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The Milwaukee Brewers are in the World Series for the first time in four decades. It took something special for them to get there.
One year after getting swept out of the NLCS by the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Brewers returned the favor with an impressive showing against the two-time defending champions. Whether it's the Cleveland Guardians or the Tampa Bay Rays coming out of the ALCS, Milwaukee will be favored in the Fall Classic after being the best team in baseball for the past six-and-a-half months.
The Brewers have done that as a unit without much name recognition for the casual sports fan. Allow this to serve as an introduction to the NL champions, who are playing baseball their way and enjoying every second of it.
Following the NLCS, Brewers manager Pat Murphy tried to sum up his team with the following statement: "[The Los Angeles Dodgers] may have a bunch of Hall of Famers, but we got a bunch of gamers, and the gamers won this week."
Please don't let Murphy fool you. The Brewers absolutely have some potential Hall of Fame talent. We can start with the presumptive NL Cy Young Award winner, who throws as hard as 105.5 mph.
Jacob Misiorowski led MLB pitchers in ERA, WHIP, strikeouts, strikeout rate, FIP and, of course, fastball velocity this season. Opponents slashed .157/.224/.246 against him. He was particularly dominant against left-handed batters, holding them to a .114 batting average.
However, he hasn't been so dominant in the postseason, failing to reach the sixth inning in his starts against the San Diego Padres and Dodgers. His team still won both of those games, though, as he managed to limit runs and was backed up by shutdown bullpen performances.
On the position player side, the Brewers have a big three of left-fielder Jackson Chourio, second baseman Brice Turang and catcher William Contreras. Chourio is one of the best young players in baseball at 22 years old. Turang has immense two-way value as a Platinum Glove winner who also gets on base at a well above-average clip. Contreras is having the best postseason of any hitter still playing.
There's also Christian Yelich, who became the first player captain in Brewers history last month. He no longer plays at the MVP level he displayed when he first landed in Milwaukee, but he is still beloved by the fan base.
Murphy joined the Brewers in 2015 as bench coach under then-manager Craig Counsell after five years as a member of the Padres' front office and decades of coaching in the college ranks. He took over the Brewers in 2024 after Counsell left town for the Chicago Cubs.
Let's just say that tenure has gone well. Murphy is heavily favored to win a third straight NL Manager of the Year award this year in his third season with the team.
The role of manager has been minimized over the past few decades as more decisions become the domain of the front offices, but Murphy has proven to be an excellent conduit for Milwaukee's brain trust, led by president of baseball operations Matt Arnold.
Under Murphy, the Brewers are a marriage of many of baseball's analytical trends, such as openers, platoons, emphasis on on-base percentage, with some of its more old-school strategies, such as stolen bases and sacrifice bunts. It has been a tremendously effective combination.
What's at stake for the Brewers is pretty simple: the first World Series title in the franchise’s 57-year history.
The Brewers reached their first and only Fall Classic in 1982, back when they were a member of the American League. They have been playoff regulars since 2018, but so far, they have no titles to show for it.
Milwaukee is one of five MLB teams without a World Series title, with the others being the Tampa Bay Rays, Colorado Rockies, Seattle Mariners and Padres. The Brewers and Padres are tied for the oldest teams in that group.
Milwaukee set a franchise record with a 103-59 record in the regular season, and they followed that by tearing through the NLDS and NLCS.
The Brewers are already guaranteed to win more games than any other team in baseball this season between the regular season and postseason. They won the NL Central by 14 games and had the best run differential in the sport, ranking second in MLB in runs scored and fourth in runs allowed.
They got through a surprisingly competitive NLDS against the Padres with three wins in four close games, then entered the NLCS as underdogs against the two-time defending champion Dodgers, who swept the Brewers in last year's NLCS. Milwaukee returned the favor this time, jumping on L.A.'s elite rotation and shutting down an offense composed almost entirely of postseason-proven veterans.
It is an impressive path to the World Series, and now the Brewers get to rest a full week between Game 4 of the NLCS and Game 1 of the World Series on Oct. 23.
For years, the Brewers have stood out as a model of small-market success, and 2026 is no different. Their $142 million payroll, as calculated by FanGraphs, is one of the largest in franchise history, but it still ranks only 19th in MLB.
Only four players on the Milwaukee roster are making more than $10 million this year: Yelich ($26 million), injured starting pitcher Brandon Woodruff ($22 million), No. 4 starter/bulk reliever Dustin May ($12 million) and reliever Antonio Senzatela ($12 million). By contract, the Dodgers had 15 such players.
The majority of Brewers players are either on affordable arbitration contracts or are pre-arb players making somewhere around league minimum. Chourio would loom as a player due the kind of mega-deal the Brewers have never handed out, but they signed him to an eight-year, $82 million extension before his debut. That now ranks as one of the biggest bargains in baseball.
With one of the best farm systems in baseball, the Brewers could’ve done plenty at the trade deadline. A deal for two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal was certainly possible, but the Tigers reportedly wanted pitcher Logan Henderson, and Milwaukee was not willing to give him up.
