MILWAUKEE -- How does the manager of one of Major League Baseball’s final four teams unwind when the workday is over and it’s the night before Game 1 of the National League Championship Series?
If you’re Brewers skipper Pat Murphy, you coach.
“It’s like the switch never goes off with him,” said Brewers radio broadcaster Lane Grindle.
Grindle’s son, Luke, and Murphy’s son, Austin, are on a 12U team for Murphy’s Arizona-based Sandlot All Stars program, which has a partnership with the Hitters Baseball Academy in Caledonia, Wis. Just as the Brewers were finishing their workout at American Family Field on the eve of the NLCS on Oct. 10, the boys and their teammates were beginning practice at Helfaer Field, a youth baseball facility right next to the ballpark on the former site of Milwaukee County Stadium.
Grindle looked up and saw Murphy in the stands. So, he coaxed him to come down to the field.
And in no time, Murphy was helping to run practice.
He watched bullpens and worked on some situational stuff on the infield, some baserunning, all of it,” Grindle said. “He’s a savant, he really is. I wish everybody could see him in that setting, because you get an incredible understanding of just how much he knows about the game.”
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Coaching kids is one thing.
Coaching Major Leaguers is another, although Murphy has a knack for blurring the lines.
Take Game 4 of the NLCS. Third inning. The Brewers trailed, 4-0, after Shohei Ohtani hit a three-run moonshot in the Dodgers’ four-run second. Milwaukee hitters had started the game eight-up, eight-down against Tyler Glasnow. Things were not going well.
Murphy leaned in to offer nine-hole hitter David Hamilton a suggestion.
No other manager in baseball would deliver it this way.
“I told him, ‘Hammy, you’re not a good bunter, I know,’” Murphy said. “He did lead the Major Leagues in bunting for hits, but he’s not a great bunter -- yet. I said, ‘Look, put a bunt down today, and I promise you, you’re going to get pitches to hit the rest of the day.’”
Murphy’s thinking? Hamilton didn’t do much in the regular season against the Dodgers -- he was 2-for-14. They would be expecting a bunt. They would set up the defense and throw him good pitches to bunt. So, Hamilton dropped a bunt. It was not a good one. He became part of 10-up, 10-down to begin the game.
But sure enough, once the Brewers got the comeback started, Hamilton was right in the middle of everything. In the fifth, he hit an RBI single to make it 4-3 and knock Glasnow out of the game. Then he used his speed to steal second on Dodgers reliever Evan Phillips to open first base for Brice Turang to be intentionally walked. With the pressure on, Phillips walked William Contreras and was replaced by left-hander Alex Vesia, who walked Jake Bauers on four pitches to force in a run.
Poof, tie game.
And in the ninth against Edwin Díaz after the Brewers had the lead, Hamilton got another pitch to hit and delivered an insurance homer that sailed a Statcast-projected 402 feet. It was his first home run since Aug. 18.
Poof, Milwaukee wins.
The Brewers, led by their occasionally unorthodox manager, are going to the World Series. And they believe they have the team to win it.
“When people believe in themselves,” Murphy said, “that gives you the greatest joy you can ever believe.”
Murphy always believed he could manage in the Major Leagues if given the chance. For a long time it looked like he might not get one, despite big success as a college coach at stops including Notre Dame and Arizona State, where he went to the College World Series four times but left in 2009 amid an investigation of the program that eventually cleared Murphy of wrongdoing. He characterizes the whole ordeal as “a major injustice.”
So, he went to manage in the Minors for San Diego, and even got a callup to the Majors as interim skipper in 2015, only to be passed over for the full-time job. Today, Murphy sees that maybe he wasn’t ready. Maybe he was “still under construction” as a leader, as he likes to say.
“I made every mistake three times, and sometimes way more than that,” he said. “And most of it is well-intended, but a lot of it is ego. A lot of it is feeling like you have to have control. A lot of it is insecurity. So you want to make sure, double down, tell them three times.
“I think you learn as you get older and you learn that you're not that important, and be careful of that thing you have, which is authority. Don't use it as power. That's the danger.”
