the Chicago order. Afterward, though, Murphy revealed that the intention was for Misiorowski to play a role. "We were thinking somewhere between 30 and 50 pitches, and we were thinking that he'd let us know when he was gassed," Murphy said. "He was very emotional, and you guys know what he's been through, but he responded. I think that's a really good sign." Postseason adrenaline seemed to unlock an extra tick of velocity for the flamethrowing rookie. His signature fastball averaged 101.5 mph, up from his regular-season average of 99.3. Only four of the 35 heaters he threw clocked in below triple digits. He hit 104.2 and 104.3 with his third and fourth pitches of the night. "In the postseason, the atmosphere, coming out of the bullpen, and all the energy he brings—I probably could have told you he was going to throw 104 today," Ashby said. "When he was warming up, actually, I was talking to our infielders and I go, 'He's going to throw 104 right here,' and he did," Andrew Vaughn said. "So it was kind of funny." "There was so much adrenaline, and I wasn't really feeling anything," Misiorowski said. "I was just kind of doing it." The main difference between the two versions of Misiorowski has been his response when things start to go sideways. On Monday, he bent in each inning, but did not break. He issued a one-out walk to Seiya Suzuki in the third, during a stretch of six straight balls thrown, but he came back from a 2-0 count to strike out Ian Happ and coaxed a groundout to the mound from Carson Kelly. He also rebounded from a two-out walk in the fourth and retired three hitters in order after a leadoff single in the fifth. "You guys get all enthralled with MPH," Murphy said. "I'm enthralled that he wasn't giving up free bases, kept his composure with runners on, that type of thing." "Proud of him, for sure," Ashby said. "Like every pitcher in this game, you go through ups and downs. Guys make adjustments. He made an adjustment today, and he executed really well." If the Brewers make a deep postseason run, it will not be the last time they task Misiorowski with recording key outs. It may not always look smooth, but in this role, it doesn't need to. When he makes enough competitive pitches, his rare combination of raw stuff and deception is a nightmare for any hitter. He may be an all-or-nothing wild card, but you can't benefit from the all if you're unwilling to risk getting the nothing. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jovanny Hernandez / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images In past postseasons, the Brewers have not hesitated to get creative with their pitching plans. Before the start of the NLDS over the weekend, there were signs that some unconventional arrangements were around the corner. "I think what we're looking at is Game 1 [Freddy Peralta], and then beyond that, it's all hands on deck," general manager Matt Arnold said on Friday. It was a vague statement, and the next few days have yet to bring much more clarity. Beyond announcing that Aaron Ashby would be first out of the chute on Monday, the Brewers have remained coy on who would cover innings for Game 2. Quinn Priester might seem like the obvious choice as the bulk guy, but Pat Murphy suggested on Sunday that the club itself has yet to make that call. "I don't know if Priester will be next," Murphy said. "I really don't." It stands to reason that the right-hander will at least be available in some capacity. Priester emerged as the Brewers' most reliable starter behind Peralta in the regular season, posting a 3.32 ERA, 3.96 SIERA, and 80 DRA-, with a 56.1% ground ball rate in 29 outings. They have reasons to use him unconventionally, though. While Priester has weapons in his five-pitch arsenal that can play against left-handed batters, they've fared better against his usual mix of sinkers, sliders, and cutters than right-handed opponents. Lefties have hit .249/.331/.405, a noticeable enough split that the Brewers used an opener in front of him five times during the regular season to limit his exposure to powerful left-handed bats at the top of an order. By delaying the start of his outing, Priester could cover the same number of innings while facing those hitters two times, instead of three. The Cubs' lineup warrants an opener. Left-handers Michael Busch (151 wRC+ against righties) and Kyle Tucker (137) have been their two best bats this year, and switch-hitting Ian Happ is far better from the left side (123) than from the right (96). They match up worse against Ashby, who yielded just two extra-base hits to a left-handed hitter all year. Beyond the platoon game, the Cubs are an unfavorable matchup for Priester's arsenal. In the regular season, 62% of his pitches were sinkers or cutters – the two pitches against which Chicago made its loudest contact. Ashby has leaned more on his sinker this year than in any other season of his career, but he can also pivot to his two big breaking balls or changeup when necessary. The Brewers also deliberately chose Robert Gasser, another southpaw whose best pitch is the signature sweeper that he's thrown over a third of the time in each of the last two seasons. Gasser is not fully stretched out, but he is another length option behind Ashby. Where Priester fits into the mix could depend on the game situation. Perhaps he'll follow Ashby for a few innings and get one matchup apiece against the Cubs' best lefties during the middle innings. He might work strictly against their righties near the bottom of the lineup, in a truncated outing. If another early Brewers outburst stakes him to a big lead, he could function as an innings-eater to save other bullpen arms. Conversely, if it's a close game and Craig Counsell shakes up his lineup to limit pockets favorable for Priester, he may not pitch at all. Murphy teased during the final stretch of the regular season that the Brewers could deploy players in different roles, based on matchups. Arnold characterized Peralta as their lone traditional playoff starter. The first round of new and surprising pitching looks could be on tap for their second postseason game. View full article