Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy was the National League Manager of the Year in 2024 and 2025. If he doesn’t win a “three-peat” this year, it will be the biggest injustice since the Sacco and Vanzetti trials. Can’t afford to sign Willy Adames after he hit 32 home runs and drove in 112 runs in 2024? No problem. Murphy’s Brewers finished 97-65 the next season, winning the NL Central Division before succumbing to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL Championship Series. After that season, they lost their top two pitchers, Freddy Peralta (17-6 record; free agency) and Quinn Priester (13-3; injury). Again, no problem. As I write this, the Brewers have the best record in Major League Baseball at 74-44. The more key players they lose, the better they get under Murphy.
When Murphy’s predecessor, Wisconsin native and former major leaguer Craig Counsell, left for what he thought were greener pastures with the Chicago Cubs, he did Milwaukee the biggest favor since the Germans settled there and built breweries in the 1840s. But what is it that’s made Murphy successful as a major league manager?
Who is Pat Murphy?
Murphy, 67, played baseball at Florida Atlantic University, where he was a catcher, infielder, and pitcher. According to James Clark of the East Village Times, the San Francisco Giants signed Murphy in 1982, and he played minor league ball for the Giants, San Diego Padres, and Tri-Cities of the unaffiliated Northwest League in a four-year career. Somehow, no minor league statistics exist for 1982. In 1983, Murphy pitched for Single-A Salem, where he was 1-5 with a 5.50 ERA. Pitching for Tri-Cities of the unaffiliated Northwest League, he was 6-5 with a 4.96 ERA over two seasons. Murphy also coached at a few small colleges during this time.
Murphy started to make a name for himself when he became the head baseball coach at Notre Dame from 1988-94, where he was 318-116, and Counsell was one of his players. He moved on to become the head coach at Arizona State from 1995-2009. His record there was 629-284 and included four appearances in the College World Series. He joined the Padres organization in 2010 as special assistant to baseball operations, then a minor league manager. In 2015, he was the Padres’ interim manager after they fired Bud Black. By 2016, the Padres had decided to hire Andy Green as manager, and Counsell, in his first full season as Brewers manager, brought Murphy over to serve as his bench coach.
That brings us up to the present day. Of course, the astute baseball fans who frequent this site know the secret to a good manager – good players. Let’s look at how Murphy has used those players.
Hereinafter, any 2026 statistics presented are as of the close of Sunday’s action.
Pat’s Bats?
Although this is Pitcher List, let’s go against the grain and start with the Brewers’ offensive attack. These Brewers aren’t like Harvey’s Wall Bangers of 1982. But it’s a pesky attack that can be frustrating to opposing teams and their fans. What can we call it? Pat’s Bats? Let’s look at a few selected figures:
What jumps out right away is that the Brewers are dead last in the majors in home runs. Dead last. They don’t strike out much, either. It seems clear that Murphy and his staff don’t teach the ridiculous “launch angle” swing that might result in a smallish middle infielder hitting eight home runs instead of his usual three but mostly result in far too many strikeouts and not enough balls put in play. Their batting average with two strikes on the hitter indicates a solid two-strike approach that’s largely absent from today’s game.
I’m an old school fan who was brought up on the game when batting average was a “thing,” as my adult offspring would say. There are fancier metrics that have replaced batting average as the measure of a hitter. I understand those and find them useful, and use them often in articles. However, I still think batting average is a thing. In baseball, nothing happens until somebody hits the ball. Thus, it’s no coincidence to me that the Brewers would have the fifth-best batting average while having the best record in baseball.
Most impressive to me, however, is that they’re second in the majors and first in the NL in percentage of batted balls hit to the opposite field. The first baseball metrics guru, long before even Bill James, is somebody you’ve never heard of, unless you’ve read Jim Bouton’s 1974 book, I Managed Good, But Boy, Did They Play Bad. Walter Lappe was charting baseball games before it was fashionable. His findings showed that, more often than not, when a batter pulled the ball, it was a grounder, whereas when he hit to the opposite field, the result was a fly ball. A manager usually selects pinch-hitters based on splits; in other words, he chooses a left-handed batter against a right-handed pitcher, and vice versa. According to Lappe, however, the best move against a ground ball-producing pitcher is to select a same-sided batter who hits to the opposite field. Their breaking pitches will run away from a same-sided batter and give him a better chance to hit to the opposite field than an opposite-sided batter. The result will be a line drive, which is the vector of a grounder and a fly ball, and the best chance for a hit. Arguably, most pitchers are ground-ball pitchers. So far, major league pitchers have induced ground balls 41.2 percent of the time, as opposed to 23.6 percent for line drives and 26.7 percent for fly balls. (What happened to the other 8.5 percent of batted balls, you might ask? They were bunts and pop-ups. Apparently nobody cares about those.) Hence, the importance of hitting to the opposite field. The Brewers are only 19th in the majors in line drive percentage. I’m surprised they’re not much higher, given how often they go the other way, but it’s a few mere decimals that separate them from the 10th-place St. Louis Cardinals, who are at 23.8 percent. The Brewers may be 10th by the time you read this.
