Going into the 2025 Major League Baseball season, few, if any, analysts expected the Milwaukee Brewers to be top World Series contenders.
But now, Milwaukee has the best record in baseball. The Brewers became the first in the MLB to punch their ticket to the playoffs on Sept. 13. A week later, they secured their third consecutive National League Central division title.
Milwaukee has now made the playoffs in seven of the last eight years, dating back to 2018. But after an underwhelming offseason, it looked like that window of perennial contention might be closing.
Star shortstop Willy Adames, fresh off a 2024 campaign in which he finished top-10 in NL MVP voting, left Milwaukee for San Francisco in free agency on a monster seven-year deal.
Days later, the Brewers traded star closer and former all-star Devin Williams, who had finished with a sub-2 ERA and at least 14 saves in his last three seasons, to the New York Yankees.
As it turns out, the Brewers may have trimmed the fat in exactly the right places.
In Game 3 of the 2024 NL wild card series, Pete Alonso of the New York Mets dashed Milwaukee’s championship hopes with a clutch go-ahead three-run homer off Williams. The Brewers had been on the cusp of victory with a two-run lead and two outs to go in the ninth.
Sample sizes of a few innings should usually be disregarded, but a closer’s mentality and ability to shut close games down in October matters. Williams has never performed well in the playoffs, giving up six earned runs in less than three postseason innings.
The Brewers’ new closer, Trevor Megill, has. He’s struck out nearly two-thirds of the batters he faced last October.
The Brewers were on the right end of the deal anyway. Williams was out as the Yankees’ closer in April after a string of poor performances, while Megill has saved 30 games for Milwaukee this year. Even if Megill can’t return from the injured list before the playoffs, there’s a host of elite relievers waiting in Milwaukee’s wings.
Adames is usually a playoff dropper, too. In his lone trip to the World Series with the 2020 Tampa Bay Rays, Adames was nearly invisible, recording a .505 OPS throughout the playoff run.
With Milwaukee, Adames had more strikeouts than hits and walks combined in the postseason.
It wasn’t a complete reset. The Brewers kept two other important veterans in William Contreras, considered to potentially be one of the best catchers in all of baseball, and Christian Yelich, a one-time MVP and clubhouse leader.
Seasoned veterans are an integral part of any playoff run. October is a totally different game than the regular season, and playoff teams need experienced veterans to stabilize the younger players.
But, considering Yelich’s modest .741 playoff OPS — compare that to his .839 career regular season mark — and Contreras’s abysmal .483 in the playoffs, it’s starting to become clear why the Brewers’ previous core didn’t manage to bring home a title.
Milwaukee is stacked with young talent guided all season long by Contreras and Yelich and hungry for a playoff run. The rookies and other young players will be the key to the Brewers’ success this October.
Two young guns have stepped up to replace the production lost from Milwaukee’s infield roster spots with Adames’s departure. Second baseman Brice Turang has been the Brewers’ most valuable player by wins above replacement, at 5.4. Caleb Durbin, the prospect received in the Williams trade, has put up 2.8 of his own.
A player to watch is Jackson Chourio, the up-and-coming face of the new Brew Crew, who already had a two-homer game in his first taste of the playoffs against the 2024 Mets.
It’s also worth noting that the starting rotation is probably the most important part of the roster in the postseason. A good or bad start can make or break an important battle in an all-too-short playoff series. Milwaukee has four starting pitchers with over 100 innings pitched and sub-4 ERAs.
The Milwaukee Brewers have never won the World Series. They’ve only won the American League pennant once back in 1982, when they failed to hold a 3-1 lead in Game 7 and lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in heartbreaking fashion.
Their playoff woes have only continued in their run of regular season success in recent years. In 2024, Milwaukee became the first team in MLB history to blow multi-run leads in four straight postseason contests.
But these Brewers have also shown the ability to tear up the opposition for weeks at a time, which is just what a team needs in the playoffs. They’ve been comeback artists — not chokers. Milwaukee won a franchise-record 14 consecutive games this year. If they get hot at the right time, they can make a run this October.
Combine that with youngsters hungry for more after their first taste of the playoffs? The Brewers have all the tools they need to secure a spot in the World Series — and win.