MILWAUKEE -- Pat Murphy doesn’t do one-size-fits-all management, and the Brewers have spent three seasons learning how much that matters.
One night, William Contreras got pulled after not running hard on a ground ball. The next day, he answered by sprinting to first and diving headfirst into the bag on another routine grounder, then smiled along with teammates who knew exactly what they were watching.
Murphy laughed, too. That’s the deal in Milwaukee: the standard is real, the correction can be public, and nobody is exempt.
That kind of approach has helped drive the Brewers to 103 wins, the best mark in baseball and a franchise record. Murphy, 67, has already won National League Manager of the Year in each of his first two seasons with Milwaukee, and he has a strong case to make it three straight. No manager has ever won the award in three consecutive years, and Murphy could be the first to do it in his first three seasons with the club.
“I’m just trying to figure it out,” Murphy said. “I don’t really have a system to it.”
His players have figured out plenty on their own. They know the message can come hard when effort slips, and they know it can also come with a pat on the back when the job is done right. Christian Yelich summed up the expectation after Murphy benched rookie Cooper Pratt during an August game against the Mets.
“You have to be a certain kind of player to play for Murph and to play here,” Yelich said. “You couldn’t coach that way throughout the league. You really couldn’t.”
Murphy’s path helps explain the style. He spent years coaching at Notre Dame and Arizona State before getting to a Major League dugout, and that background shows in the way he confronts mistakes right away and treats veterans and rookies the same. Yelich, now Milwaukee’s newly named captain, said the players on the roster matter just as much as the approach itself.
“I think it’s having the right guys that are responsive to that,” Yelich said. “I don’t think that would work on every team in the league.”
Sal Frelick sees it the same way. He has been pulled from games by Murphy, and he was among the teammates who checked on Pratt after the rookie was benched in New York. To Frelick, the system works because the clubhouse is built for it.
“The players he wants to play his brand of baseball are also the same players that he can bench when they don’t play well,” Frelick said. “Good will come of it.”
Murphy’s voice isn’t always sharp, either. Sometimes it’s a correction.
Sometimes it’s encouragement. When he removed Robert Gasser during a Sept. 1 start against the Cubs at Wrigley Field, Gasser was unhappy with how he pitched.
Murphy still made a point of telling him what he liked. Gasser said the conversation meant a lot and helped his confidence, and he has backed that up in his four starts since, allowing just three runs over 22 innings.
A week later, Murphy had another small but telling moment with Luis Lara. Before Lara came to the plate with the bases loaded in extra innings against Chicago on Sept.
8, Murphy went over to the young outfielder, who was hitless in four at-bats, asked if he was ready and told him he had confidence in him. Lara responded with a walk-off single.
Murphy downplayed the significance of the exchange.
“I really don’t think that conversation mattered,” he said. “It was probably more for me, so I was participating, I guess.”
That kind of answer sounded familiar to Craig Counsell, who played for Murphy at Notre Dame, worked with him in Milwaukee and now manages the Cubs. Asked about Murphy’s style, Counsell focused on the one thing he thinks defines it.
“It’s authentic,” Counsell said. “That’s the number one thing. It’s just who he is.”
When asked whether Murphy had used any particular motivational tactic on him in college, Counsell leaned back and sighed. A reporter asked if swearing was involved.
“That’s the first thing that came to mind,” Counsell joked. Then he settled on “good cop and bad cop,” used in varying ways.
Murphy doesn’t pretend he always gets it right. He said he has misread plenty of people, and he doesn’t assume players enjoy his pep talks any more than his criticism. Years as Milwaukee’s bench coach also taught him that silence can be the better move.
“Sometimes your non-message is better than your message,” Murphy said.
The Brewers have seen both sides. Pratt’s benching showed the standard.
Contreras’ headfirst dive showed the standard reaches everybody. And the relationships inside the room are strong enough to handle it.
Murphy, though, keeps giving the credit back to the team.
“When you have a good team, it makes the manager’s moves look right,” he said.
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