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Milwaukee has averaged a baseball-best 97 wins a season in Pat Murphy’s three years as manager, topped by a franchise-record 103 victories this summer. What the Brewers haven’t won is a National League pennant, a drought they could end by beating the Dodgers in a rematch of last fall’s NL Championship Series.
The Dodgers won that series, of course. And that bit of confidence could prove important against a team that got better as the season wore on. Milwaukee not only had the best overall record (103-59) and best home record (55-26) in the majors, but they had the best record in the second half (44-22) as well as in September (18-6).
But if the Brewers have the numbers on their side, the Dodgers have history: Milwaukee was baseball’s winningest team last season but couldn’t get by the Dodgers, who have never lost a playoff series to the Brewers.
Here are nine things to know about the Brewers heading into Game 1 of the NL Championship Series with the Dodgers on Sunday.
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Dome sweet home
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No team in baseball was better at home than the Brewers, who won 55 times beneath the retractable roof at American Family Field, where the home-field advantage includes more than just batting last: in the opening game of the division series, the Padres lost a go-ahead homer when Ty France’s ninth-inning fly ball hit a roof cable and dropped into Jackson Chourio’s glove for the second out.
And that’s bad news for the Dodgers since the series opens with two games in Milwaukee, where the Brewers have lost just once since Aug. 30, including playoffs. Milwaukee pitchers had the majors’ best team ERA (3.17) and lowest opponents’ batting average (.213) at home during the regular season while its hitters had the highest average (.270) and scored the most runs (447) at home.
The Brewers batted 23 points higher in Milwaukee, where they hit nearly two-third of their homers and scored 62 more runs.
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Familiar foes
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The Dodgers and Brewers are meeting in the postseason for the fourth time — all since 2018. The Dodgers swept last fall’s NLCS and a 2020 Wild Card Series.
The 2018 NLCS was a little closer, with the Dodgers rallying to win Game 7 on homers from Cody Bellinger and Yasiel Puig, advancing to a World Series where they were thumped by the Boston Red Sox.
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Fast company
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Cy Young favorite Jacob Misiorowski led the majors in ERA (1.80) and strikeouts (252 in 174 2/3 innings), had the lowest WHIP (0.80) and was second in the National League with 16 wins. He’s also the only pitcher in history to throw more than 1,000 pitches at 100 mph or faster in his career — and he did it all in one season, hitting 100 or more 1,000 times in 2026, topping out at 105.5 mph in a June start against the Cubs.
Plus he’s 13-1 at home, including the postseason, and 2-1 against the Dodgers in his short career. Only two Dodgers starters who have faced Misiorowski more than twice (Shohei Ohtani, .286 and Teoscar Hernández, .250) are hitting better than .167 against the right-hander in the regular season, although the Dodgers did beat him in Game 3 of the NLCS last fall.
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Brice is nice
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If Misiorowski is the ace of Milwaukee’s pitching staff, the offense runs through former Corona Santiago High star Brice Turang, who is one of just three major leaguers to score at least 102 runs and drive in 100 in the regular season. He also led the Brewers in hits (156), doubles (37), RBIs (100) and slashed a career-best .268/.366/.450. He topped 20 homers for the first time in his career too.
A first-round pick in the 2018 draft, Turang is also a splendid fielder, winning a Gold Glove in 2024 and leading the NL in defensive wins above replacement this season, making just six errors while turning a league-best 91 double plays at second base. Both of Turang’s parents were star athletes, with his father, Brian, playing two seasons with the Seattle Mariners while his mother Carrie, a softball outfielder and pitcher, played twice in the Women’s College World Series for Long Beach State.
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More where that came from
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The offense doesn’t stop with the left-hand-hitting Turang. Two other Brewers (outfielder Jackson Chourio and first baseman Jake Bauers) scored more than 90 runs and Bauers and catcher William Contreras topped 85 RBIs.
The patient Brewers made opposing pitchers work since no team saw more pitches per plate appearance than Milwaukee, which was second in the majors in walks, averaging 4.1 a game. The Brewers were good in high-leverage situations too, slashing an MLB-best .276./.363/.435 with runners in scoring position.
