Pat Murphy should be sitting at the top of the NL Manager of the Year race, and yet the Brewers’ skipper is somehow listed behind Atlanta’s Walt Weiss.
That alone tells you everything about how Milwaukee keeps getting treated. Year after year, the Brewers are handed modest expectations, and year after year they blow right through them.
This season has followed the same script. Milwaukee dropped its series opener to the Cubs at Wrigley Field, but even with that loss the Brewers still own the best record in MLB at 85-53 entering September 1, and they’re 2.5 games ahead of everyone else.
They hit 85 wins on August 30, a month before the regular season ends, and they’re now on pace for 100 wins.
That’s a massive gap from where the projection systems had them. PECOTA pegged Milwaukee at 80.5 wins, while FanGraphs came in at 82.
Those models are often right, and they had reasons to be cautious here. The Brewers traded away ace Freddy Peralta during the offseason, sent Caleb Durbin to the Boston Red Sox and were left with a third base situation that raised plenty of questions.
On paper, this looked like a roster that was going to be hard to pin down.
Instead, Milwaukee has done what it keeps doing: stay in the contender class. The Brewers were expected to take a step back, just like they supposedly were in 2024 and 2025 after losing key players.
Instead, they’ve kept rolling. And that’s why Murphy and his staff deserve the credit that comes with it.
The current odds picture, though, doesn’t reflect that reality. On MLB Network’s “MLB Central” on August 31, a FanDuel graphic showed Weiss as the favorite at +210, with Murphy right behind at +230. San Diego’s Craig Stammen and Philadelphia’s Don Mattingly were next at +500 apiece.
The argument for Murphy is pretty straightforward. Manager of the Year has become the award that often goes to the club that beats its preseason projection by the widest margin, and Milwaukee has done that again. Murphy already won the NL’s Manager of the Year award in each of the last two seasons after the Brewers were dismissed in the offseason and then went on to win the NL Central.
Weiss has had a strong debut season with the Braves, who were projected by PECOTA to win 92 games and are now on pace for 96. Atlanta has also had to navigate major injuries, especially on the pitching side, with Spencer Strider, Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep out for the season. But Milwaukee has dealt with its own absences too, including Quinn Priester and Brandon Woodruff, who were expected to be the top two arms in the rotation and have missed much of the 2026 season.
That’s why Murphy being second in the odds doesn’t make much sense. The Brewers have outperformed the projections by a wider margin, done it with a roster many thought would regress, and kept winning anyway. If the award is supposed to reward the manager who gets the most out of what he’s given, Murphy has the strongest case by far.
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Misiorowski has already made himself impossible to ignore, from his overall dominance to the fastest pitch thrown by a starting pitcher this season. Now the focus turns to one final outing and the small list of pitchers he could join if he finishes with a sub-2.00 ERA and 250-plus strikeouts, a mark that would add another eye-catching line to an already memorable debut year. [Read more 🡒]