MILWAUKEE – This has been the rap with the Milwaukee Brewers all season: a lineup full of unheard of underdogs. A pitching staff full of junk and unknowns. A team that claws for everything it can get, treats the basepaths like a racetrack, takes risks, grinds for every 90-foot gain.
They weren’t supposed to be that good — one projection system picked them to win just 79 games — but here they are in September, entering Thursday leading the National League Central by nine games.
“In my mind we have an uphill battle,” manager Pat Murphy still says. “I want that ascended battle to be attacked.”
The thing about the brewers? They do not reject any of these labels. They don’t beat their chests and push these notions away. They do not decry the lack of respect of the coastal fodder of baseball. Instead, they flipped the conversation. Owned their flaws. Turned them into badges of honor.
Subordinates? They embrace it.
Less talented than the Los Angeles Dodgers or Philadelphia Phillies? Well, oh
Talk to the players in this clubhouse, and they feel like they belong. But what if the rest of the world doesn’t see it that way? It plays right into their hands, even if it’s no longer accurate to call them Baseball’s Little Engine That Could.
The Milwaukee Brewers – the same ones who were supposed to win 79 games – spent 147 days in first place. When everything clicks, Milwaukee can look like a team no one wants to see in a best-of-seven series.
“Sometimes it’s nice to be the underdog even when we’re playing really well,” relief pitcher Jared Koenig said. “Everybody still treats us like, ‘Oh, we can beat them.’ But it’s like, ‘Well, we’re a really, really good team.’”
The Brewers have one of the best team ERAs in baseball despite using 36 different pitchers this season. (Michael McLoone/USA Today)
On the wall leading to the dugout at American Family Field, one of Murphy’s many creeds is painted in massive letters: WIN TONIGHT.
Back in spring training, Murphy stood in front of his team and laid down the edict, the kind of day-in and day-out baseball cliché that every team has — but also the type that the best live by.
“‘Winning tonight’ was the big thing,” left-handed pitcher Aaron Ashby said. “People will look at us and not expect too much, but we know what we’re capable of.”
The adjacent hallway is covered in brick renderings, part of the organization’s winter 2019 rebrand, which also included a return to its beloved ball-in-glove logo. Some of the city of Milwaukee’s most famous structures were built with cream-colored, lime-and-sulfur bricks molded from clay along the Menomonee River. Every time the Brewers win a game, they plant a decal on the fake bricks with the date and the opponent, a way to celebrate the long, brick-by-brick journey that is a 162-game season.
The Brewers have claimed 81 of those bricks so far in 2024. They lead MLB with a plus-135 run differential, and while that should make them front-runners, they otherwise embody perfect playoff spoilers. The Dodgers and Phillies are the powerhouses in the National League, iconic franchises with bigger markets, much larger payrolls and more marketable star power. The Brewers, however, have won the National League Central two of the past three seasons and made the postseason in five of the past six. They have become playoff mainstays, although they are still looking to get over the proverbial October hump. Milwaukee has not reached a league championship series since 2018.
On the good days, there’s an aura around this team reminiscent of last year’s Arizona Diamondbacks. The Diamondbacks are once again lurking as October threats, but if there’s a new club this postseason that could ruin a national television audience but win over the hearts of baseball fans, the Brewers fit the bill. Their payroll sits around $116 million, 22nd in the league.
The Phillies are at $248 million, the Dodgers $325 million.
“I think this team has the right people in the room, and that’s why we’ve been able to survive,” Murphy said. “And that’s what we do — we survive. We’re not as talented as a lot of teams, but they survived because of the right guys. “
Milwaukee is here largely because of shortstop Willy Adames, catcher William Contreras and rookie outfielder Jackson Chourio. Former MVP Christian Yelich recaptured the form of the previous year, hitting .315 before an injury led to season-ending back surgery. Closer Devin Williams missed nearly four months with a stress fracture in his back but returned and surrendered just three runs in 13 2/3 innings.
The rest of the Brewers, however, took different paths to this first place team. The club’s progressive front office has a knack for getting the best out of discarded pitchers. One of their main starters, Tobias Myers, is on its sixth organization and didn’t make the team out of camp. Another, 34-year-old Collin Rea, was in Japan just two years ago.
The Brewers have cycled through 36 different pitchers this season. Relievers such as Trevor Megill, Bryse Wilson, Bryan Hudson and Joel Payamps were all designated for assignment by previous teams. Payamps, who has a 2.93 ERA since joining Milwaukee last year, has been DFA-d four times.
“We were at the end of bad things in our careers,” Koenig said. “A lot of guys were DFA-d, non-tendered, kind of rejections. I think we all really pull together, try to support each other.”
Their mark has been consistent and relentless throughout the season. No National League team plays defense better than the Brewers: they lead the NL with 72 defensive runs saved and 20 strikeouts above average. Few teams run the bases like they do: their 180 team steals are third in baseball, and their base stealers are successful at an 83 percent clip.
When chief executive David Stearns stepped down two years ago, general manager Matt Arnold stepped up to the leadership role and has since built a roster that, depending on one’s view of the game, is either retrograde or on the cutting edge of the sport’s next evolution. . Speed, defense, small ball. That in itself is an interesting paradox, and the team’s season has produced its share of strange poetry. That may never have been more evident than this past Sunday, when the Brewers recalled a 28-year-old, right-handed outfielder.
