Brewers Must Shed Underdog Mentality to Win World Series

For the second straight season, the Milwaukee Brewers had the best record in baseball in the regular season. This time around, they set a franchise record (again) with 103 wins. They should be the favorites to win the World Series and should feel in the clubhouse like they take a backseat to no one. They should enter every series feeling confident that they are going to win it.

Maybe they will. Hopefully they will.

They no longer have any virtual boxes to check in the regular season, but a few remain in the playoffs and it's time to get the job done. The franchise has never won an NL pennant (the lone pennant came in the AL in 1982) and is one of five MLB franchises without a World Series title.

There's been a theme in the playoffs this decade, too, with the Brewers. In 2021, they won 95 games in the regular season and grabbed the No. 2 seed in the NL. They lost three games to one in the NLDS to the 88-win Braves. In 2023, the Brewers lost in the Wild Card Series as the No. 3 seed to the 84-win Diamondbacks. In 2024, the 93-win Brewers, again the No. 3 seed, lost to the 89-win Mets in the Wild Card Series. Last year, the Brewers reached the NLCS and lost to the eventual repeat champion Dodgers.

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It seems fine, but that made it four straight playoff trips getting bounced by an inferior playoff seed.

In Major League Baseball, much of the talk centers on market size because of the lack of a salary cap. With that spin, maybe it doesn't feel like the Brewers are perpetual playoff failures or anything, but how would we talk about the Mets or Cubs if they had the same playoff resume this decade?

And here's where I get to my plea for the Brewers.

Don't act like the underdog. Don't act like David to anyone else's Goliath (even if we know the outcome there). Don't act like "The Little Engine That Could."

It might not be overly egregious to some, but that's how things have gone so far under manager Pat Murphy. I've mentioned it before, but in the playoffs last season, he harped on opposing player salaries on several occasions (including Matthew Boyd of the Cubs, who is on a two-year, $29 million contract).

Earlier this season, after stomping the Cubs (as usual), Murphy offered up this gem: "[The Cubs] don't even know most of our guys' names, so they're never going to be intimidated by us, but we're not looking for that."

Please start looking for that. There needs to be an attitude shift now that it's the playoffs. If you want to change the results, change the mindset. Get it through your head, Brewers, that you are the Big Bad Wolf. You are the Terminator. You are the FINAL BOSS.

Walk into the ballpark thinking the other team should be scared of you.

The history doesn't matter. Rewrite the history. Look at college football. Indiana coach Curt Cignetti carried himself with an air of "everyone should be worried about us" and made history in two seasons, transforming the Hoosiers from Big Ten cellar dweller to first-time national champion. It wasn't, "aw shucks, everyone knows Ohio State has better athletes than us," or "yeah, Alabama has far better competition than us," or anything other than an attitude that signaled not only did he expect to win, but knew it would happen.

This is where things need to shift with the Brewers. You aren't scared of the Dodgers or (if it comes to this in the World Series) Yankees. You chuckle at how the Padres are so damn hot coming into the series, knowing that you, the Brewers, won 15 of your last 18 with a plus-46 run differential.

You have Jacob Misiorowski and Logan Henderson anchoring the rotation. You have Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill waiting in the bullpen. You have Jackson Chourio and Brice Turang and Jake Bauers and all kinds of clutch hitting. You steal bases and play great defense.

You are the final boss.

"We ain't gonna be anyone's underdog," Murphy said earlier this week.

Yes!

That's the message, Brewers. Do more of that. Make everyone else bow down to you. That's how you win championships.