Postseason Managerial Report Card: Pat Murphy

Hey kids, there’s a substitute teacher today! But I’ve been given the lesson plan, so we’re going to go ahead and talk about Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy — no spending the day watching old episodes of The Simpsons that I have on VHS, even though this classroom still has a functioning VCR for some reason. As your normal teacher, Mr. Clemens, would do, I’m going to grade Murphy based on his overall performance in the playoffs, rather than scrutinize every single micro decision made. If you’d like to see Mr. Clemens’ reports on the managers who lost in the various Division Series, you can find the American League write-up here, and the National League write-up here.

I find the Brewers fascinating, both because I’ve always appreciated them having the best logo in sports, and because I’m really bad at projecting them. While I had a better time of it than some others did this year, and at least only had them two wins short of the Cubs, the preseason ZiPS standings have repeatedly underestimated the Brew Crew. I’d love to be able to directly blame the computer for this phenomena, but ZiPS has actually done a solid job of projecting individual Milwaukee players. The problem is that when it comes time to guess exactly who will see the field, I’ve been giving them short shrift. In each of the last five seasons, if I had known precisely who would end up getting playing time, the preseason projections would have gone up by an average of just under four wins per year. It’s not simply that they’ve been healthier than expected, either; the Brewers tend to promote interesting players at a much faster pace than I expect them to, are very quick to understand what’s not working, and deploy role players extremely effectively.

OK, the bell rang, so let’s get going.

Batting: A

The Brewers had a solidly above-average offense in 2025, finishing third in baseball in runs scored and ninth in overall wRC+. They managed this feat without anything in the way of a middle-of-the-order bruiser, and overall, the team didn’t have a single player with at least 300 plate appearances who even hit the .800 OPS mark. The Brewers were 22nd in homers and 25th in isolated power, ahead of only the Padres among playoff teams, but they led the league in singles and ranked second in stolen bases. They also led the league in bunt hits, grounded into the third-fewest double plays, and had more of their baserunners actually score than any other team.

The way they scored was effective over the long haul of 162 games, but it was riskier than one might expect in a short series. Contrary to conventional wisdom, for at least the last 30-plus years, teams that rely on homers are more consistent scorers. If you look at the coefficient of variation (CV) for game-by-game team scoring since 1993 (standard deviation over mean), about 20% of a team’s game-by-game volatility can be explained by homers as a percentage of hits, with home run reliant teams being more stable run producers. And this goes beyond the relationship with just being a good offense; if you construct a simple model for a team’s scoring volatility using only a team’s runs per game and home run hit percentage, the latter is actually the stronger part of the model.

Why? The likeliest explanation is that the particulars of a home run make it consistent: If you pull a fly ball really hard, there’s a very good chance that it’ll be a home run, the most successful type of hit. That’s a repeatable skill. So is making any kind of contact, but the results of other types of contact are less certain, thanks to the dudes with those big leather hand thing-a-ma-bobs.

Game 1 of the NLDS went quite smoothly, with the team quickly getting to Matthew Boyd; they knocked him out in the first inning, so there wasn’t much temptation for Murphy to be too cute on a tactical level. The identical Game 2 lineup scored seven runs, and with a solid lead for most of the game, there again wasn’t much room for shenanigans. The only quibble I had here was not getting Jackson Chourio out of the game even sooner, given the lead and that he was just coming off re-tweaking his hamstring in Game 1. Brandon Lockridge did come in for the ninth, but I would have brought him in after Chourio homered to put them up 7-3 in the fourth. That’s probably pretty small potatoes, though.

I was less enthralled with Murphy’s Game 3 lineup. You can justify Lockridge’s utility as a defensive replacement/pinch-runner in the postseason, but I don’t think the situation called for actually starting him. You’re not going to play Chourio in center given his hamstring, but the Brewers did have other options out there. I know Sal Frelick isn’t the preferred choice, but given that Murphy did use him out there in the NLCS, I can’t imagine he was categorically not an option in the NLDS. I would rather have gotten Isaac Collins or Andrew Vaughn into the lineup (the latter pushing Jake Bauers into the outfield) than have Lockridge face Jameson Taillon. And while squeeze plays are cool, even the more boring safety squeeze variation, but I really hated the Lockridge attempt in the fourth. I don’t like a one-run play when a team is behind by two on the road or has one out already. And then Murphy pinch-hit for Lockridge with Collins later in the game anyway!

There wasn’t much to be done in Game 4, as the preferred lineup against lefties was out there and just didn’t perform. Unless I missed one, the Brewers didn’t get a single hit with a runner on base, and there’s just not much that can be done tactically in that situation.

The 3-1 victory over the Cubs in Game 5 was another fairly straightforward affair. The starting nine against opener Drew Pomeranz was the same as it was against Boyd the game before, just with some minor shifting around in the batting order. Milwaukee won the game in a rather un-Milwaukee-like way, with little action on the bases and three solo homers proving to be enough. The only time they really strung together hits was in the fourth inning against Colin Rea, and you could argue that when they loaded the bases with two outs, it was the time to pinch-hit for Joey Ortiz, but that’s really my only quibble.

From a managerial standpoint, the NLCS was less interesting than the NLDS simply because Murphy had tactical options against the Cubs that he largely lacked against the Dodgers. There’s no impactful lineup decision or pinch-hitting choice that can make up for a team scoring four runs in four games. Maybe you squeeze Rhys Hoskins into the lineup to try to hit a home run off a lefty, but there just weren’t many ways to move the needle. Nobody had answers against Blake Snell in Game 1, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto was nearly as dominant in Game 2. A Caleb Durbin leadoff double in the seventh off Alex Vesia was the most interesting Game 3 moment, allowing the Brewers to get Bauers, Collins (pinch-hitting for Ortiz), and Chourio to face Vesia and then the increasingly erratic Blake Treinen, but the team’s knack for stringing hits together once again abandoned it. As for Game 4, if Murphy was somehow responsible for the Brewers not employing Shohei Ohtani, I can see blaming him for that, but I’m not sure there was a pinch-hitting move or lineup swap that would have countered Ohtani’s incredible night.

