Brewers Reach World Series With a Style Today’s Lab-Built Baseball World Nearly Killed

Los Angeles — “They don’t want you, Murph.”

The message could not have been any clearer. It came from Craig Counsell, who from the first day of fall practice playing for Pat Murphy at Notre Dame was Murphy’s kind of guy. Counsell took a bad hop to his nose at second base that day. The impact was so bloody Counsell was rushed to a hospital. He was back on the field before practice was over.

Murphy was Counsell’s bench coach and consigliere for nine years when Counsell managed the Milwaukee Brewers. Counsell jumped to the rival Cubs as a free agent after the 2023 season. Counsell told Murphy to pack his bags. The club did not consider him as his replacement.

“They didn’t want me,” Murphy says. “They were going with Don Mattingly or whoever else they wanted. That’s fine. I got it. Listen, I could just go to the Cubs as a bench coach.”

But then the Brewers pivoted back to Murphy. He was interested, he told owner Mark Attanasio, but only on one condition.

“We have to establish a way to play baseball,” Murphy told him. “We’ve got to be different. And it’s all about the who we have in the room.”

Murphy insisted on defining the style, and in some cases, the personnel of Brewers baseball, a rare empowered managerial voice in a game in which front offices have more sway than ever when it comes to lineups, rosters and strategy.

Today, for the first time in 44 years, the Brewers are headed to the World Series. They demolished the Dodgers in a four-game sweep that was the most thorough takedown of a dynasty since the Visigoths rolled Rome. The Dodgers held a lead in all four games for a total of six times and the Brewers wiped out all of them. The last was the biggest stunner of all. The Dodgers led 4–0 at home after a made-for-Hollywood moment when Shohei Ohtani awakened from a two-month slump to smite a boffo three-run homer.

“In my lifetime, I couldn’t be more proud of a group of players"#WinOurWay pic.twitter.com/IzvIZ2X1Qx
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) October 16, 2026

“When we came back in the dugout,” centerfielder Garrett Mitchell said, “there was not a second of doubt at all. It was like, ’Let’s just chip away. Let’s get back in this game.’”

Brewers DH and captain Christian Yelich turned to Mitchell and said, “Just wait. How cool is this going to be when we come back and win? It’s going to be even sweeter.”

And they did, roaring past the aging shell of the Dodger dynasty with a 6–4 victory. So dull were the Dodgers, they became only the seventh team to lose four straight games in one postseason series without attempting a stolen base. They did so with a .250 slugging percentage, the worst of those static seven this side of the 1963 Yankees, another empire that was reaching its end.

“They may have had a lot of Hall of Famers,” Murphy said. “We have a bunch of gamers. The gamers won this week.”

Especially now that the Brewers are in the World Series—building a 7–1 postseason run atop a 103-win regular season—it is difficult to imagine the Brewers without Murphy in the wake of Counsell’s departure. The Brewers are Murphy and Murphy is the Brewers. Relentless. Persnickety. Irascible. Fearless.

At 67, with a bad hip and a knack for being charming and cutting in the same breath, Murphy is the second-oldest manager to make his World Series debut, behind only 72-year-old Jack McKeon of the 2003 Marlins. The Brewers’ pennant is a triumph of patience for a passionate baseball town that has waited 44 seasons to see a World Series, the seventh longest drought of all time. It also is a validation of Murphy’s insistence on playing a throwback style in a labbed-up, data-driven age. Milwaukee, last in the league in home runs, hit the fewest home runs (154) of any pennant-winner since the 2015 Royals.

Pat Murphy has transformed the Brewers franchise in his image. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

“I feel blessed,” Murphy said. “And I’m not trying to be super religious. I’m just saying, I just feel grateful to be part of this whole thing, to have a chance to be in the role that I’m in. And I mean that, and I felt it [during] my three years. But I’m sorry, I think about next week, and then I think about next year, and it’s just the way I think. I don’t need to celebrate too much. You know what I mean? The joy of everybody is enough for me.”

If you looked closely, you saw Murphy’s fingerprints all over the clincher. Down 4–2 in the fifth, Sal Frelick walked. Frelick was a first-round pick in 2021 despite being a 5’ 9" outfielder with little power. Murphy lobbied for him. Frelick is the closest thing to a prototypical Murph kind of player since Dustin Pedroia, whom Murphy had at Arizona State.

“That’s the kind of mentality we need to play like this,” Murphy said. “It’s not about numbers. You need people in the room like Sal Frelick.”

Frelick then stole second and scored on a single by David Hamilton, a 5’ 10" infielder who hit four homers and stole 30 bases. Hamilton would score the tying run on a bases loaded walk. Hamilton later homered for the last run. His two run-scoring hits prompted Murphy to recall his instructions to the speedy Hamilton before his first at-bat.

DAVID HAMILTON GETS HIS OCTOBER MOMENT ‼️‼️‼️ pic.twitter.com/TVtnzlDzzw
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) October 16, 2026

“Bunt,” Murphy told him. “You just have to get one down. If you get one down, I don’t care if you’re safe, the rest of the game, I promise you, you’re going to get pitches to hit, and I’m going to leave you in."

It was Mitchell, one of Murphy’s favorite foils, who hit what became a pennant-winning home run. In the sixth, Mitchell battled back from 0-and-2 against lefthanded reliever Tanner Scott to smoke a homer into the bleachers in right-centerfield. Mitchell is a skilled player who regularly draws Murphy’s ire for slights such as missing signs and poor secondary leads.

