Milwaukee’s October has already given the Brewers a stack of moments that can be measured, ranked and remembered. If you want the cleanest snapshot of just how far this playoff run has traveled, the numbers tell the story through Championship Win Probability Added, or cWPA, with each swing and pitch nudging the Brewers closer to a World Series title.
At the top of the list sits the moment that turned the NLDS into a full-blown eruption: Jackson Chourio’s walkoff single against Mason Miller in Game 2. With two outs, the bases loaded and Milwaukee down by a run, Chourio stepped in with one strike left against what was described as arguably the best relief pitcher in the world.
The leverage was enormous, carrying a Championship Leverage Index of 173.47. On Miller’s 40th pitch, a 101-MPH fastball leaked over the plate, and Chourio lashed it past Jake Cronenworth and into center field.
Yelich scored without trouble, Sal Frelick barely beat the tag at home, and Milwaukee got the kind of scene that blows the roof off a ballpark. By the numbers, it was the biggest single moment of the Brewers’ postseason so far, worth 6.94% cWPA.
Just below that came Jake Bauers’s series-shifting homer off Blake Snell in Game 3 of the NLCS. Snell had already strung together 14 straight Brewers outs at one point, but after Andrew Vaughn drew a leadoff walk to start the seventh, Bauers delivered another long at-bat that ended the same way his earlier marathon had ended: with a hammer.
On the 11th pitch, Snell tried a fastball, and Bauers sent a 109-MPH shot into the bleachers to put Milwaukee ahead for good. That swing carried a 3.90% cWPA and felt, at the time, like it might close the door on the series.
Christian Yelich’s go-ahead single off Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 2 of the NLCS checks in next at 3.10% cWPA. Los Angeles had already seized its second lead of the night by the third inning, but Milwaukee answered quickly.
Jake Bauers worked a 12-pitch walk to load the bases, and Yelich got a breaking ball he could handle. He lined it into center field, scoring Hamilton and Turang and flipping the game back to the Brewers.
William Contreras’s home run against Kris Bubic in Game 2 landed at 2.45% cWPA, and it came in a game that had already started to tilt nervously. Logan Henderson pitched four decent innings but nearly gave it away with two bad throws to first, and the Dodgers took a 4-3 lead into the bottom of the fifth.
Then Bubic came in, Brice Turang struck out looking, and Contreras stepped up with one out and nobody aboard. Bubic left a middle-middle fastball over the plate, and Contreras crushed it 436 feet to tie the game.
Milwaukee went on to win 7-4.
The fifth-biggest moment so far came in Game 1 of the NLCS, when Trevor Megill shut the door on Mookie Betts. The Brewers had already done enough against Tarik Skubal to scratch across two runs, and the bullpen backed Jacob Misiorowski with 11 scoreless outs before handing the final inning to Megill with a one-run lead.
He retired the first two batters on five pitches, then ran into traffic when Kyle Tucker and Josue De Paula both walked. That brought up Betts, who saw a knuckle curve for ball one and then got a 98-MPH fastball right over the plate.
Betts launched it 375 feet to the warning track, but Garrett Mitchell was there to make the catch and end it. Milwaukee took Game 1 and moved 2.24% closer to a title.
Those five plays have powered Milwaukee’s pennant-winning October so far, and the most striking part is how quickly the Brewers have kept answering every Dodgers push. The run isn’t over yet, but the biggest pressure moments have already stacked up fast.
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