It’s hard to give someone a good grade when his team gets swept out of a series, but the Brewers simply got outplayed, and different managerial tactics wouldn’t have saved them.

Pitching: B-

I thought Murphy generally did a good job juggling the Brewers’ pitching staff over the course of the regular season. I was much less excited about the pitcher usage in the postseason, though as with the hitting, I’m not sure it would have made a difference in the end.

Remember when I praised Murphy for resisting the impulse to be too cute? Well, some of his pitching decisions in the postseason were videos of puppies swarming Santa Claus on Christmas morning. Not bad per se, but sometimes eschewing a simpler, more straightforward approach to using his resources.

Still, let’s start with one spot where I wish that Murphy had tried to play 11-dimensional chess: the usage of Freddy Peralta in Game 1 of the NLDS. Peralta was basically the only plug-and-play starter who the Brewers could be 100% comfortable with, and with a 9-1 lead after two, I would have told him to hit the showers. Think of those 26 pitches as him just being an opener; you might need him again sooner rather than later. Now, I won’t judge a manager too harshly for failing to make an unusual choice with his ace pitcher, so it’s a really just a small note with my red marker. But Murphy should have at least considered giving Chad Patrick some bulk innings there, because then you can bring back Peralta even earlier than Game 4.

It worked out in Game 2, but I really didn’t like going to a bullpen game this early in the postseason. Yes, they were rested, but Murphy had to know that he was going to need to use his relievers a lot this October. I was less disappointed when it appeared that Quinn Priester might get a bunch of innings after the Aaron Ashby opener, but Murphy indicated that they didn’t actually have any plans to use Priester in the game. However, I did like seeing Jacob Misiorowski, so full credit for that! ZiPS actually would have preferred for the Miz to have just been a part of the rotation from the start. The Brewers used a lot of relievers to maintain a pretty solid lead, but you can also argue the benefits of letting everyone get some pitches in.

Priester was the logical starter in Game 3 if he didn’t start in Game 2, so I’ll assign no blame for his struggles to Murphy. I think I would have tried to wring more pitches out of Nick Mears before going to Jose Quintana in long relief, but that’s a small issue.

I approved of using Peralta in Game 4 rather than some over-complex plan of hoping the team wins Game 4 without him, and saving him for a possible Game 1 in the NLCS. In a seven-game series, Peralta probably doesn’t get an extra start if you throw him in a Game 1 instead of a Game 2, as you can swing in a five-game series. The bullpen had been heavily used for two games, so if you’re going to start Peralta for one of the games, it’s best to just settle things in Game 4. It didn’t quiet work out that way, of course, but with an off day and the Miz having another solid bulk appearance in Game 5, the rubber game went according to plan from a pitching standpoint. And Murphy finally gave Patrick some pitches, as I had been demanding previously!

The contours of the NLCS made pitching management rather tricky for Murphy, so I’ll give him a lot of credit here. Milwaukee’s bats were silent, but the Dodgers’ hitters never obliterated the Brewers at the plate, so Murphy was put in a situation where he had to keep games as close as possible while waiting for offense that never came. As perverse as this may sound, things might have been easier if one of those losses had been a 13-0 shellacking that allowed a mop-up game. Tobias Myers was basically added to the NLCS roster in place of Mears for this very possibility, after all.

Game 1 finally gave us that Ashby-plus-a-Priester-chaser game, and while it wasn’t a sterling outing for Priester by any stretch of the imagination, he managed to escape trouble and left the game with the Dodgers still scoreless. He can certainly thank the defense of Collins and Frelick, including that really fun 8-6-2 double play that stole a Max Muncy grand slam. Abner Uribe, one of the most improved pitchers from a control standpoint the last few seasons, did have a lapse that walked in Muncy, but I also would have intentionally walked Ohtanti with runners on second and third to set that up.

The Dodgers eked out a small edge against Peralta in Game 2, but with Yamamoto mowing down the lineup, there weren’t any decisions for Murphy here that had a good chance of reversing the 5-1 loss. Murphy got a lot of heat in some corners of the internet for going to Ashby again in Game 3 as the opener, but I actually felt it was perfectly reasonable with Ohtani and Freddie Freeman at the top of the lineup. And in the end, if giving up one run in the first was a deal breaker, there was never a deal to start with! Misiorowski was very good again — as I said before, I wish they had just used him as a starter — and I would have left him out there for the rest of the sixth even after the Dodgers scored their second run. Again, it was the lack of offense that was the problem here.

Game 4 was the Shohei Ohtani Game, of course. If mortal man could stop Ohtani, they surely would have done so by now. Quintana was quite hittable, but he was also the obvious choice given how the first three games went, and that was that.

When the Brewers look back on the failures of the NLCS, the sweep really comes down to the offense simply not performing when they needed runs. I don’t think Murphy did an absolutely perfect job, but I also think that his decisions generally put the Brewers in a position to succeed. That they fell short of the World Series doesn’t fall on his shoulders. I didn’t have a vote for the NL Manager of the Year award, but I would have chosen Murphy for the two-peat if I had. I’ll give him a solid B+/A- overall for the postseason, and thank you all for not letting the classroom devolve into chaos with a substitute teacher manning the desk for the day.