The Milwaukee Brewers have baseball’s best record, at 68-44. They have the best run differential, at plus-121. They sit atop the power rankings. Yet in World Series odds, they languish in ninth or 10th across the board. Other forms of public appraisal seem to be finally catching up, but the betting market still won’t buy the Brewers. Why not?
Rivals remain ahead on market leaderboard as Milwaukee Brewers hold top spot in standings
By consensus odds, Milwaukee ranks behind each of the following teams, in order from top to bottom: Dodgers, Phillies, Tigers, Mets, Yankees, Blue Jays, Cubs, Astros, and Mariners. Sure, some of these powerhouse teams have an argument, but all of them? Really?
There are several possible reasons. Injuries could catch up to them, true, depending on how long Jackson Chourio, Jacob Misiorowski, and Rhys Hoskins remain out. But it’s worth noting that the Brewers have implemented a next-man-up mentality to perfection. Every hole that appears is patched.
No Hoskins? How about Andrew Vaughn and his 1.118 OPS? No Chourio? Fine. Blake Perkins will launch two bombs tonight. Misiorowski to the injured list. Ok, call up Logan Henderson, who has a 1.78 ERA in the majors so far.
Maybe people, namely public bettors who are starting to come around on this team, just aren’t ready to put their money where their mouth is. So to speak.
The Brewers are a small-market team as is. If you’re looking for excuses, it could be easy to sweep them under a rug of $300 million payrolls. Well, not really. It shouldn’t be anymore, not when they have gone 43-16 since late May. This isn’t a hot streak anymore, it’s more than half the season.
Similarly, though, they don’t have the top-tier stars that populate those half-billion-dollar books. No Ohtani. No Juan Soto. No Tarik Skubal or Aaron Judge or Bryce Harper.
Milwaukee’s most valuable position player by WAR is second baseman Brice Turang. How many non-Brewers fans should be expected to know that?
Defying age-old trends is something this team must almost surely do for postseason success
Perhaps the most salient reason, one especially related to the last two, is that Milwaukee’s magic fails to align with traditionally esteemed post-season traits like power, a flamethrowing bullpen, and a household name or few.
All that is well and good, but those things should help in the regular season too, and the Brewers continue to deny the formula. Teams like Milwaukee – make contact, run the bases, play defense, overachieve in pitching – are supposed to be wild card Cinderella stories, not first-place juggernauts. There has to be some degree of carryover in the playoffs.
Moreover, although in the guise of rookies and unexpected aces, the Brewers do have one oft-cited postseason advantage: plenty of starting pitching. Due to extra travel days and inter-series breaks, teams in the playoffs typically rely on the top three guys in the staff, or at most a top four. Milwaukee’s depth, then, wouldn’t necessasrily come into play, but a top four of Freddy Peralta, Brandon Woodruff, Jacob Misiorowski, and Quinn Priester sounds pretty nice.
Where pitching depth could apply is in upgrading the bullpen. Logan Henderson, Chad Patrick, Tobias Myers, even Misiorowski or Robert Gasser – those guys could all end up pitching out of the pen in the playoffs, providing another upper-end arm or two.
As for the lineup, with 38 runs over the weekend, the Brewers are now up to fifth in scoring per game. Take that, isolated power (and no, ESPN, the Brewers are not 15th; even more impressively, they’re doing all this ranked 11 spots lower).
Having lost five straight playoff series, Milwaukee is hoping to buck that trend and, more than that, give themselves a shot to go all the way. It might not happen, but if there was ever a team to break cast-iron rules of thumb, it’s this one.
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