Brewers' Devil Magic? Milwaukee Is Running Away With The National League Somehow

How do the Milwaukee Brewers do it? 

Seemingly every year, Milwaukee is right in the thick of the playoff race, despite running well below average payrolls, trading key players, or seeing stars leave in free agency. 

They traded Josh Hader at the 2022 deadline to the San Diego Padres. After the 2023 season, they traded superstar starter Corbin Burnes to the Baltimore Orioles, after taking him to arbitration over a minimal amount of money. After the 2024 season, they flipped yet another star reliever: Devin Williams to the New York Yankees. 

They've done it season after season, eroding top-level talent for future value, controllable assets, and relying on a farm system and international scouting and signing department to replace who's left. It's worked. But it's never, ever worked like it has in the Brewers' stunning 2025 season. 

Through Tuesday's games, the Brewers had the best record in baseball by two full games. They had the best record in the National League by 2.5 games over the Los Angeles Dodgers. They swept the season series with LA, making it effectively a 3.5-game lead. They've opened up a three-game lead over the Chicago Cubs in the NL Central race. And out of nowhere, they now have the best run differential in Major League Baseball.

It's insane, and it's virtually inexplicable. But let's try anyway.

MINNEAPOLIS - Milwaukee Brewers starting pitcher Jacob Misiorowski walks off the field after getting pulled during the seventh inning against the Minnesota Twins at Target Field on June 20, 2025. Photo: Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images

Milwaukee Brewers Using Elite Pitching, Surprising Hitting 

While Milwaukee lacks a true, star hitter in 2025, the team has made up for it by limiting the amount of holes on the roster. Jackson Chourio has been an above-average offensive player. So has William Contreras. And Christian Yelich. And Brice Turang. And Caleb Durbin. And Isaac Collins. And Rhys Hoskins. And even Andrew Vaughn has been above-average offensively since being picked up for essentially nothing from the Chicago White Sox.

The Brewers are also one of baseball's best defensive teams, adding more than 20 runs above average of defensive value, per Fangraphs. 

The question is: how did they evaluate that those players would be above average offensively this season? And the answer is, they probably didn't. 

Chourio was a former top prospect already producing in MLB in his age-20 and 21 seasons. Yelich is a former MVP. Contreras and Turang had displayed potential in the past. But Vaughn wasn't good enough to play for the historically bad White Sox. Caleb Durbin was rated as organizational depth by most prospect evaluators, nowhere close to the top 100. Isaac Collins was acquired in the Rule 5 draft from the lowly Colorado Rockies for $22,000. He was ranked even lower than Durbin on the Brewers' top-50 preseason prospects.

So is it just luck then? Well, not exactly. Even if Durbin and Collins fall back to their scouting reports eventually, the fact that the Milwaukee front office evaluated that these players could be useful major league players, even for a short time, is remarkable. Whatever other teams missed, they saw. Have they been fortunate that both players have performed this well? Yes, of course, and it's unrealistic for it to continue. But they've now banked that production, identified that there is a level of talent far beyond what outsiders predicted, and increased their value to other teams in a potential trade.

It's a classic Brewers move: find value where others ignore it, and maximize, even through luck, whatever potential exists.

Then there's the pitching. 

Milwaukee's 3.63 team ERA ranks fourth in baseball, and unsurprisingly, has wildly outperformed the advanced metrics. Thanks likely to defensive excellence, and some more good luck, that 3.63 ERA is far below their "expected" 3.96 ERA. Will that continue? Maybe, maybe not, but again, the Brewers have banked that performance and moved ever closer to securing home field advantage throughout the playoffs and World Series.

Quinn Priester is the poster child for the Brewers' remarkable renaissance. The Red Sox gave up on him, flipping him to Milwaukee for Yophery Rodriguez and the 33rd overall draft pick. He had a 7.71 ERA in 50 innings in 2023. Then a 4.71 ERA in 2024 over 49.2 innings. This season? Priester has a 3.15 ERA in 114.1 innings and an 11-2 record. A well-below-average strike-out rate and some batted ball luck imply he's overperformed, but again, Milwaukee saw something in a player that no other team did. And took advantage of it.

Superstar rookie Jacob Misiorowski frequently looks unhittable, and Brandon Woodruff has managed to avoid any ill effects from missing most of the 2023 season and all of 2024 with arm surgery. Despite losing two miles per hour on his fastball, his ERA through five starts is just 2.22 and he's struck out 37 hitters in 28.1 innings. As always with Milwaukee, he's benefited from an unsustainably low batting average on balls in play. Though maybe it is sustainable if you play in the home of baseball devil magic.

Put simply, Milwaukee has no business being this good. Andrew Vaughn went from a cast off to 1.118 OPS, hitting basically like peak Aaron Judge over 80 at-bats. Isaac Collins went from a Rule 5 pick to being the only qualified hitter on the Brewers with an OPS over .800. And it's .801. They have the second-highest batting average with runners in scoring position, have taken advantage of batted ball luck and maximized it with top-tier defense. They've shrugged off the loss of bullpen arms and replaced them with Trevor Megill, who went from a 4.80 ERA in 2022 to 2.72 in 2024 and 2.13 in 2025. 

Whatever the Brewers touch turns to gold. And it's put them in prime position to shock the baseball world the rest of the season.