At long last, the Brewers won a World Series title. Milwaukee closed out a dominant postseason with a Game 5 victory in St. Petersburg, capping off the year for what was the best team from start to finish in 2026. And if you want to point to one component that helped the Brewers win it all, it was a reliable pitching staff that won Milwaukee the close games.
Winning the close game
In the 2026 World Series, the Brewers won three games decided by three runs or fewer. Two of those, which came in Games 1 & 2, the Brewers won by just one run. In the NLCS, it was the same theme, as three of the four games were decided by three or fewer runs in Milwaukee’s favor.
Runs are, generally, much harder to come by in the playoffs. And while the Brewers had their scoring bursts, much of the credit has to be given to that stellar pitching staff.
Granted, that pitching didn’t beat hitters the way it did in the regular season. The Brewers finished with a 24.2% Whiff% during the playoffs, down from the 27.3% in the regular season. That’s not a surprise, given that A) it’s not a 162-game sample size and B) Milwaukee faced advanced competition.
Jacob Misiorowski‘s Whiff% dipped significantly during the playoffs, although it was still awfully hard to hit the likely Cy Young winner. Aaron Ashby was unbeaten in the postseason, and the rest of the cast got the job done.
If you want to start somewhere, it was the pitching staff.
Vanquishing demons
The Brewers were beaten badly last year in the NLCS. After just getting by the Cubs in a five-game NLDS, Milwaukee was swept at the hands of the Dodgers in a series that wasn’t close. Blake Snell & Yoshinobu Yamamoto shut down the Brewers’ offense, and Shohei Ohtani took care of everything in Game 4.
But in 2026, the script was flipped. Los Angeles wound up making the bulk of the mistakes, highlighted by a middle-middle fastball to Jake Bauers from Blake Snell in Game 3 of the NLCS that permanently turned the tide in the series.
The right mix
We went over earlier in the month how the Brewers made this happen, through player development and trades. And overall, this really is the right mix for both the present & future.
A dominant bullpen, strong starting pitching, and a reliable, fast defense headlined by Brice Turang, Cooper Pratt, and a fantastic trio of outfielders (Jackson Chourio, Sal Frelick, Garrett Mitchell) helped make this a complete effort.
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