The Milwaukee Brewers have put themselves in a position few teams can match, and the latest round of MLB insider opinion shows it. ESPN polled 16 executives and scouts to identify the team to beat in each league with October approaching, and six of them chose Milwaukee.
That support came with an important caveat: no one from a contending team was allowed to take part in the survey.
The case for the Brewers starts with the pitching. The insiders leaned heavily on Milwaukee’s staff, ranking the top of the rotation and the bullpen with the best in the sport.
One NL scout in the poll, who had already backed the Brewers a year ago, pointed to Jacob Misiorowski and Logan Henderson as the reason for doing it again. “That one-two combo can hang with the Dodgers,” the scout told ESPN.
Misiorowski has made that belief easy to understand. He is 14-5 with a 1.95 ERA, which leads the majors.
His 236 strikeouts also lead the league, and among qualified starters his 0.80 WHIP is the best in baseball. Milwaukee drafted him 63rd overall out of Crowder College in 2022, and he made his debut in June 2025.
Milwaukee’s record tells the rest of the story. The Brewers are 93-57 with 12 games left, and they entered Monday’s MLB slate as the only team in the league with more than 90 wins. The Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays are the only other clubs that have even reached 90.
There is also confidence in the way the Brewers score at home. American Family Field was cited as a major reason for the optimism around Milwaukee’s postseason outlook, with the ballpark giving evaluators reason to believe in the offense over a series there.
The Brewers have already had one eye-opening moment at home this month. Cincinnati was beaten 20-0 in Milwaukee on Sept. 11, a result that carried historic significance on its own. That same week, William Contreras reached 1,000 innings caught, becoming the first Brewers catcher to do it in three straight seasons.
The Dodgers, meanwhile, were the only team to finish ahead of Milwaukee in the ESPN poll. Los Angeles is the betting favorite to win the World Series at +195 as it goes after a third straight title. The Brewers are next at +650, up from +750 a week ago.
One NL executive did raise a concern about Los Angeles, pointing to the fact that Shohei Ohtani is not healthy enough to pitch late this season.
Milwaukee still has business to finish in the regular season before thinking too far ahead. The Brewers have 12 games left, including a three-game series at Philadelphia from Sept.
22-24. If they stay healthy and keep rolling, they could walk into October with the best record in MLB.
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For Milwaukee, the episode was a reminder of how carefully Mitchells situation has to be monitored even on a routine night in the middle of the schedule. Murphy also weighed in on the bullpen and the teams recent stretch of games, but the larger focus after Mitchells departure was simply making sure this was a health issue being managed the right way, not a setback that would linger. [Read more 🡒]
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Lara has still managed to keep his on-base percentage at .333 lately, helped along by coaching decisions and the defensive value he brings to the roster. The larger takeaway is that Milwaukee keeps leaning into a merit-based approach with both Lara and Frelick, which is good process but also leaves a tricky question hanging over how much runway Lara is really going to keep getting as the roster gets healthier and the games matter more. [Read more 🡒]
Brewers Trade Is Already Raising Questions About Their Catching Bet
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Yoho has been productive for Cleveland, which has only added to the sense that the Guardians came out ahead in the short term. Naylor, meanwhile, has logged only limited major league time in Milwaukee but has shown enough promise in Triple-A to keep the long view alive, leaving the Brewers to wait and see whether the trade starts looking different as his role grows. [Read more 🡒]