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Well-armed and dangerous
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Misiorowski was the only Brewer pitcher to make the NL All-Star team this summer, but he’s hardly the team’s only star pitcher. Starters Kyle Harrison and Logan Henderson both won 11 games with Henderson posting a 2.47 ERA in 18 starts.
Milwaukee’s staff ERA of 3.51 was best in the National League — 0.04 better than the Dodgers — and its 1,544 strikeouts were second-best. Only the Dodgers held opponents to a lower batting average than the Brewers’ .218.
In the bullpen, closer Trevor Megill saved 30 games in 33 chances while Aaron Ashby went 13-3 with a 3.00 ERA in 74 relief appearances and Chad Patrick was 7-3 with a 3.59 in 51 games as a reliever. In fact, Murphy got more wins from his bullpen, 48, than any manager in baseball. Milwaukee’s 55 saves — in 76 opportunities — led the N.L.
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O Captain! My Captain!
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At 34, Christian Yelich of Thousand Oaks is the oldest player on one of the youngest rosters in the majors. He’s also one of the best active players who has never played in a World Series.
Yelich is a three-time All-Star, two-time batting champion, former league MVP and a Gold Glove winner. What he hasn’t done is win a ring. He doesn’t even have a World Series appearance on his resume.
There’s no question age is catching up with Yelich, who has two years left on his contract. His .235 average this season was his lowest in a full season and his 118 games played was among the fewest in his 14-year career. But his leadership remains invaluable, which is why he was named the franchise’s first team captain during the final week of the regular season. Only two other current players have been so honored.
“Sometimes, leadership is caught and not taught,” Murphy said. “The way he acted, the way he carried himself, he led those young people.”
That’s not to say he hasn’t made huge contributions on the field. His one-out walk and stolen base in the ninth inning of Game 2 of the division series sparked Milwaukee’s walk-off win.
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A life well lived
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Murphy is a baseball lifer who paid more dues than a union plumber before finally pulling on a big-league uniform for the first time when he was 56. Murphy pitched in the low minors for two organizations and for two independent teams before retiring to become a college coach at Maryville, Claremont-Mudd, Notre Dame and Arizona State. He also managed the Dutch national team to a European championship and a spot in the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
His big break came in 2015, when the Padres promoted him from their triple A team in El Paso to take over for Bud Black as interim manager. A year later Craig Counsell hired him as bench coach for the Brewers, and when Counsell took the Cubs’ managerial job ahead of the 2024 season, Murphy, now 67, was named his replacement.
Two-hundred and 93 regular-season wins and three playoff trips later, the baseball lifer is four wins away from the World Series, which would be the trip of a lifetime.
“I think it was just the relentless pursuit of something,” Murphy told Yahoo Sports of his long journey. “I wanted to be somebody. I wanted to be special.”
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Town with just one crown
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The Padres are the only major league team that’s been around as long as the Brewers and has yet to win a World Series. Both teams were established in 1969, although the Brewers played their first season in Seattle as the Pilots before being acquired in bankruptcy court by a Milwaukee car dealer named Bud Selig, who moved the team to Wisconsin and renamed them the Brewers.
Selig later served 23 years as baseball commissioner but he couldn’t help his Brewers, who made their only World Series appearance in 1982, losing to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. Milwaukee did not get back to the postseason for another quarter-century, by which time they had changed divisions twice and leagues once, jumping from the American League to the National League in 1998.
Milwaukee has celebrated a World Series title, it just wasn’t won by the Brewers. The Braves, who moved to the city from Boston in 1953, won two NL pennants and beat the Yankees in the 1957 World Series behind three home runs from a 23-year-old outfielder named Hank Aaron.
The Braves moved to Atlanta nine years later, taking their trophy with them and leaving Milwaukee as the answer to a trivia question: Name the only current big-league city that has won a World Series while its current franchise has not.
The post Nine concerns the Dodgers should have about facing the Brewers in the NLCS appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