The club opted to improve on the margins instead. They brought in May and reliever JoJo Romero from the St. Louis Cardinals, catcher Bo Naylor and reliever Codi Heuer from the Guardians and Senzatela from the Colorado Rockies.
Only May, Romero and Senzatela made Milwaukee's NLCS roster, but they have all become part of the pitching machine. And it's not like not having Skubal hurt them in the NLCS.
Here's a list of MLB's five highest-scoring teams this season, with their rank in home runs: Cubs (third), Brewers (29th), Nationals (sixth), Dodgers (eighth), White Sox (fifth).
Does something stand out there?
In the current home-run-dominated incarnation of MLB, the Brewers stand out as an elite offense despite a lack of traditional power hitters. They make up for that by annoying opposing pitchers into submission.
Milwaukee led MLB in batting average, on-base percentage and walk rate this season while ranking fifth in stolen bases and sacrifice hits. No team is better at getting hitters on base, and few teams are as aggressive when it comes to advancing those runners into scoring position.
There is some power at the top of the Brewers' order, but every hitter in the lineup has some other way to bother pitchers, as we saw in the NLCS when guys such as Jake Bauers, Garrett Mitchell and Luis Lara all had huge moments against the Dodgers. This team has a clear identity on offense, and it's a kind of identity that's rare in modern baseball. Their persistence is what allowed the Brewers to become the first team in MLB history to sweep a seven-game series in which they trailed in all four games.
It says something that of the 13 pitchers on the Milwaukee NLCS roster, closer Trevor Megill had the third-fewest innings and Game 4 opener Shane Drohan had the second-fewest. Only Chad Patrick went unused. The Brewers made significant use of every other pitcher in their bullpen.
Aaron Ashby stood out most, with three scoreless, multi-inning appearances against L.A. Lefties DL Hall and JoJo Romero were also asked to lock things down for more than an inning at a time. Milwaukee has several relievers it trusts, all of whom are willing to pitch in nontraditional roles.
Of course, Plan A for World Series Game 1 is still probably going to be a long, dominant start from Jacob Misiorowski. He is definitely a major reason the Brewers are here. But after him, they have many other options. Henderson, Robert Gasser and May are the other starting pitchers in the rotation, but none of them has pitched past the fifth inning this postseason. This is also a team that likes its openers.
To use a financial term, the Brewers are diversified. Case in point: Abner Uribe, arguably their best reliever the past two seasons, coughed up a lead in Game 3 against the Dodgers. Hall then came in and threw 2 1/3 innings, followed by 1 1/3 innings from Megill while the offense broke through for five runs across the final three innings.
No player, not even Misiorowski, needs to have a great game for this team to win. In seven out of eight games in this postseason so far, someone has come through when needed.
As annoying as the Brewers' offense is, we can't say it has had a dominant postseason. Milwaukee needed just a few runs in each game to get through the NL West powers, so even a single extra-base hit felt huge.
The Milwaukee offense failed to score more than four runs in its first five games of the playoffs. They were at least consistent, never getting held to zero or one, but that's where the lack of home runs was noticeable. Milwaukee is great at scoring runs in several different innings, but not so great at scoring several runs in a single inning.
The Brewers also strike out more than you might think for such a pesky group, ranking 14th in MLB in strikeout rate this year, but that's a reflection of their patience at the plate. They like to work counts, and that sometimes involves falling behind pitchers. Milwaukee hitters ranked fourth in MLB in pitches faced with two strikes, and that 10-spot delta from their strikeout rate speaks to how hard they are to put away as a team.
All of that adds up to a unit you'd think quality pitching could shut down. That was supposed to be the Dodgers, with their star-studded rotation and fairly deep bullpen, but we know how that worked out.
Looking ahead, the Rays and Guardians both have good pitching staffs backed by cutting-edge front offices (this was a rather analytics-heavy championship round). Let's also not forget that as nice as a week of rest sounds, there could be concerns of rust compared to the ALCS winner, who will be playing until at least Sunday.
Rewind to the 2023 Brewers, a 92-win team that won the first of four straight NL Central titles.
Corbin Burnes was the staff ace, having won the Cy Young Award in 2021. Their No. 2 pitcher was Freddy Peralta. Their closer was Devin Williams. Willy Adames led them in home runs at shortstop. Counsell was manager. David Stearns was still in the building, advising ownership after a tenure as the whiz kid president of baseball operations.
All those people have left or been traded. Burnes was dealt to the Baltimore Orioles ahead of the 2024 season, before he could leave in free agency. Williams was traded ahead of the 2025 season, before he could leave in free agency. Peralta was traded last offseason, before he could leave in free agency. Adames left in free agency. Counsell left for the Cubs, the hated NL Central rivals. Stearns went home to New York to run the Mets.
And yet, the Brewers are still here.
It has been so easy to underestimate this group as years and people have gone by, but the foundation is now stronger than ever, and the Brewers might still be on their way up. This team is young, doesn't have many notable free agents this offseason and just won 103 games. Milwaukee also had the third-best farm system in baseball at midseason, according to MLB Pipeline. Even more talent is on the way, with No. 1 overall prospect Jesús Made leading the next wave.
That is profoundly special stuff, no matter how the next couple of weeks go for Milwaukee.
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