Proximity and Familiarity: Cubs vs. Brewers NLDS Preview

Favorable conditions for a dramatic and explosive era of the Cubs-Brewers I-94 rivalry have been percolating for a while. And now they come to a head as the two clubs meet each other in the playoffs for the first time ever, even though it’s been 27 years since the Brewers changed leagues. Fan friction invariably occurs when two sports-loving cities are proximate to one another (you can drive from Milwaukee to Chicago in roughly 90 minutes along the southwest shore of Lake Michigan), but tensions grew here when Cubs manager Craig Counsell decided to jump ship from Milwaukee to Chicago after the 2023 season.

Spurned and abandoned by Counsell (and David Stearns) even though the team has been consistently (and seemingly sustainably) competitive, Milwaukee has carried on as a scrappy throwback squad built on contact, speed, and defense. Despite dealing with an April blight of pitcher injuries so bad that it gave us a week of needless torpedo bat discourse, the Brewers finished with the best record in the majors, won the NL Central by five games, and made the postseason for the seventh time in the last eight years, though they have just one NLCS appearance in that mix. The Cubs are fresh off a down-to-the-wire Wild Card Series win in a decisive Game 3 against the Padres in which their deep lineup tallied 13 hits, many off of excellent (if taxed) San Diego relievers. Let’s examine the component parts of each team in greater detail to remind ourselves how each team was assembled, and how they arrived at this part of the postseason.

Starting Pitching

The Cubs rotation is full of strike-throwers. They had the lowest walk rate in baseball this year, but ranked fourth from the bottom in K/9.

Chicago didn’t announce its Game 1 starter until the middle of yesterday, when it became known that lefty Matthew Boyd would take the ball on short rest. The 34-year-old had a 3.4-WAR renaissance in 2025, a shade better than his previous career season a whopping six years ago. Boyd worked 4 1/3 innings on Tuesday against the Padres before he was removed, having thrown just 58 pitches, which might mean he’s fresher than most pitchers who’ve lost one of their days between starts. It was the first of several indications that Counsell would be proactive about bullpen usage, and both Shota Imanaga and Jameson Taillon also worked just four innings in their appearances against the Padres. (Counsell elected to use a right-handed opener for the first inning of Game 2 so he could maximize Imanaga’s workload without having him face Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado more than two times.) All three of Chicago’s presumed starters in the NLDS tend to miss bats with their secondary stuff at a slightly above-average rate, but struggle to do so with their fastballs.

The way the off days and travel work out for this series will allow Boyd (in year one of a two-year, $29 million deal) and the to-be-determined Game 2 starter (both Imanaga and Taillon will have had at least their usual rest before Monday’s game) to start on normal rest in Games 4 and 5, if they’re necessary.

Milwaukee’s starting staff is spearheaded by 29-year-old Freddy Peralta, an ultra-athletic righty with a cross-bodied delivery and exceptional secondary stuff. Peralta has been among the top 15-20 pitchers in baseball since he was moved into the rotation in 2021 and enjoyed a huge breakout. He’s coming off a 3.6-WAR, 2.70-ERA, 176 2/3-inning season, and is clearly the best starter in this series.

The Brewers have been coy about who will start Game 2, as manager Pat Murphy has stated publicly that both 36-year-old veteran stalwart Jose Quintana (who has been out since mid-September with a calf strain and threw live BP last Friday) and Quinn Priester are options. Priester was acquired from Boston after injuries made the Brewers desperate for warm bodies in their rotation. It seemed like Priester, who was joining his third org already at age 25, was an emergency, short-term patch rather than a long-term piece of the Milwaukee postseason puzzle. Instead, Priester’s 3.32 ERA contributed to Brewers starters combining for the third-best mark in the league. Priester’s pitch mix (especially his curveball) is difficult to elevate, and he was fifth in the majors in groundball rate among pitchers who threw at least 120 innings.

At some point, Murphy will likely have to lean on any number of his several rookie pitchers. If it were possible to give a Rookie of the Year award to a team’s entire freshman class, then this year’s Brew Crew would have earned that distinction. Twenty-seven-year-old swingman/fifth starter Chad Patrick, a former fourth rounder out of Purdue who hopped via trade from Arizona to Oakland in 2023 and then to Milwaukee in 2024, was your 2025 rookie pitcher WAR leader and another key early-season stabilizer in the Brewers rotation, though he struggled late in the year. Fireballing 23-year-old righty Jacob Misiorowski is pretty easily the most talented of all Brewers pitchers, but he issued too many walks down the stretch of the regular season and didn’t exactly seize a postseason rotation spot. It might make sense for him to start Game 3, if only so the youngest pitcher on the roster can maintain his pre-start routine, even if it means Murphy keeps Misiorowski on a short leash if he turns out to be wild across a couple of innings.

