In the first 31 years of the award’s existence, not a single Milwaukee Brewers skipper received the Baseball Writers Association of America’s manager of the year honor until Pat Murphy took the job.
Now, Murphy has won it twice in two years at the helm of the Brewers.
Murphy became one of only four managers ever to win the award in back-to-back years since the BBWAA took it over in 1983, joining Atlanta’s Bobby Cox (2004-05), Tampa Bay’s Kevin Cash (2020-21) and Cleveland’s Stephen Vogt (2024-25) by receiving 27 of 30 first-place votes and appearing on all but one ballot when the results were announced Nov. 11. Murphy and Vogt, the American League winner, are the first two to win manager of the year in their first two years on the job with a team.
Murphy beat out finalists Rob Thomson of Philadelphia and Terry Francona of Cincinnati.
A year after taking over for Craig Counsell, the franchise’s winningest manager, in 2024 and guiding the Brewers to 93 wins and a division title, Murphy was the top man in the dugout as they went even a step further in exceeding expectations by winning 97 games. That was the most in MLB, which set the stage for the Brewers to and advance to the National League Championship Series.
Two years, two victories — and two deflections of credit.
“I think what you have to recognize is the Milwaukee Brewers are committed,” Murphy said. “And to collaborate with the ‘Ivory Tower’ (the Brewers front office) and our coaching staff, that’s what it’s all about.
“I wasn’t particularly nice to them, but they held the standards very, very high and forced those standards.
“We had the right ‘who.’ We had guys who are aware and hungry. It makes the manager look good at the end of the day.
There haven’t been many managers to do what Murphy has in this position.
There may be even fewer that do it with his unique, inimitable style.
As designated hitter and team captain Christian Yelich put it this year: “What you see is what you get.”
Yelich said that in the wake of Murphy telling reporters shortstop Joey Ortiz was out of the lineup because “the manager’s pissed” at his swing decisions.
That’s far from the only case of Murphy pulling no punches and coating nothing with sugar. He also benched Sal Frelick and Caleb Durbin during a game in April, then a week later effectively benched his starting pitcher, Tobias Myers, in the middle of a game after two innings.
“I say things to players because you want to impact players,” Murphy said. “There’s been cases where I haven’t spoke to players for a great length of time, like (Andrew) Vaughn. I said one sentence to Vaughn and 51 RBIs later was maybe my second sentence. Sometimes it’s not what you say, it’s what you don’t say.”
Murphy’s tactics are often easy to see, from aggressive baserunning that helps set the Brewers apart to equally assertive bullpen usage in which he rode the likes of Aaron Ashby, Abner Uribe and Jared Koenig as much as possible, keeping in line with his “Win tonight” mantra, to two team meetings before the calendar flipped to June.
He pounded the table for third baseman Caleb Durbin in spring and then again in May kept him in the lineup every day despite major struggles, giving him the runway to break out.
But in baseball, a manager’s job is often what happens behind the scenes, that which can’t be easily gleaned by the public eye. This season, that ranged anywhere from telling Brice Turang he was going to get a first-pitch breaking ball to drop a squeeze bunt down against for a walk-off win to printing out notes to leave on players’ chairs when they get to the clubhouse.
Sometimes that involved pressing the right buttons that had nothing to do with the games, too. On Aug. 1, a day after a light trade deadline for the Brewers had many, including some around the team, underwhelmed, Murphy jotted down a note for himself somewhere in his mountain of desktop papers: “Less is more,” it read. “I don’t have to go out there shouting because we had a big trade deadline thing,” he said that afternoon.
Instead, he decided he was going to pull out a pancake, one of the many types of snacks he keeps on his person during games, during an interview on the nationally televised Apple+ broadcast.
“I add a little carbs during the game,” Murphy said after the game. “When I wear I hoodie during the game, that’s full of carbs.”
From holding players accountable to, yes, pocket pancakes, it shows the duality of Murphy as a manager, a fierce competitor at his core but someone who’s at his best when he’s keeping things light.
“I learn a ton every year,” Murphy said. “You’re crazy if you don’t. We’re under construction; we’re always trying to get better.
“This year, the way we started as opposed to ’24 (when) we started so hot and things were clicking, ’25 didn’t start like that. There were so many injuries and so many question marks and guys searching for their best selves.
“What clicked is the resiliency they had. While we struggled, we got on it in time and we got on a roll. I don’t think anybody feels like this year there was anybody who did their best. We were a team through and through.”
In an era where the true impact of a manager’s strategy on wins and losses can be difficult to impossible to measure with so much of game-planning streamlined from front offices on down, Murphy’s fingerprints were once again easy to ascertain by glancing at the Brewers.
That, more than anything, may be the best way to remember Murphy’s second consecutive award-winning season.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Brewers’ Pat Murphy makes history by winning second NL manager of the year award
Reporting by Curt Hogg, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
