Pat Murphy took his latest Manager of the Year honor from a hospital bed, and somehow that fits.
The Brewers’ 67-year-old skipper won the BBWAA’s National League Manager of the Year Award for the third straight season on Tuesday, becoming the first manager in either league to pull off that three-peat since the award was added in 1983. He’s also the first, as far as anyone knows, to do it while recovering in a Milwaukee hospital bed after a hip replacement.
Murphy had spent the 2026 season battling pain, pushing off knee and hip surgeries because emergency back surgery came first. By Tuesday, his lower body was finally getting fixed up, and that’s where he appeared for the awards show on MLB Network.
“When the playoffs started, you saw the way they won games, how resilient they were, how they responded to every adversity,” Murphy said. “You just got this feeling, we could be destined to do this."
For Murphy, the award caps a year that already included a new three-year contract, a franchise-record and Major League-best 103 wins in the regular season and a World Series title. The ballots, though, were cast before the postseason began, when Milwaukee was still just a four-time defending NL Central champion and not yet a champion of the whole sport.
Murphy collected 20 of 30 first-place votes. Braves manager Walt Weiss finished second, with Phillies manager Don Mattingly third.
The honor puts Murphy in rare company. He’s now the 10th manager to win the BBWAA award at least three times. Tony La Russa, Bobby Cox and Buck Showalter have won it four times each, while Jim Leyland, Dusty Baker, Lou Piniella, Joe Maddon, Bob Melvin, Terry Francona and Murphy have three apiece.
His three straight wins also tie the most Manager of the Year Awards won with one franchise. Cox did it with the Braves, Baker with the Giants and Francona with Cleveland.
And while the World Series title came after the ballots were submitted, Murphy’s season still joined a very short list. It was the ninth time a manager has won both the World Series and Manager of the Year in the same year, and the first time that’s happened in more than 20 years. The others were Ozzie Guillen in 2005 with the White Sox, Jack McKeon in 2003 with the Marlins, Mike Scioscia in 2002 with the Angels, Joe Torre in 1998 and 1996 with the Yankees, Tom Kelly in 1991 with the Twins, Tommy Lasorda in 1988 with the Dodgers and Sparky Anderson in 1984 with the Tigers.
Murphy’s message never really changed: “Win tonight.” That’s the phrase Brewers players see before they head from the clubhouse to the field.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, watching his club get swept by Milwaukee in the NLCS, had plenty of praise for the way Murphy’s team operates.
“I think Murph does a fantastic job with their team,” Roberts said while L.A. was on the way to getting swept by the Brewers in the NLCS. “They play baseball the way it was intended.
They value 90 feet. They take extra bases.
They defend well. They’re athletic.
They prevent runs with really good pitching and then with the defense layered in. They don’t give pitches away.
They hit to all fields. And with that, they’re in every game.
So how do you combat that?”
He answered his own question by pointing to the only path: play with the same fundamentals and apply pressure. The Dodgers couldn’t make it happen.
Across the regular season, almost nobody could. Milwaukee became the first team to win 100 games without a winning streak longer than five during the regular season.
The Brewers hit the second fewest home runs in the majors, yet scored the second most runs. They outscored opponents by 214 runs, the best mark in baseball and a club record, smashing the previous Brewers high of plus-174 set by the 1982 American League champion team.
They did it with a pitching staff that kept adapting. Brandon Woodruff was sidelined most of the year, Quinn Priester missed all of it, and Murphy used a rookie starter in 80 of 162 games, the highest percentage in the majors.
The preseason projection from PECOTA had Milwaukee at 80.5 wins in February. Murphy’s team finished with 103.
“I don’t think we play different than anybody else, I really don’t,” Murphy said. “And I hear it a lot, ‘Oh, I love the way you guys play.’
Well, there’s plenty of days I don’t. Buy-in from players?
I think they’re just great dudes that care about each other. I don’t think they’re buying into anything I’m doing.
I think they’re buying into each other and buying into winning at a big-time level.
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