His given name is Charles Hicklen, but he goes by his middle name. So for the first time in franchise history, the Brewers have a player named … Brewer.
Murphy is the team’s first-year manager, a longtime college coach at Notre Dame and Arizona State whose winding path led him to his first permanent managerial job at age 65.
The fiery manager brings an emotional style of the college game. He coached Craig Counsell at Notre Dame and later became Counsell’s bench coach in Milwaukee. Now he is the successor to his old mentor and looks like the favorite to win National League Manager of the Year.
As good as things were, Murphy has a background in boxing and enjoys looking at things through a prism of adversity. There is always another bump in the road ahead. Milwaukee entered the year trading ace Corbin Burnes. Brandon Woodruff, the team’s other workhorse starter, was set to miss the entire season due to shoulder surgery. Williams’ back flared up on the first day of spring training, and he didn’t pitch in the majors until July 28, when his return served as a lift.
“I think that gives us a sense of, ‘Oh, good, we just got better,'” Murphy said.
About two weeks later, the Brewers learned that Yelich needed season-ending back surgery.
“And your sense of security goes down a little bit,” Murphy said.
The Brewers won five straight after that news.
Now into the tight race, every loss still eats at Murphy. He thinks about them on his drives to and from the park, struggles to make up for the missed opportunities. Recently, the shortages have been more powerful. Milwaukee has lost three of its past four, each of those losses coming in extra innings. Cleverly as Murphy has managed this club, on Wednesday he made a questionable decision in extra innings, walking Nolan Arenado with two outs and bringing in Hoby Milner, a pitcher with a 4.92 ERA who hadn’t pitched in the big leagues since Aug. 8. The Cardinals pinch hit to end a lefty-on-lefty matchup. Milner kept getting the ground ball that Murphy wanted, but it snuck through the infield. The Brewers went on to lose 3-2.
“We had six players in the lineup today who are playing in their first full season, and I think in those situations they tend to try to do too much,” Murphy said afterward. “I guess this is a phase we’re going through, and a lot of it is youth, but there are a lot of bright spots at the same time. It’s just very, very frustrating. We didn’t have this stress of that frustration. … When you lose like that, it hurts a lot more, especially for a young group.”
A pessimist might take the three recent losses as hints that Milwaukee’s Cinderella run could be headed for another quick October collapse. Stubborn as the Brewers are, the lineup misses Yelich’s punch. They can struggle against left-handed pitching and are 17-21 against left-handed starters. They played 28 games that were decided in the last at-bat, going 16-12. With their winning-on-the-margin style comes razor-thin margins for error.
Milwaukee ranks fifth in runs scored but only 13th in slugging. Their 3.60 team ERA is third in baseball, but their elite defense has masked a 4.27 Fielding Independent Pitching metric.
“I didn’t love a lot of what I witnessed,” Murphy said of the recent stretch. “I love the kids and I love the way they competed and put themselves in a really good position. But you have to make it permanent. You can’t take your foot off the gas. You can’t coast up.”
Since June 1, rookie Jackson Chourio leads the National League with a .319 batting average. (Cara Owsley/USA Today)
There is another point lost somewhere in this prevailing narrative of the poor, underdog Brewers. With all labels comes the notion that they have no talent, as if they’ve assembled a roster full of randoms from a local re-link. But for all the undersized speedsters (second baseman Brice Turang has 41 steals) and journeyman pitchers (Brewers relievers have accounted for wins 46 times) that make up the Masonry of this club, there are certainly stars among the lesser-known names.
Contreras, Adames and Chourio power this lineup as three of the best players in the National League. Contreras’ 4.2 fWAR is the best of any catcher in baseball. Adames misses the big moment and has hit 13 three-run homers this year, tying Ken Griffey Jr. for the most part in a single season. On Monday, he launched his 29th homer of the season on his 29th birthday. He is the emotional catalyst of the team; as he conducted a doubleheader postgame interview with starting pitcher Freddy Peralta, Adames’ arm initially lay draped around his pitcher’s shoulder.
The rookie Chourio has had a rough start, but since June 1, he leads all NL hitters with a .319 batting average. The cosmic energy of the team was at it again on Monday in the sixth inning against the St. Louis Cardinals, when Chourio turned to Adames and pitcher Frankie Montas inside the dugout.
“I’m about to hit a grand slam,” he said.
At the time, there was no one on base.
Sure enough, a few batters later, the bases were loaded, and there was Chourio walking to the batter’s box.
He lifted a 1-1 slider, and the ball sailed 420 feet and well over the fence.
Chourio pointed to Adames and Montas as he rounded the bases. And when he returned to the dugout, he looked for Peralta. The rookie already signed to an eight-year, $82 million contract has developed a running gag with the pitcher, a line he repeats whenever he does something well.
In a way, his words reflect exactly the play of this team, which he said throughout the season.
“He told me again,” Peralta said, laughing. “Do you see how good I am?”
(Top photo by Willy Adames: John Fisher/Getty Images)
