The 2025 Milwaukee Brewers need to be studied.
A roster that's been pieced together through Rule 5 draft picks, unheralded prospects, pitching cast-offs, a declining former MVP, and one top prospect has run away with the National League. Entering Saturday, the Brewers had the best record in baseball by a whopping six games. They had the best record in the NL by 7.5 games. They had the best run differential in the sport at +161, easily outpacing the second-best Chicago Cubs 47 runs.
At the start of play on May 24, Milwaukee was 25-28. The Brewers were 9.5 games behind the Philadelphia Phillies for the best record in the NL, in fourth place in the NL Central, 6.5 games behind the Cubs.
Since May 24? The Brewers are 52-16. That's not a misprint, they are 52-16. 52-16! That's a .765 winning percentage in modern Major League Baseball. Over a full season, that's a 124-win pace. As in, a team that would finish 124-38. The best record in history is 116-46, and for nearly three full months, the Brewers have played at a pace eight games better than the best team ever.
What happened Friday night though, might have been the most absurd example of Brewers devil magic yet.
On Friday night against the Cincinnati Reds, the Brewers fell behind 8-1 in the bottom of the second, as star rookie Jacob Misiorowski had the worst start of his young career. When the Reds plated their eighth run, their win expectancy was 97.5 percent.
Three guesses what happened.
Sure enough, in the top of the third inning, Milwaukee scored five runs. Suddenly, that 8-1 lead was 8-6. Then the Brewers scored two more in the fourth inning, completing the seven run comeback in two innings. Then one more each in the 6th and 7th innings. The Brewers bullpen, naturally, held the Reds scoreless after the second, and Milwaukee had a 10-8 win. After trailing 8-1.
The third inning was a microcosm of how the Brewers have managed it.
A 76mph single from Brandon Lockridge. An 84mph single from Sal Frelick. A 69mph groundball that moved the two runners to second and third. A Christian Yelich double on a 62mph pop up to score a run. Followed by Andrew Vaughn, the new Aaron Judge, hitting a three-run homer.
Same with the fourth inning, when Sal Frelick reached on a 78mph infield single, Joey Ortiz singled, and William Contreras reached on another weakly hit infield single played into an error by Gavin Lux. Yelich then singled again, tying the game.
It's just…it's absurd.
The win gave the Brewers 13 in a row, extending their lead over the second-place Cubs to nine games. Their magic number to clinch the Central is just 33. At the rate they're going, they could officially end the division race by the start of September. Heck, they've lost four games total since July 7.
How are they doing this? Honestly, there is no rational explanation. The Brewers roster is simply not this good. Their batting average on balls in play is miraculous. League average for balls put in play is roughly .300, or slightly under. Here's a list of Brewers players and their batting average on balls in play.
Some of these are part-time players, some are hurt, and some have batted ball profiles that can lead to BABIP overperformance. But some are also just getting incredibly lucky, and at the perfect time. They might go 0-3, but that fourth at bat results in a run-scoring 73mph infield single. For some teams, you'd think that was an unsustainable strategy. For the Brewers? It's working perfectly.
Obviously, this is not all luck; you don't win this many games, have this kind of success over a sustained period without having talent on your roster. But the Brewers don't have a single player likely to have a four-win season. They've been extremely fortunate that Andrew Vaughn has put up one of the best months of his career at the perfect time.
It's a testament to how close the gaps are between teams in modern baseball. If you can find the right combination of talent, timing, good luck, and quality pitching, most teams are capable of being the "best" in the sport over a given period. No matter how much, or how little, they spend on their roster.
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