How baseball’s hottest team is shocking everyone, again

The Brewers are out of control right now. They won their 10th game in a row on Sunday, finishing off a blistering sweep of the defending champion Dodgers, and pulled into a tie with the Cubs for the best record in the National League.

This is particularly impressive because, well, the Brewers are the Brewers. This is a team with a relatively low payroll, no established superstars and a whole bunch of guys whose names you probably don’t know if you live outside Wisconsin. We shouldn’t be this surprised by the Brewers – they have won the last two NL Central titles, and three of the last four – but there’s no question that most of baseball nevertheless is.

So how are they doing this? And can they keep it up? As the Brew Crew opens a series at Seattle on Monday night, here’s a look at how baseball’s hottest team finds itself shocking everyone … and why it’s likely to keep doing so.

They have pitching everywhere
One of the reasons you might see the Brewers active before the July 31 Trade Deadline – other than the fact that they’re, you know, one of the best teams in baseball – is that they have so much pitching. Some have referred to the Brewers as the Midwest Rays, and you don’t have to squint to see a similarity to the Tampa Bay teams of the past decade (though not necessarily this year’s team).

Everywhere you look, they’ve come up with a new pitcher who’s contributing. Some of them have been homegrown, with All-Star phenom Jacob Misiorowski the most obvious example, but don’t forget the likes of Abner Uribe and Aaron Ashby, both of whom have been excellent out of the bullpen. Some of them are longtime Brewers with whom they’ve been patient, from Freddy Peralta (who seems to have been several different pitchers throughout his Brewers career) to Brandon Woodruff (who recently threw his first MLB pitch in 652 days and immediately looked like his old self after a grueling rehab process).

But the most impressive thing the Brewers have pulled off has been taking pitchers from other organizations and fixing them, from Chad Patrick (who was great until Woodruff’s return) to closer Trevor Megill to relievers Nick Mears, Grant Anderson and DL Hall to, especially, faded Pirates prospect Quinn Priester, who unlocked all that untapped potential the minute he got to Milwaukee. They still have No. 6 prospect Logan Henderson (and now Patrick) in the Minors as well. Most teams are desperate for any pitching they can find at this point of the season. The Brewers have more than they know what to do with.

They are bad at nothing
As noted by Joe Sheehan in his essential baseball newsletter, the Brewers are above average at run prevention and only slightly above average on offense. That doesn’t sound super exciting – it would be more fun, if drearily familiar, to just say things like “they have the best offense in baseball” and let that explain things. But it turns out that being good at everything, without being spectacular at any one thing, is an excellent way to win a bunch of baseball games.

No regular in the Brewers’ lineup is hitting .300, and no one has 20 homers. (Christian Yelich leads them with 19; he’s one of just three Brewers with more than seven.)

But there are few holes in this lineup. Among the team’s top nine players by plate appearances, only catcher William Contreras and shortstop Joey Ortiz carry an OPS+ under the league average of 100. (That’s one of the reasons the Brewers might be looking for a shortstop at the Deadline.) When you put all that together, and mix in an above-average pitching staff, you win a lot of games.

Don’t complicate it: When you’re good at everything and bad at nothing, you are, well … you’re good.

They’re getting major contributions from unlikely places
Fun fact about the Brewers: They don’t have a single player among the top 50 this season in FanGraphs’ version of WAR. (Their top player is right fielder Sal Frelick, at 64th.) Another fun fact: Some of their best players are guys I’m betting most of you don’t know much about.

Remember that offseason trade that sent Devin Williams to the Yankees and brought in Nestor Cortes, who started just two games for Milwaukee before going on the IL? Well, that deal also brought in third baseman Caleb Durbin, who has been an on-base machine for the Brewers (he actually leads the NL with 14 HBP, in only 77 games). Left fielder Isaac Collins was selected in the Triple-A phase of the 2022 Rule 5 Draft from the Rockies – a team that maybe shouldn’t just be giving guys away? – and is playing outstanding defense while posting a .371 OBP.

First baseman Andrew Vaughn, the third overall pick in the 2019 Draft, never fulfilled his potential for the White Sox before the Brewers acquired him earlier this season; he now has a 1.239 OPS in his first eight games for the team, because of course he does. Again, like with Priester, the Brewers have taken other teams’ coal and turned it into diamonds – over and over again.

They’re getting a little lucky
Well, “luck” is always a loaded word, so maybe we’ll go with “well-timed sequencing.” The Brewers are sequencing very well: As Sheehan notes, “The Brewers’ offensive events should have produced 441 runs. The team has 473. That’s more than three extra wins right there.”

Basically, they have hit better with runners in scoring position than most teams, and – perhaps most importantly – they strike out less in those situations than almost anybody. Their pitching staff also has MLB’s fifth-highest strand rate, an important metric, but not necessarily one that has historically been the most repeatable.

None of this is to say the Brewers aren’t really good; they obviously are. But fortune has smiled on them, at least slightly.

They are set up well to get better from here
With everything else going in the Brewers’ favor, having Woodruff get healthy and work himself back into top form just in time for the stretch run is a huge development. Lest you forget, this is a two-time All-Star pitcher who was fifth in NL Cy Young Award voting in 2021 and boasted a sub-3.00 ERA from 2018-23 before missing nearly two full seasons. Add in the emergence of Misiorowski, and that’s two top-of-the-rotation options that Milwaukee barely used before the All-Star break.

But this is another advantage of the Brewers’ depth: They have all sorts of flexibility leading up to the Deadline. Need a shortstop? Maybe another big bat? (Eugenio Suárez would be wonderful, wouldn’t he?) Anything else? The Brewers essentially have extras of everything. They are outstanding right now. But they’re about to get better. Look out.