Garrett Mitchell had just two Major League home runs off left-handed pitchers since his debut in 2022.

He's gone yard off a southpaw in Game 3 AND Game 4! pic.twitter.com/kHeZPODgS7
— MLB (@MLB) October 16, 2026

“Mine usually go with base running,” Mitchell says of the times Murphy chides him. “That’s probably the one that happens the most.”

In 2024, the Brewers were playing at Dodger Stadium. Tyler Glasnow, as he was in Game 4, was the Los Angeles pitcher. Murphy gave Mitchell the steal sign. Mitchell missed it. Murphy put the steal back on. Still, Mitchell didn’t run. It happened a third time. And a fourth. Finally, Murphy yelled from the dugout to Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman, “Hey, Freddie! Tell him to run!”

Freeman did as instructed. He turned to Mitchell and said, “Murph wants you to run.”

Said Mitchell, who never did run, “After like the fifth pitch, I didn’t go and I think he ended up getting the out right after that. That one always sticks in my mind.”

Said Murphy, “Garrett has taught me that you always have to love your players.”

The feeling is mutual around the Brewers.

“The reason why I love Murph is because you never know what you’re going to get,” Mitchell said. “It’s unpredictable. But no matter whether it’s tough love or motivation, whatever it is, you love him and you respect him because he’s 100% authentic to who he is. And all you can do is respect that.

“Again, you know where you stand. There’s no games. Well, sometimes he plays little games. Don’t get me wrong. Like I said, you know where you stand with him, and again, like, I think that’s how you get the most out of your players. I feel from my own perspective, he gets the most out of me because you never know what you’re going to get that day, but you know that it’s always met with love. Like, tough love, a hug, smack on the butt, or get your butt off the field.”

When rookie pitcher Logan Henderson was two minutes late to the mound for a start last season, a letter from the commissioner’s office arrived at his locker the next day informing him of a $5,000 fine for holding up the game. Murphy and pitching coach Chris Hook told Henderson he should write a letter of apology to the commissioner in hopes of getting the fine reduced. Just as Henderson was about to commence with his written plea for mercy, Murphy and Hook let him in on the prank.

Murphy’s biggest impact is on how the Brewers play baseball. When the Brewers analytics department, for instance, gives him statistics with pull air percentage—a measure of hitting balls in the air to the pull side—Murphy tells them, “don’t bother putting that in.”

Analytics people love pull air percentage. Inversely, Murphy loves “backside grounders”—hitting the ball on the ground the other way.

“It’s like golf,” he said. “Sometimes you need the wedge. Hitters hit about 200 points higher when they go back side on the ground.”

Turns out, he’s right. This year, major league hitters batted .205 when they pulled a groundball and .415 when they went backside grounder. Guess who led the majors in opposite field hitting? Groundball percentage? The best team in baseball, the Brewers.

On the mound, Milwaukee used old school methods there, too, to beat the Dodgers. They pounded the Dodgers with 66% fastballs (most notably, a barrage of sinkers) at an average speed of 97 mph. Los Angeles’ only path to victory was to slug, which Milwaukee pitching, especially the indefatigable Aaron Ashby, would not permit.

“Lefthanded velocity,” Murphy said when asked about the plan to throttle the Dodgers. “That’s how you do it. That’s what you have to do. You take away the weapons. D.L. Hall, Ashby, JoJo Romero ... they were all sensational.”

Break out your bellbottoms and call your good buddies on your CB radio. Whether Cleveland or Tampa Bay wins the American League pennant, the upcoming World Series, which starts Oct. 23 in Milwaukee, represents a throwback to the days when batting average and baserunning were cool. For the first time since 1990, when the Reds beat the Athletics, the World Series will feature two teams with fewer than 170 homers and more than 140 steals. Such balance was not uncommon then. It also happened in 1980, 1976 and 1974. The Brewers look like they have time-traveled from that era of beltless polyester uniform pants.

What the statistics do not show is how Murphy has succeeded in his biggest demand upon being hired: to establish a culture different from the cookie-cutter, numbers-based world of the rest of baseball. His is built on getting the right people in the room and getting them to buy in, even if it means calling out catcher William Contreras for not running hard on a grounder in a meaningless late September game after the Brewers clinched. Milwaukee is 22–4 since Sept. 7, gas pedal remained pressed firmly on the floorboard.

The party is on for the NL Champs Milwaukee Brewers! pic.twitter.com/3SsEpSGxbV
— MLB (@MLB) October 16, 2026

“I think it’s important in what we do that each game is the same, right?” Mitchell said. “I’m playing the whole entire game over 162 because it isn’t about letting off the gas. It’s about winning that day. That truly means something, and it’s our identity. Every game, until the last out is made, we are going balls to the wall no matter what.

“That makes it a lot easier to trust in each other because we’ve all been a part of it. We’re all doing it. That’s where there is not just accountability to each other, but trust. We trust one another.”

Said Murphy, “We set standards that are really baseball-y. It’s not a bunch of talk. You know what I mean? For me it’s about setting these standards in baseball. How are we going to do it? Are we going to live up to those standards? Are we going to take that three-one pitch when it’s not a strike? Are we going to have an opposite field grounder in our bag? Are we going to do that stuff?”

Since Murphy did get the managing gig in 2024, the Brewers have the most wins, the most stolen bases, the most singles, the most opposite field hits and the most groundball hits of any team in baseball. The World Series is his validation. You can win with a style the information age tried to kill, if you have the right manager and the right people in the room.

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