Postseason Managerial Report Card: Pat Murphy
As I’m quite certain you’re aware if you’re reading this article on FanGraphs.com, the Milwaukee Brewers just won their first World Series championship in franchise history. They didn’t limp their way to the alcohol showers either, winning 103 games during the regular season before an 11-2 playoff run that never felt as if they were in serious jeopardy. When you’ve already snatched up the full scholarship to an elite school, it probably doesn’t matter whether you got an A or a B in your senior year electives. But as Mr. Barr reminded me when he gave me a D in English in my final quarter of high school, something which I managed to conceal from my mom for 20 years, there are still report cards to fill out.
Grading the manager of a team that dominated in the playoffs is always a bit tricky to pull off. After all, whether moves were good ideas or poor ones, they mostly worked out, or the Brewers wouldn’t have dominated so consistently. But we evaluate the process here, not just the results, and hopefully I have just the right combination of objectivity and natural unlikability to grade Brewers manager Pat Murphy fairly.
Batting: A
As someone who likes picking apart things, I’m mildly disappointed that I don’t really have many gripes here. The truth is, a manager in baseball does not have the same level of tactical influence over the game as, say, an NFL head coach does. Baseball is largely a game of execution and chance, and while many decisions have an impact, there are limits, on both the good and bad sides, to just how much a manager can affect the outcome. A lot of a manager’s job is simply getting the right players on the field, and as Casey Stengel noted, “keep[ing] the five guys who hate you away from the four guys who haven’t made up their minds.”
From an overall standpoint of getting his preferred players on the field, Murphy did a very good job. One thing I respect a lot is how Murphy trusted his players in their roles, while also not being afraid to bench a player. Even with Christian Yelich having a lousy season, a lot of managers likely would have had trouble leaving him, a veteran with a lot of cachet in Milwaukee who was named as the team’s first official captain in history, out of the lineup against unfavorable starting pitcher matchups. Even more would have had trouble doing it without it causing any kind of controversy. That’s a hard thing to do without significant buy-in from your players.
While it didn’t pay any obviously huge dividends, I was also a fan of Murphy’s willingness to start Luis Lara against Tarik Skubal and Blake Snell in the NLCS, despite Lara being a rookie who didn’t have the greatest of debuts offensively. I’m not sure I’d have been as willing to start David Hamilton as Murphy was, but he saw the opportunity and took it. I also greatly appreciate the thoughtfulness with which the starting lineup was put together; in multiple press conferences, Murphy discussed how much he and the front office emphasized thinking about how specific late-inning relief choices would match up with Milwaukee’s available pinch-hitters. I’m not a fan of the hit-and-run generally, but I do like it used enough to have the threat of it out there. If you want your team to be aggressive, don’t half-ass it! William Contreras’ hit-and-run in World Series Game 2 was a really good one, and it was a big part in swamping the Rays with a massive inning.
Murphy also didn’t get too rigid with his platoons if the situation didn’t call for it, something I complained about with Dave Roberts of the Dodgers. For example, Murphy left Sal Frelick in against Ian Seymour to lead off the sixth in Game 2 of the World Series. Yes, the Brewers were a run behind, but the bases were empty, and with Seymour’s excellent changeup being his best pitch (in my opinion), his nonexistent platoon splits so far in the majors are not unwarranted. Yes, Frelick ended up hitting a homer, but that’s not why I like it; Murphy’s powder was kept dry for a higher-leverage situation.
I save the A+ grades for absolute perfection, and I do have some quibbles. I really thought that, in NLDS Game 3, Andrew Vaughn should have pinch-hit for Brice Turang with the bases loaded and two outs in a tie game with Yuki Matsui pitching and Turang having really struggled recently at the plate. I also did not like the Garrett Mitchell bunt in Game 1 of the World Series with two on and nobody out; Mitchell is not Hamilton (who had 15 bunt hits in 2026), and he did not have a single bunt hit during the regular season. If you’re playing aggressively, which the Brewers tried to do, go for the big inning. Still, this is a solid A.
Pitching: A-
As with the hitting, there are a lot more highs here than lows.
I’m a fan of letting a reliever pitch multiple innings when they’re rolling along, with little sign of tiredness. One of my favorites was allowing Aaron Ashby to get out of his own jam in Game 2 of the World Series. I still thought Ashby was pitching well, and it kept the Brewers from turning to Trevor Megill for a second consecutive game after a dicey outing in Game 1. In fact, my broadly, I’m a fan of Murphy’s tendency to treat Ashby as a multi-inning reliever, so I naturally liked the choice to let Ashby finish NLCS Game 4, even though it left him all but officially unavailable in Game 5. There’s a clear pecking order in Milwaukee’s bullpen, and Murphy showed little fear of moving his high-leverage relievers into early innings if the situation called for it. Yes, you can bring in your closer to face Fernando Tatis Jr. in the eighth inning rather than worrying about saving him for the ninth. Yes, you can bring in Abner Uribe in the fifth or sixth even if he didn’t pitch before the seventh a single time during the regular season.
