The Milwaukee Brewers’ run to the World Series is more than a feel-good small-market story for the Flushing crowd. For the Mets, it reads like a roadmap.
The clearest connection is David Stearns. Milwaukee’s current President of Baseball Operations built the model that has the Brewers back on baseball’s biggest stage, and New York is trying to follow a similar blueprint with a much richer wallet.
Stearns has already had a mixed first chapter with the Mets: an NLCS appearance in year one, then back-to-back seasons without a postseason berth. Even so, Milwaukee’s success gives weight to the idea that the process deserves more time.
That’s especially true because the Brewers look the way Stearns wants the Mets to look. The roster is packed with athletic, versatile players who make contact, run, and defend.
Jackson Chourio, Brice Turang, Cooper Pratt, Garrett Mitchell, and Joey Ortiz all fit that mold. In New York, the shift is already visible.
Carson Benge and A.J. Ewing have earned regular roles this season, and another group of younger infielders - Jefferson Rojas, Mitch Voit, and Emilien Pitre - could be next.
Milwaukee has also shown it can plug in stars without losing its identity. Stearns got Christian Yelich from Miami in 2018 for essentially nothing, then helped bring in catcher William Contreras in a three-team deal involving Atlanta and the Athletics.
The Mets have their own headliners in Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor, so the challenge is not star power. It’s building the right structure around it.
Pitching is another area where the Brewers have become a model club. They’ve kept churning out young starters even after moving on from names like Freddy Peralta and Corbin Burnes via trade.
Jacob Misiorowski, the likely NL Cy Young winner this season, and Logan Henderson were both drafted and developed by Milwaukee. The Mets are trying to create that kind of pipeline too.
Nolan McLean and Christian Scott reached rotation status this year, Zac Thornton made a strong push for a spot down the stretch, and Jonah Tong could be part of the next wave, with Jack Wenninger, Jonathan Santucci, and Will Watson also in the mix.
The bullpen has followed a similar script. Milwaukee has pieced together a strong relief group with a blend of different paths to the big leagues.
None of its elite relievers were highly touted prospects. Trevor Megill came over in a trade, Abner Uribe developed into a weapon, and Aaron Ashby - a Brewers draft pick in 2018 - moved from the rotation to the bullpen in 2023.
New York’s relief mix has taken on that kind of shape as well, only with one high-priced centerpiece in Devin Williams, a former Brewer. Around him are younger, intriguing arms such as Daniel Duarte, Dedniel Nunez, Nate Lavender, and Jefry Yan. Most of that group still has minor league options, which gives Stearns room to keep rotating pieces through the staff.
Where Milwaukee really separates itself is in squeezing value out of players who don’t arrive with much fanfare. Jake Bauers is the prime example. He came into the year as a journeyman who nearly retired two years ago before deciding to keep going for his family’s health insurance, then turned into the NLCS MVP after hitting a career-high 26 home runs in the regular season and adding six more in October.
That’s a different lane from the one the Mets have taken in some spots. Rather than finding cheap wins in unexpected places, they’ve paid heavily to try to revive or reshape players, including giving Jorge Polanco $40 million over two years to be a first baseman and putting tens of millions into fix-it starters.
The Mets do have one major advantage Milwaukee doesn’t: Steve Cohen’s money. That could let Stearns supercharge a Brewers-style roster with expensive stars.
A deal for someone like Tarik Skubal, on a hefty long-term contract, would be hard for Milwaukee’s salary structure to absorb. In New York, it becomes more realistic if homegrown players like McLean, Ewing, and Benge are producing at below-market rates.
The Brewers’ way of playing also tells part of the story. They prefer putting the ball in play and using speed as a weapon instead of chasing power at every turn, and that style has helped them pile up regular-season wins.
The Mets are moving in that direction, though there are still too many all-or-nothing bats in the organization. Even so, progress has been made.
And that may be the biggest takeaway for New York. Milwaukee has become proof that this team-building formula works.
The Brewers have won the NL Central five times in the past six years and have posted at least 92 wins in each postseason season during that stretch. The Mets haven’t approached that kind of sustained success since the 1980s, when a different postseason format could have put them in the bracket every year from 1983 through 1990.
Milwaukee didn’t get there overnight, either. It took time for the roster to reach the point where it could handle elite postseason pitching, and the last two NLCS results against the Dodgers showed that.
Stearns and the Mets may still be a year or two behind that level of roster construction, but they can close the gap faster with the right additions. That’s why this Brewers World Series run matters so much for New York: it’s strong evidence that staying the course with Stearns a little longer could be the right call.
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Now comes the part the Mets always have to navigate this time of year, when marginal additions can turn into real decisions. Cairo, Weston and Abner all sit in that gray area where recent performance and organizational need will shape what comes next, but the bigger question is how much room New York is willing to keep open for players it only just brought in and has not yet seen on the field. [Read more 🡒]