Best Team Yet Dressed as 'Underdogs': Brewers Blow Away the Dodgers on the Road to the World Series
The Milwaukee Brewers are the best team of this season in Major League Baseball. Yet even at the moment of advancing on the road to the World Series, the team presents itself as the 'underdog' - that is, the team that is behind. After sweeping the expensive Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series, manager Pat Murphy's old ploy has again come into discussion.
Against the Dodgers, the Brewers' bullpen was almost irresistible in the series. The bullpen, built around Aaron Ashby, DL Hall, JoJo Romero, Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill, gave up only two runs in 15.2 innings of relief across the whole series, and both came off Uribe's bowling. No runner who reached base against the other four bowlers in 13 innings could score - whereas across the league the average rate of runners being left stranded on base is around 75 percent, in the case of Murphy's team it was one hundred percent.
The same picture in batting. Milwaukee left the Dodgers behind 7-1 in home runs. In postseason history, in the combined 'three true outcomes' rate of strikeouts, walks and home runs, the Brewers are now on top of everyone. Analysts had been saying that the strategy of putting the ball in play was their strength; in reality they won in that familiar power-hitting style, which many claim does not work in October.
The team's starting pitchers also gave up only three earned runs. Although small-sample random luck played a role behind the results, the final picture is clear - as in 2025, in 2026 too the Brewers were baseball's best team.
The statistics say the same. The Brewers' run differential in the season was plus 214, the highest in the league. In the Division Series they beat the expensive San Diego Padres, a team with which they were ahead by more than 170 runs on differential - more than one run per match on average. Since the start of the 2025 season, Milwaukee has also won the most matches.
Even before the NLCS began, 13 of ESPN's 15 writers had put the Brewers ahead against the Dodgers. The team has won 103 matches. In such a situation, why the 'nobody knows us' kind of talk is the question now going around.
In fact, this ploy of Murphy's is not new. Before the 2025 NLCS too he had said that most Dodgers players supposedly could not name even eight of the Brewers' players. In the middle of the 2026 season, regarding the Chicago Cubs too, he said in the same tone that opponents do not know their players' names, so the question of being scared does not arise.
Within minutes of winning the fourth match and sealing the series, Murphy raised the matter again. Regarding the Dodgers, he said, 'They have a lot of Hall of Famers in their team. We have a bunch of fighters in ours. And this week the fighters won.'
Although the Dodgers have stars like Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts, the Brewers' strength is no less. The 24-year-old Jacob Misiorowski is the near-certain claimant of the NL Cy Young Award. Playing only a few big league matches, he had made a place in the 2025 All-Star team. Had he not been tied down by the age-based salary structure, his value in the open market would have been five to six crore (50 to 60 million) dollars per season.
The 22-year-old Jackson Chourio has set a new record - he is now the owner of the most home runs in a postseason career before the age of 23. His contract with Milwaukee is worth 82 million dollars. Christian Yelich was the 2018 NL MVP, a three-time Silver Slugger and All-Star, and a two-time batting champion.
Brice Turang is a first-round draft pick and won the Platinum Glove in defence in 2024. Garrett Mitchell is also a first-round pick. William Contreras, as a catcher, is making his place in the list of the best catchers in history within a five-year career. Calling such a team 'unknown' therefore seems ridiculous to many.
Meanwhile, in the American League Championship Series the fight is now level at 2-2. In the fourth match, the Tampa Bay Rays turned around against the Cleveland Guardians' pitching, riding on the bats of Yandy Diaz, Jonathan Aranda and Richie Palacios. In the fifth match, Drew Rasmussen and Parker Messick will face off. The winning team of that series will face the Brewers in the World Series - the team that, despite being the best, loves to keep dressing itself as the underdog.
