Milwaukee has turned things around and enters Wednesday tied for the NL Central lead with the Chicago Cubs.
They’re that Toyota Prius in a parking lot full of Bentleys and Rolls Royce’s.
They’re that ground chuck burger on a menu with tomahawk steaks and lobster tails.
They are the unwanted, the discarded, and the castoffs of Major League Baseball.
They are the Milwaukee Brewers.
“The island," Brewers reliever Grant Anderson tells USA TODAY Sports, “of misfit toys.’’
It was the moniker Brewers pitching coach Chris Hook placed on his staff, with Brewers manager Pat Murphy chiming in, saying his entire team, is “Just a bunch of average Joes."
Well, these anonymous castoffs just may be the best darn team in all of baseball, tied with the Chicago Cubs for baseball’s best record, 60-41, while winning 35 of their last 48 games, including 11 of their last 12.
Yes, the Brewers, whose $124 million payroll is the seventh-smallest in baseball, and less than what the Los Angeles Dodgers are projected to pay in luxury tax penalties this year.
Yes, the Brewers, who don’t have a single player hitting .300, who has 20 homers, or whose WAR ranks higher than 60th in MLB.
Yes, the Brewers, who have only two players earning more than $10 million this season.
“No one knows who we are," Murphy says, “but we do. It’s like I told the reporters in LA. No disrespect to the great fans of Japan baseball, but they can’t name five players in our lineup.”
Well, hate to break the news to Murphy, but baseball fans right here in the good ol’ USA can’t name five Brewers players, either.
Sure, go ahead and try.
There’s former MVP and two-time batting champion Christian Yelich. There’s 21-year-old center field sensation Jackson Chourio. There’s two-time All-Star catcher William Contreras. There’s uh, well, that kid who throws 101mph on every pitch, what’s his name, Miz something?
Anyone else?
“We don’t get recognized anywhere," Brewers left fielder Isaac Collins says. “I mean, even in town, I think I’ve only been recognized once or twice. No one knows who we are."
Well, considering they’re on pace to reach the postseason for the seventh time in the last eight years, with four NL Central Division titles, it’s about time everyone finds out.
“We’re going to start wearing 'Power of Friendship' T-shirts," All-Star closer Trevor Megill says, “then people can start recognizing who we are. I mean, people were freaking out last year when we won 93 games. Maybe they didn’t think we could do it again."
The Brewers are reminding folks that even if you don’t wear Armani suits, Gucci shoes and David Yurman gold chains, all you need is a comfortable pair of spikes, a broken-in glove, the right bat, and the unselfish desire to play the game the right way to make the rich and famous wallowing in jealousy.
The Brewers have no power, and not a lot of speed, but, oh, do they play the game hard, they play it right, and they will beat your brains in playing small ball.
“We’re the little engine that could," Murphy says. “We have no pop. We have no slug. We don’t have a lot of things. But we have a lot of heart
“These guys are hungry.
“And it’s hard to be hungry when you’re full."
The Brewers make up for their power deficit by putting the ball in play. They rarely strike out. They bunt. They hit-and-run. They play defense. They attack. Simply, they’re relentless.
“It’s nice for America to see that our brand of baseball works," Collins says. “You don’t have to live and die by the long ball. You just have to do all of the little things right.
“That’s all we’re doing, just being ourselves."
And, poking a little of fun at themselves in the process.
When the Brewers signed a backup player for $1.35 million during the winter, Murphy sent Andrew Friedman, Dodgers president of baseball operations a note: "Hey Andy, sorry, but when you were signing Shohei Ohtani, [Yoshinobu] Yamamoto and Blake Snell, we stole this guy from you. Sorry about that."
When players are traded to Milwaukee, GM Matt Arnold cracks, “You don’t get traded to the big leagues. You get traded to Milwaukee JUCO."
And when you enter the Brewers clubhouse, you feel as if you’re walking into a movie set or a comedy club, with Murphy being called “Patches O’Houlihan," from the 2004 movie “Dodgeball."
“That’s what we do here,’’ Murphy says. “We dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge. We need to get those T-shirts made."
This also is the place where you can be released, designated for assignment, traded or dumped, and come resurrect your career.
The Brewers will take your sick, your hungry, your weary, and even your ex-Colorado Rockies. The Brewers acquired reliever Nick Mears from the Rockies for two minor leaguers last July, and picked up Collins from the Rockies in 2022 in the Triple-A phase of the Rule 5 Draft.
Mears has since become one of their most reliable relievers, yielding a .200 batting average this season with a 0.86 WHIP – sixth among all relievers. Collins won the starting left field job and is hitting .269 with a .777 OPS.
“It seems like half the guys here have been DFA’d or come over in a trade," Mears says, “but once you get over here, you buy into the culture. There’s a hunger to win, especially coming from a bad team. You want to prove to yourself that you’re more than just a DFA guy.
