The Brewers keep winning without looking anything like a club built around the home run.
That’s the odd little truth sitting at the center of Milwaukee’s season, and it was on full display Friday night when the Brewers put up 10 runs against the Reds without leaving the yard. Sal Frelick was robbed of a homer by Cincinnati center fielder Dane Myers, but even without that swing changing the score, Milwaukee still found a way to score in bunches. The line could have been even bigger, too: the Brewers left nine runners on base and went 5-for-18 with runners in scoring position.
And yet the power numbers remain stubbornly light. Entering Saturday, Milwaukee was last in the majors with 131 home runs, while ranking second in on-base percentage at .339 and walks with 584. The Brewers were also tied for second in batting average at .257, third in runs with 715 and third in steals with 139.
Jake Bauers and Jackson Chourio lead the team with 23 and 21 home runs, respectively. Nobody else has more than 17.
That gap is part of the reality manager Pat Murphy has embraced. He knows scoring this way takes more work than waiting on a three-run blast, but he’s not interested in pretending otherwise.
“We’re choosing hard,” Murphy said. “We’re certainly trying to hit home runs.
We're not cutting our swing down to create ground balls. We're still putting our best foot forward when the pitch is thrown that we can homer on.
We're trying to just do everything we can to keep our focus on the right things, and that's winning baseball.”
Milwaukee enters the second game of its three-game series against the Reds on Saturday night at Great American Ball Park with the best record in baseball at 88-54. That kind of result is exactly why Murphy pushes back when people try to label the Brewers as a team that only works in the regular season.
“It makes no sense to me that someone would say, ‘Well, they're built for the regular season,'" Murphy said. “Think about what you're really saying.
They're built to win games. What's the difference?”
The Brewers finished 97-65 last season, the best record in baseball for the first time since 1982, and set a franchise record for regular-season wins before falling to the Dodgers in the NLCS. Even then, the long ball wasn’t the defining feature of their offense. Milwaukee ranked 22nd with 166 homers last season, but still finished third in batting average at .258, second in on-base percentage at .332 and third in runs with 806.
Murphy pointed to that same tension when talking about what comes next.
“Maybe we win the most games in baseball, like we did last year,” Murphy said. “[If] that doesn't translate to the World Series championship, what can we do to change it?
Just start saying, ‘Go ahead and just try to hit homers?' The teams that hit homers, they're not doing that.”
Even in last year’s NLDS against the Cubs, the Brewers showed they could bring power when it mattered. They homered seven times in the series, and Brice Turang, William Contreras and Andrew Vaughn all went deep in the decisive Game 5 win that gave Milwaukee its first postseason series victory since 2018.
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Brewers Are Chasing More Than Home-Field Advantage Now
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That matters for a club that has been noticeably better at American Family Field, where both the offense and defense have been stronger. Jacob Misiorowski has shown a similar split, with better numbers at home than on the road, which only adds to the sense that a strong finish could pay off in a big way. Milwaukee still needs to stay ahead of the Atlanta Braves to secure that bye to the NL Division Series, so the Brewers' next stretch is about more than just finishing first. [Read more 🡒]
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Misiorowski will be trying to pick up his 16th win of the season against Brandon Young, with Sunday Night Baseball offering the kind of stage that can make a late-September game feel like more than just another stop on the schedule. For a club that has already matched its best mark, the next step is clear, even if the payoff is still just out of view. [Read more 🡒]
Brewers Are Balancing One Big October Risk With Jacob Misiorowski
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For Milwaukee, the larger issue is less about what Misiorowski did in this start and more about how carefully they want to handle him heading into October. He leads the major leagues in ERA, strikeouts, WHIP and opponents batting average this season, which only sharpens the clubs balancing act as it tries to keep him effective now without overextending him before the regular season finale. [Read more 🡒]