Through his mistakes, he believes he’s improved in that department. But there is work to do.
“I'm under construction,” he said. “For what it's worth, I'm still trying to figure it out.”
Here’s an example from early in his coaching career. Murphy has long had a soft spot for undersized players with heart, so it didn’t take long for him to love what a skinny infielder named Craig Counsell brought to Notre Dame in 1989. But he was a quiet kid, too quiet for Murphy’s liking. During indoor workouts over the winter, with Lou Holtz and the football team impatiently waiting to use the same field, Murphy instructed Counsell to yell, “MINE!” for every ground ball.
“I wanted him to stick his chest out and be a leader,” Murphy said. “There would be this shortstop out there yelling, ‘Mine!’ for every ground ball, and people would be like, ‘What the hell was that?’ But I was trying to bring it out of him, and he wanted to kill me.
“That was a mistake. He did just fine without yelling, ‘Mine!’ for ground balls. Had a pretty nice big league career.”
Murphy learned that you can’t force someone to be a leader -- a lesson that has served him well as soft-spoken Brewers captain Christian Yelich has grown into that role naturally over the past decade in Milwaukee. He arrived two years after Murphy, who came to town to be Counsell’s bench coach in 2016. When Counsell made a stunning departure for the Cubs after the 2023 season -- not stunning that it happened, but stunning that he went to Milwaukee’s chief rival -- the Brewers quickly identified Murphy as a candidate to take over.
It was not a given. Murphy was about to turn 65, and at the risk of sounding ageist, that was a consideration for a club stocked with young players. The more club officials talked to him about it, however, the more they came to understand he was the right man for the job.
“I think this was really, right place, right time for him,” said Padres president of baseball operations A.J. Preller, the GM who’d passed over Murphy in San Diego. “He had the trust of the team, of the organization. I think the experience he had with them, and then getting the job, put him in the right place to succeed. And he’s one of the best managers in the game.”
The Brewers have been the best team in the game since Murphy took the helm, with MLB’s highest winning percentage over the last three regular seasons. Instead of taking a step back after losing Counsell and former NL Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes in the same offseason, they were one win better in 2024 and won the division again. Then they set a franchise record with 97 wins in ‘25. Murphy won the NL Manager of the Year Award both years, the first Milwaukee manager to win the honor, which dates back to 1983.
After setting another franchise record with 103 wins in ‘26, he’s lined up to become the first manager ever to win that award three years in a row. Of course, Murphy credits the players. He likens himself to a chef, standing back to let things simmer.
“Sometimes your best move is to stay out of the way,” he said.
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And then there are the times you want to really get in there and coach. Here’s a little story about that.
Luke Grindle was pitching a gem in an 11U championship game during the MLB All-Star break when Murphy leaned into Lane Grindle’s ear and said in a low voice, “Hey, he’s tipping his breaking ball. You might want to go talk to him about that.”
Grindle suppressed a smile.
But Murphy was serious.
“I go, ‘Murph, they’re 11. They’re not going to pick up on it,’” Grindle said.
Murphy’s response?
“You don’t know that!” he said.
It still makes Grindle laugh.
“His mind is incredible,” Grindle said.
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At the end of Spring Training, Murphy made a presentation about his theme for the 2026 season. It was called, “Thread the needle.”
Nearly seven months later, standing on the field at Dodger Stadium, soaked in the beer and champagne that signified the Brewers had earned a trip to the World Series, he explained what that meant.
“When you thread a needle, OK, you take the little thread and you put it through that little hole. There’s not a lot of margin for error, you know?” said Murphy. “You have to be poised. It’s precise. And that’s what it takes to be the very, very best. So if you want to go beyond where we went [last] year with the best record in baseball, put yourself in that position again, and thread the needle.
“That’s exactly what the guys did. They would not be denied. Most teams get down 4-0 in a place like this, loud and crazy with their stars and we woke up their giant, he hits a three-run homer, most teams lay down. They just kept going, and that’s the beautiful thing about this group.”
They’re still going.
Game 1 of the World Series is Friday night.