I don’t know whether Murphy is a Lappe disciple. Actually, I doubt it. In any event, the combination of using the whole field and eliminating strikeouts has caused the Brewers to rank highly in runs scored, wOBA, and wRC+. I don’t cite OPS in my articles very often, because the nuns at Immaculate Conception School taught me that one can’t add two fractions with different denominators. In any event, readers like OPS, so OPS and OPS+ are presented in the table above, too. The reader will note that the Brewers don’t rank too shabbily there, either. So much for the launch angle swing. Theirs is a fun brand of baseball to watch. Success often breeds imitation. If it happens in this case, the game will be better off.
The Running Brewers
Modern analytics suggest that the stolen base isn’t worth the risk, that the runs gained by stealing a base aren’t worth the runs lost with a failed attempt. One who would probably disagree is the late former major league manager Chuck Tanner, who felt that what the statistics don’t measure is the effect on the pitcher and the catcher, particularly the increased amount of easy-to-handle, easy-to-hit fastballs the catcher will call for when he suspects the runner may be on the move. In 1976, Tanner’s undermanned Oakland Athletics team stole 341 bases, finished second in the American League West Division at 87-74, and threw a scare into the first-place Kansas City Royals.
The rule changes before the 2023 season that increased the size of the bases from 15 to 18 square inches and limited the number of pitcher disengagements were designed to encourage stolen-base attempts and add more excitement to the game. Not every team followed suit right away. Murphy’s Brewers were an exception. Murphy turned his baserunners loose immediately upon taking the managerial position. With that, he was ahead of most of the other managers in baseball. Here are the results during his time.
At Last, the Pitching Side
You knew I’d get around to discussing pitching. After all, this is Pitcher List. Here’s where the Brewers’ pitchers rank in selected key categories.
But what does this tell us, besides the fact that Milwaukee has pitched well this season? It’s hard to discern from the stats any particular pitching philosophy of Murphy. All managers preach the same things to pitchers anyway: throw strikes, get ahead in the count, don’t walk anybody, pitch inside, etc. For Murphy, it may be more a matter of how he handles pitchers and lays out expectations. He’s known as a straight shooter. If there were times that he might have shot too straight for some pitchers’ tastes, he got his message across.
On May 30, he removed struggling second-year pitcher Brandon Sproat in the fifth inning of a 9-2 loss to the Houston Astros. Sproat’s line on the day: 4.1 innings pitched, five runs (all earned), six hits (including a home run to Jeremy Peña), no walks, and two hit batsmen. Murphy’s postgame comments to the media were blunt: “We’re not going to tolerate too many duds like this, that’s for sure. If he’s not going to step up – we’re trying to win. We’re not rebuilding.”
After another second-year pitcher, Craig Yoho, had a rough outing where he surrendered three runs to the Cincinnati Reds in one inning of work on June 24, he was sent to Triple-A Nashville. Once again, Murphy was frank in his assessment. “Obviously, he comes in the game and gets a big out in a big situation,” Murphy told the press, as reported by Sports Illustrated. “I’m really happy for him. Now you have to regroup and go out after he threw one pitch and got a big out on that changeup, got the guy out in front a little bit. They don’t know him yet; they haven’t faced him yet. Now he goes out [for] the second inning, and they’re expecting it. It’s a two-pitch guy, really, and he doesn’t throw strikes. You can’t do that. . . You can see he wasn’t comfortable in that situation. They know the deal. I mean, the report’s out there. Fastball command, question mark. Changeup, very slow, sit on it, not a swing-and-miss [pitch].”
Yoho returned to the majors 10 days later and was better. In July, he lowered his ERA from 6.00 to 3.15. He was traded to the Cleveland Guardians at the deadline.
Sproat, on the other hand, is still receiving messages from Murphy. On August 3, he surrendered three runs to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the third inning after the Pirates loaded the bases with two outs. Sproat fell behind Spencer Horwitz, 2-0, and yielded a three-run double. In the fourth, Sproat gave up a leadoff single to Endy Rodríguez. While pitching to the next batter, Jacob Gonzalez, Sproat uncorked two wild pitches. Murphy sprang out of the dugout and replaced him without letting him complete Gonzalez’s at-bat, a rarely seen maneuver that most pitchers would find humiliating. It was a strong message. Sproat was sent to Nashville the next day. On Murphy’s team, the inmates don’t run the asylum.
The Mystique
Have we unlocked the Murphy Mystique with this article? I don’t know, but his all-around old-school approach to the game, down-homeness (if that’s even a word), and sense of humor make him easy to root for (or, for those of us in a NL Central rival city, at least hard to dislike). His Brewers have always seemed like a team built for the regular season but not so much for the postseason. Maybe this is the year he gets his World Series ring.
