September 28, 2026
September 28, 2026
Milwaukee Brewers’ 2025 Season: A Franchise-Best Year Meets a Ruthless End
The Brewers’ 2025 season will be remembered as the winningest year in franchise history. It will also be remembered for the four punishing nights that ended it. Milwaukee finished 97-65, a total no previous Brewers team had ever reached, and rode that record to the top seed in the National League. Pat Murphy’s club pulled away from the NL Central by five games over the Cubs. It survived a taut division series against that same Chicago team. Then it ran into a Los Angeles Dodgers roster that would not be denied. The season’s final chapter was a four-game NLCS sweep, capped by one of the greatest single-game postseason performances in baseball history. Milwaukee still spent six months proving it belonged among the sport’s elite.
Milwaukee’s front office made a bet nobody outside the organization loved. It defined the pitching staff for six months. General manager Matt Arnold shipped All-Star closer Devin Williams to the New York Yankees in December. The trade reshaped the bullpen overnight and left Milwaukee without its most dominant late-inning arm. Nestor Cortes and infield prospect Caleb Durbin came back in return, adding rotation depth rather than another shutdown reliever. The move looked like a step backward to fans who had watched Williams close out games for years. Trevor Megill answered every doubt, converting 30 saves with a 2.49 ERA and never letting go of the ninth inning. Freddy Peralta anchored the rotation, finishing 17-6 with a 2.70 ERA and 204 strikeouts in a career-best season. Quinn Priester broke out behind him at 13-3 with a 3.32 ERA, and veteran José Quintana added stability at 11-7. An offseason that unsettled the fan base turned into the deepest pitching staff Milwaukee had fielded in years.
Christian Yelich still set the tone, but this offense no longer needed him alone. Yelich delivered 151 hits, 29 home runs and 103 RBIs, proof his prime was far from over. Jackson Chourio, only in his age-21 season, matched him stride for stride with 148 hits, 21 home runs and 88 runs scored. He became the face of the next Brewers era. Brice Turang led the club with 168 hits and 97 runs. Once valued mostly for his glove, he had become one of the National League’s most complete second basemen. Catcher William Contreras added 147 hits, 89 runs and 17 home runs, pairing power with real strike-zone control. Each drove the lineup differently, and that collective depth became the engine of the Brewers’ 2025 season.
Nothing about August 2025 looked routine once Milwaukee caught fire. The Brewers ripped off fourteen consecutive wins. The rest of baseball took notice.
The streak started like dozens contenders enjoy every summer. It became something historic. Milwaukee became the first team since the 2022 Seattle Mariners to win fourteen straight games. Its rotation and bullpen barely blinked through the run. By the time the streak ended, the Brewers had separated themselves from the pack, forcing the rest of the division to play catch-up.
Chicago refused to fade quietly. At one point the Cubs led Milwaukee by 6.5 games in the Central. The Brewers answered with sustained pressure, chipping away at that deficit until the lead flipped in their favor. Milwaukee completed the turnaround on September 21, clinching the NL Central outright and finishing five games clear of Chicago. The Brewers had already locked up a playoff berth on September 13, the first team in baseball to do so that year. Chicago kept pushing. Milwaukee had already pulled away.
Pat Murphy did not just manage a 97-win team. He built a culture that made 97 wins feel inevitable by August. Voters recognized as much, naming him the National League’s Manager of the Year for the second consecutive season, a rare repeat honor. Murphy’s fingerprints were everywhere. A bullpen absorbed the loss of its closer without missing a beat. A lineup trusted unheralded players like Turang near the top of the order. A clubhouse never panicked when Chicago cut into the division lead. The Brewers’ 2025 season carried the stamp of a manager who found more in his roster than the sum of its parts suggested was possible. Milwaukee had heard for years it operated on a fraction of the sport’s biggest payrolls. Under Murphy, that gap stopped mattering.
Milwaukee and Chicago had waited decades for this moment. The 2025 NLDS marked the first time the I-94 rivalry had been settled in the postseason, and Milwaukee made sure it ended in Wisconsin’s favor.
The Brewers came out swinging in the series’ opening two games at home. They jumped on the Cubs early. It put Chicago in a hole nobody expected after a full season of trading division blows. Milwaukee’s rotation set the tone, and its lineup made every advantage stand up.
Chicago refused to disappear. The Cubs clawed back with two wins of their own at Wrigley Field, forcing a decisive Game 5. Every ounce of composure Murphy had built all summer got tested at once. Milwaukee delivered when it mattered most. The Brewers carried a lead into the late innings back home, and Brice Turang put the outcome beyond doubt with a home run that sealed a 3-1 win. Milwaukee was headed to the National League Championship Series, the win over Chicago validating everything the Brewers had built all season.
Everything Milwaukee built across six months collapsed against one team in four nights. The cruelest part: the Dodgers were the team the Brewers had already beaten every time they played.
Shohei Ohtani delivered the signature moment of the entire postseason, and it happened to Milwaukee. He took José Quintana deep to lead off Game 4, becoming the first pitcher in postseason history to open a game with a home run of his own. He was not finished. Ohtani added two more home runs off Chad Patrick and Trevor Megill. He struck out ten Brewers hitters and worked into the seventh inning of a 5-1 Dodgers win that completed the sweep. No pitcher had ever hit multiple home runs in a single postseason game before that night. Milwaukee had gone 6-0 against Los Angeles in the regular season. None of that history mattered once October arrived.
The larger story of the NLCS was an offense that had carried Milwaukee all year suddenly going quiet. The Brewers scored exactly one run in each of the first three games. They managed only 14 hits in the entire series. That averaged out to .118, the lowest batting average ever recorded in a postseason series of at least three games. Christian Yelich went 1-for-14. Brice Turang managed a single hit in 15 at-bats. The Brewers’ 2025 season did not deserve to end on a whimper like that, not after a summer of streaks and a division title won the hard way. October baseball rarely hands out fairness. Los Angeles went on to beat Toronto in a seven-game World Series, a reminder of how good the team that finally slowed Milwaukee down really was.
Ninety-seven wins is not a number this franchise had ever reached before, and it will not be forgotten because of how October ended. The Brewers’ 2025 season reset expectations for an organization that had spent years fighting for respect on a mid-market budget. Pat Murphy’s Manager of the Year award, Freddy Peralta’s ace-caliber season, and homegrown talent in Chourio, Turang and Contreras all point toward a core built to contend again. The NLCS sweep stung. It should sting for a fan base that watched its team dominate the sport for six months, then go cold against Ohtani and the Dodgers. A roster that just delivered a franchise record and a division title earned through a genuine comeback does not need one bad series to define it. Milwaukee proved in 2025 that it belongs among the sport’s true contenders.
For the complete statistical record of the campaign, Baseball-Reference maintains Milwaukee’s full team ledger, and coverage of the NLCS collapse against the Dodgers detailed Ohtani’s historic night in full.
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