The Brewers ended up losing Game 4 of the World Series, but I do think that not bringing in Jacob Misiorowski to pitch in relief was the right play, preserving his ability to start Game 5 on four days rest. In other Misiorowski moves, yanking him in Game 1 of the NLCS during the fifth was the right thing to do — he was still throwing hard, but the Dodgers were making a lot of contact. Murphy also took the Miz’s cramp in Game 5 of the World Series very seriously. In any case, Misiorowski was not likely to come back out for the seventh, so giving him the hook rather than trying to let him complete the sixth inning was the right thing to do.
The negative side of the ledger is not large. The roster isn’t solely the manager’s call, but if Murphy had really wanted Chad Patrick on the roster, do you think anyone would have said no? I think Patrick was simply a more trustworthy option to have around than Kyle Harrison and, I’m sorry to say, Brandon Woodruff, and I’d be happier if Patrick had been forced into a start than either of those other two. I thought the slow hook with Uribe, whose command was very off in NLCS Game 3, was a mistake, especially with DL Hall ready to go. In that same game, I would have stuck with Robert Gasser, who had thrown only 72 pitches through five innings. I said a not-very-polite word to the television screen when Megill was pulled after recording the final out of the eighth inning with the score tied, 2-2, in World Series Game 4. Sure, it was Ashby who replaced him, but Megill had faced only one batter and needed only five pitches to retire him.
All told, Murphy did an excellent job managing the Brewers in the playoffs, and Milwaukee was so dominant that a lousy job probably wouldn’t have changed things. I’m a tough grader, but given how much splitting hairs I’m doing to find fault, I don’t know how anything lower than an A- could be justified here. The Brewers may not have won the World Series because of Murphy, but their championship certainly wasn’t in spite of him.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
After the Brewers won game 2 of the WS in a rout I told a friend of mine that it looked like a 4 game sweep. 🧹
Murphy did a stellar job. Congrats to the Brewers and their fans.
In general when you don’t notice the manager doing something wrong it is a good thing. But this also wasn’t like Snitker with the Braves a few years ago where he somehow always made the right move. I would be comfortable with A and A- grades like in the article.
Leaving Uribe in when he didn’t have it against the Dodgers and the bizarre decision to use Megill for one out in a game you knew could go long were the only two meaningful complaints I had of Murphy’s job this post-season.
There was some local kvetching about pinch hitting Vaughn for Hamilton in G4, only to have Pratt thrown out stealing and Vaughn yanked for defense. I was fine with Pratt running there because Vaughn is a singles hitter; with 2 outs Pratt reaching second safely would’ve been meaningful.
I know this hypothetical never happens, but would a viable strategy have been to send Hamilton to the plate with a directive not to swing. If Pratt’s steal attempt is successful, then pinch hit Vaughn with a 1-1 count or whatever. (Obviously 0-2 would be a rough scenario, but it could also be 2-0.)
Potential downsides: A) LH reliever can be more aggressive vs Hamilton, increasing the chance of a bad count for Vaughn; B) Pratt more compelled to try stealing with bad jump; C) Vaughn gets to see fewer pitches before having to swing.
Maybe I answered my own question, but the upside is obviously still having Vaughn available in what turned out to be an extra inning game. Thoughts?
If you’re going to try the mid-PA PH gambit, I think if it gets to 0-2, even if Pratt successfully steals on the second pitch, you call it off and let Hamilton try to fight one off. But it isn’t the craziest idea I’ve heard.
The biggest mistake Murphy made on the hitting side was in WS G2. In the bottom of the fourth after Bauers walked to load the bases with 2 outs down 4-3, Murphy should have pinch hit Vaughn for Yelich after Booser got brought in. It would have been aggressive, but Yelich was a very bad matchup for Booser there. It ended up not mattering, but that was one of the highest leverage situations in the game.
I was a little surprised not to see Vaughn there myself. It’s not like Vaughn is a joke vs RHP — if he came up in again in another clutch situation later in the game, so be it.
Vaughn actually had a 18 point advantage in wRC+ vs RHP over Yelich this season!
Apparently not starting Yeli vs Skubal or Snell is one thing, and pulling him with the bases loaded — match-up be damned — is another. I can see how the latter move would be more prone to stirring up controversy, as Dan puts it.
As already noted by others, I only had two WTF-are-you-doing reactions to Murphy all postseason:
The first was leaving Uribe in against the Dodgers when he was throwing like he was blindfolded. Thinking he’d escaped his self-inflicted jam to realizing Murphy was sticking with him was the ultimate “Yes Yes Yes — No! No! No!” October moment for me.
Second was basically burning Vaughn when he pinch hit and Pratt got thrown out, then immediately replaced for defense when he was set to lead off the next inning. Vaughn’s absence generally during this whole run was odd to me. Bless Yelich but Vaughn should have been DH’ing against lefties.
On that note, I’d add that for a guy who seemingly never posts the same lineup two days in a row during the season, watching the exact same nine roll out in the same order every day all of a sudden was somewhat amusing.
The Brewers were pretty selective throughout the year in what type of pitcher Vaughn started against. They didn’t follow a strict platoon and sat him against basically any pitcher with a good sweeper because Vaughn can’t hit those. Joey Ortiz sat a fair bit even when he was hitting well for similar pitcher-matchup reasons.
Don’t know how many arms they saw in the playoffs that fit that sweeper bill, but I would bet its the main reason we didn’t see much of Vaughn in the postseason. (Ortiz too, though he was also dealing with a knee issue at the end of the season and that may have had more to do with it.)