Bullpens

If the Brewers commit to deploying Misiorowski exclusively from their bullpen, then it means they’ll have three righty relievers with premium late-inning stuff. Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill also have fastballs that sit in the 98-100 mph range, and behind them are Jared Koenig and Aaron Ashby, who have uncommon velocity for guys who are otherwise funky, deceptive lefties. Expect the top half of the Cubs lineup (which is mostly left-handed) to see lots of Ashby and Koenig in key spots. Milwaukee also has several relievers who can provide multi-inning length — Tobias Myers, Robert Gasser, Misiorowski, Patrick, DL Hall — should any of its starters struggle to work deep into the game.

Chicago’s bullpen has been cobbled together with journeymen in their mid-to-late 30s. Only Daniel Palencia and Michael Soroka are under 30, while five of the Cubs relievers are 35 or older. Based on their Wild Card Series usage, Counsell’s hierarchy is led by Palencia (deployed in the game’s biggest moments, regardless of inning), sinkerballing righties Andrew Kittredge and Brad Keller, and lefty slider dynamo Drew Pomeranz. The Cubs have a couple other lefty-specialist types in Taylor Rogers and Caleb Thielbar, and some long men in Colin Rea (maybe also a sneaky option to make a start, more likely next round if they advance), Aaron Civale, and Soroka. The way Kittredge and Pomeranz have maintained their stuff as they’ve aged, and the leap Keller has made since joining the Cubs and moving to relief full time, has given this bullpen real teeth beyond Palencia. Overall, though, the Brewers have a deeper, nastier group.

Position Players

Both the Brewers and Cubs had among the most productive offenses in baseball this year. Both were top six in WAR generation, with the Cubs finishing third; both finished inside the top five in stolen bases, and the top 10 in walk rate, strikeout rate, and wRC+. If there’s a gap here, it’s that the Cubs have several more dangerous power hitters than the Brewers do. Only two Brewers (Christian Yelich and Jackson Chourio) hit 20 homers or more, while the Cubs had six guys do it, including their eight-hole hitter, Dansby Swanson. Sandwiched among all those sluggers is second baseman Nico Hoerner, one of the best pure contact hitters in the sport.

The Brewers are a team that keeps the line moving, full of several smaller, speedy, pesky contact hitters who complement each other’s skills and allow Murphy to play favorable matchups throughout the game. Whereas we might see the Cubs pinch-hit for Matt Shaw and make zero other position player subs in a game, the Brewers might empty their bench on any given night. Considering how Counsell managed his starters’ workloads in the Wild Card round, there is going to be lots of mid-game chess played here as he goes to his bullpen and Murphy decides whether to make early changes to his lineup. Murphy tends to be most active playing matchups with his corner outfielders and first basemen, while guys like Yelich, Chourio, and Brice Turang (who took a big step forward as a hitter this year and led Milwaukee in WAR) are permanent fixtures. Two of those aforementioned Brewers rookies (former Division-III college player and offseason trade acquisition Caleb Durbin, and former minor league Rule-5 pick Isaac Collins) have not only taken unique paths here, but both are legit Rookie of the Year candidates. Durbin is one of the league’s better pure contact hitters, and Collins is well-rounded switch-hitter who should start against lefties in this series.

Perhaps the best and most exciting aspect of this tilt, however, will be watching both of these teams play defense. Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong has absurd range and even better ball skills. His ability to slide and contort his body at the catch point might be unmatched in baseball right now. Swanson has been one of the better shortstop defenders in baseball for the last decade and made several consequential plays in the Wild Card Series, and Hoerner is a capable shortstop masquerading at second base. Milwaukee’s infield is full of viable shortstops. Turang is one of the better high school infield defenders I’ve ever seen, and he’s playing second base on this team because Joey Ortiz is a better, more acrobatic shortstop. Blake Perkins is a dynamic outfield defender who can provide a late-game defensive upgrade at two spots simultaneously, because his incorporation means moving Jackson Chourio to a corner, which is also usually an upgrade.

Managers

Finally, the meatiest narrative element of this series is the managerial matchup. Murphy coached Counsell at Notre Dame from 1989 to 1992 — he once broke Counsell’s nose while hitting him angry fungos after Counsell had made a bunch of errors — and then later left to coach at Arizona State in the mid-90s and overlapped with Counsell in Phoenix while the latter was with the Diamondbacks. After a historically significant head coaching career (he was the youngest college coach to 500 wins and went to four College World Series with the Sun Devils), Murphy was ousted from ASU in 2009 for recruiting violations, most of which wouldn’t be considered so under today’s rules for collegiate athletes (though there were some Steve Ballmer-Kawhi Leonard parallels involving Murphy’s nonprofit). Murphy worked for the Padres for half a decade before Counsell became the Milwaukee manager and hired him as his bench coach. The two worked together until Counsell left for the Cubs job a couple years ago.

I asked hoagie-eating friend of the ‘Graph and ESPN college baseball broadcaster Mike Rooney, a teammate of Counsell’s at Notre Dame and later an assistant under Murphy at ASU, about the their dynamic. “They’ve always been so close, but they are so different, especially from a personality and style standpoint,” Rooney said. “Counsell said that’s exactly why he hired him. I’m biased of course, but I don’t know if I’ve ever met someone so in tune with his own personal blind spots and biases. It’s kind of a superpower.”