Just imagine how first baseman Andrew Vaughn was feeling. The former first-round pick couldn’t even stick with the Chicago Sox. He was demoted and sent back to the minors for the first time since 2019. He was still languishing in the minors when Brewers veteran Aaron Civale asked to be traded, upset he was being taken out of the rotation for rookie sensation Jacob Misiorowski.
In less than 24 hours, Arnold was sending Civale to the White Sox for Vaughn. Vaughn returned to the minors but when first baseman Rhys Hoskins sprained a thumb ligament two weeks ago, he was summoned. Vaughn hit a three-run homer in his first at-bat with the Brewers, and never stopped, hitting .333 with two doubles, two homers, 12 RBI and a 1.071 OPS during an 11-game winning streak.
“It’s pretty special being here," Vaughn says. “You can see why they have so much success."
There is starter Quinn Priester, given up by the Pittsburgh Pirates after being a first-round draft pick in 2019, and then the Boston Red Sox, who traded him April 7 to the Brewers. The Red Sox didn’t think he could help them, but the Brewers believed in his pedigree, and with a little tinkering of his arsenal, could be a force. You think the Red Sox could use him now?
Priester, who added a cut-fastball to his arsenal, is 8-2 with a 3.33 ERA. He pitched six shutout innings, yielding just three hits and striking out 10 without a walk in his last outing against the Dodgers.
“I remember as soon as I got traded here," Priester says, “I had a bunch of guys text me telling me how good this team is developing pitchers in the system, and they do such a great job. You look at how many of us came from different organizations and got better here.
“We’re not here to prove people wrong, but to just enjoy the camaraderie, with everyone buying in to do whatever it takes to win."
There is Caleb Durbin, a Division III player at Washington University in St. Louis, who was traded twice in two years without spending a day in the big leagues. The Brewers scouts loved his fiery demeanor, playing almost with a chip in his shoulder, knowing his style perfectly fit Murphy’s mold. So, when the Brewers traded All Star closer Devin Williams to the Yankees, they made sure Durbin was in the deal along with veteran starter Nestor Cortes.
“I know we’re a small market team," Durbin says, “but we’re still a big-league team. We still have good baseball players. It’s just we’re overlooked because of our makeup.
“That’s OK. We know how good we are. If you’re not ready to scrap nine innings with us, at the end of the game, you’re going to be on the wrong end of it."
Infielder Joey Ortiz came over from Baltimore in the Corbin Burnes trade along with pitcher DL Hall. He was their starting third baseman last season, is now a Gold Globe candidate at shortstop, reminding Arnold of former defensive whizzes Walt Weiss or Rey Ordonez.
Megill was an original Padre. Then a Cub. Then a Twin. And two years later, after being acquired by the Brewers for a player to be named later, Megill is now an All Star. He has 44 saves the last two years and became the Brewers’ full-time closer when the Brewers traded Williams.
“When we told him he made the All Star team," Arnold says, “he gave me a big hug. It was like hugging a Sequoia tree. He’s just a big moose. We thought he could handle the job, and he’s been great."
Williams sensed he was gone last year after giving up that game-winning homer to Mets first baseman Pete Alonso in the Division series. It was a gut-wrenching end to the Brewers’ season, the last game beloved Hall of Fame broadcaster Bob Uecker called.
“That was as tough a loss as I’ve ever been part of," Arnold says. “But nobody said, 'That’s it.’ We’ve been knocked down a lot of times here. We always get up.
“We have a standard here that we tried to hold ourselves to. We’re never going to make excuses where we are in the world being the smallest market in baseball. We believe in ourselves, but we just have to do it differently, try to be creative, and have guys that nobody heard of step up."
It was really no different when the Brewers opened the season losing their first four games of the season by a combined score of 47-15, the biggest run differential in MLB history. They still were four games under .500 (21-25) six weeks into the season.
Then, a funny thing happened. The pitching staff, which opened the season with 11 of their top 16 pitchers injured, began to get healthy. Those cast-offs started gelling. And then, on May 25, they rallied from a 5-3 deficit in the eighth inning against the Pirates to win, 6-5.
They have since been baseball’s hottest team.
“We don’t have guys making $20 million a year," says Anderson, who’s on his third team after being designated for assignment last December by the Rangers, “like we did when I was in Texas. We don’t have four MVPs in the lineup like the Dodgers. We don’t have a lot of things.
“But we believe in each other. We know how to win games. And we have a lot of confidence."
It’s proven to be quite the lethal combination
So, you may want to hurry up and get to know these Brewers’ names.
Come October, it could be quite handy.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Brewers embrace 'power of friendship' in NL Central standings
Category: Baseball
