Leading OFF
Why this surprising National League team will win the World Series
CHICAGO – They are America’s best secret on a baseball diamond.
They reside in baseball’s smallest market with a population of 577,000 and only the 38th-largest TV market in the country just behind Greenville, South Carolina.
They are the Milwaukee Brewers.
They also may be the last team standing when the month of October flips to November.
Clip and save: I’m picking the Brewers to win their first World Series title.
When you think about it, it’s really not that far-fetched.
The Brewers have the best starting rotation of any of the postseason teams with Corbin Burnes, Freddy Peralta and Wade Miley. (Brandon Woodruff has been ruled out of the wildcard series because of a shoulder injury and the team said it was seeking a second opinion.)
They may have the best closer of any postseason team in All-Star Devin Williams.
They have one of the greatest managers in the game in Craig Counsell.
“We recognize that we’re the smallest market in the league, and it can be daunting when you head into the postseason, but anything can happen in a short series,” Brewers general manager Matt Arnold told USA TODAY Sports. “I do believe this is one of the deepest teams and strongest teams we’ve ever had. I think we have something really special here.”
Certainly, the Brewers have quietly been a model franchise.
They’ve reached the postseason in five of the past six years without having a payroll higher than 16th in baseball, ranking 20th this season at $118.7 million. Yep, a cool $235 million less than the New York Mets, who will be sitting at home.
This is the sixth consecutive year the Brewers have won at least 86 games in a full season, surpassed only by the Dodgers and Houston Astros, and their 572 victories since 2017 are the third most in the National League.
They have become the gold standard of the NL Central, overtaking the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs for supremacy, winning more games than any other division team since 2016, which was Counsell’s first full season.
“It’s fun in our division knowing that the Cubs and Cardinals are spending more than us and we’re beating them,” Counsell says. “I think every competitor looks to have a chip on their shoulder, and that’s what we do.”
So let other teams empty their checkbooks on the free agent market and fill their roster with the biggest stars they can find. Then let other teams look up at the Brewers at the end of the season, wondering how that reliable Toyota Prius again finished ahead of that Porsche.
“There’s definitely a sweetness to this,” says owner Mark Attanasio, a day after he watched his wife doused in a champagne and beer celebration in the Brewers’ clinching party. “I think we benefit at being a small-market team. People wake up on Labor Day and say, ‘Hey, the Brewers have a baseball team.’ But we always believed in ourselves here.”
Certainly, they’ve made believers out of everyone else this season, too. Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson eliminated the Brewers in the 2021 postseason when he played for Atlanta and always admired the team from afar. But after playing against them 13 times this season, he understands the secret to their success.
“They just do a good job of understanding who they are,” Swanson says. “When the season ends, you look up after Game 162, and say, ‘How are they always in the mix?’
“Well, they understand who they are, and they do everything well. When you have the arms and stuff they do, you’re always going to be in the game. It’s just a matter of time before the offense can score some runs. It’s not that they don’t have a talented offense, it’s just that they get contributions from so many different people.
“Not every team can be like them, but that’s just their formula, and it works for them.”
Go ahead, you try to reach the playoffs with a .240 batting average, the worst of any playoff team, while producing the fewest total bases for any team in baseball outside of the 50-112 Oakland Athletics.
“There’s nothing offensively where you go and play them and you’re really scared of anything,” Cubs manager David Ross says. “But they always have really good starting pitching, which is as good as it gets for me, and it seems like they’re in every game. They do a really nice job over there, and Counsell does a great job.”
Counsell, 53, and Attanasio agreed three weeks ago that they would not talk about a contract extension until after the season.
While Counsell considered simply stepping away from the game for a year or two, he now plans to keep managing.
“Let’s get to the end of the season and then we’ll see what happens,” Counsell said. “I’m going to listen to people, listen to the Brewers, and see where it takes me. I think there’s a lot left to happen before I have to make any decisions, but I want the next month to change my life.”
The Brewers are showing how dangerous they can be, going 27-13 since Aug. 18, second best to only the Baltimore Orioles in the last five weeks, putting their past pain behind them.
There’s no longer any talk about last year’s clubhouse meltdown when they traded All-Star closer Josh Hader to the San Diego Padres (“As you know, it wasn’t my decision,” Attanasio says).
There are no hard feelings that David Stearns, their former president of baseball operations who stepped down to become a consultant this year, left to join the Mets for a lucrative five-year contract (“How many great top chefs stay in the same restaurant their whole lives?” Attanasio says).
Christian Yelich’s mysterious slump after his 2019 MVP season is now a distant memory.
“I know how difficult it is to get to the World Series,” says Attanasio, who has seen the Brewers advance to seven postseason appearances in his 19-year tenure, ending a 26-year drought between 1982 and 2008. “But I try to enjoy the ride and the anxiety. What’s rewarding is being consistently excellent. That’s the real challenge going forward.
“When I got here, all you saw is the 1982 banners. I was desperate to get a flag up or a sign at our stadium, and we finally did in ’08. Now, we’re out of space. We can’t put any more division signs now. I love that.”
They do have plenty of room, however, for that coveted World Series flag.
“We’ve been here so many times,” Woodruff told reporters in the champagne celebration, “I feel like it’s our time to get over the hump. We can do it.”