MILWAUKEE -- Pat Murphy understood that he was witnessing history when Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani singlehandedly sent the Brewers into the offseason with an epic performance on the mound and at the plate in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series.
That didn’t mean the Brewers manager enjoyed it.
"Let everybody else enjoy the historic moment,” Murphy said. “It looked like the big 12-year-old in a Little League game, and he hits three homers and punches out everybody. It didn’t feel that good.”
It was that kind of a series for the Brewers, who punched above their weight all season while leading the Major Leagues with 97 victories and took down the rival Cubs in an emotional NL Division Series. Then they ran into a Dodgers behemoth that was rested and ready for the NLCS.
Throughout the NLCS, a Dodgers sweep in which they outscored the Brewers 15-4 and held Milwaukee to the lowest batting average (.118) ever for a postseason series of at least three games, Murphy noted the disparity between the teams, including that L.A.'s player payroll was at least three times that of Milwaukee’s. Each of the four starting pitchers who shut down the Brewers -- Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Ohtani -- signed contracts with the Dodgers with guaranteed dollars in excess of the Brewers’ entire 2025 payroll.
But that’s the challenge for the Brewers moving forward. If they want to end a World Series drought that reaches back to 1982, they’ll probably have to get through a club like the Dodgers, Phillies, Mets, Padres or Cubs.
A week later, looking back on 2025 and ahead to '26 in a season-ending press conference at American Family Field, Murphy was asked to reflect on that challenge.
"I felt that we did not put our best foot forward in that series, and I think it would have made some difference, but the Dodgers were on it. And you know when a team is on it,” Murphy said.
He added, “It’s just ... it’s what we do. Consistently, how can we figure it out? And then we end up in these situations, and hopefully we’re playing our best where things are going great for us at that time and we don’t run into that type of buzz saw like we did. I think the Cubs series just emotionally took so much out of them, and then to have to come back [after one day off] and play [the Dodgers] was difficult on the guys. But that’s another learning situation for us, so here we go.”
Murphy also talked about baseball’s economics earlier in the week during an appearance on the New York Post’s baseball podcast. In that conversation with hosts Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman, Murphy praised his players for overcoming injury and a modest budget to lead MLB in victories and clinch a postseason berth for the seventh time in the last eight seasons. He called watching them perform, “awesome.”
And he conceded that things get more difficult in the postseason.
"I think it's changing in that the rich are getting richer, and it's getting more difficult to break through,” Murphy said on the podcast. “I think we broke through as good as anyone has of the small-market teams. Now, you're talking 10 years ago when Kansas City did it. I mean, that's pretty special. Homegrown, for the most part. And I think we have to do it that way, too. I think it has to be homegrown and pick up some of the right pieces. And I mean, it's still very difficult when you're going against ... look at the pitching we faced in those four games.”
The Brewers, meanwhile, went into the postseason with two starting pitchers who were fully stretched out: Freddy Peralta and Quinn Priester, plus Jose Quintana on a limited pitch count coming off a calf injury.
"I think small-market teams,” Murphy said, “you just have to piece it together.”
Still, he said, “I commend this team and I admire this team we had in Milwaukee. Unfortunately, we ran into the buzz saw of the Dodgers at the wrong time.”
The Brewers will head into 2026 with the same aim: Take down one of the NL’s monsters and earn a trip to the World Series.
"It’s not our job to think about what the economics of the sport are,” said Brewers president of baseball operations and GM Matt Arnold, who was promoted to that new title on Thursday in part to prevent other teams from poaching him to mimic Milwaukee’s recent success. “That’s above all of us.
"In our situation, what are we going to do about it? That’s really where I come at it from. We’re going to have the resources that we need. We have support from our ownership to put a quality product on the field.”