The Milwaukee Brewers have come to our village to rassle your beloved St. Louis Cardinals. These NL Central adversaries will pack five major-league ballgames into four days, so the pitchers from both sides will earn their pay envelopes.
As is custom, the Brewers are jogging ahead of the pack in the NL Central, coming to St. Louis with a six-game lead over the Cubs, and a 7 and ½ game cushion on the third-place Cardinals.
At the moment, the Pirates and Reds are non-factors in a “race” for first place. The Cubs and Cardinals ain’t exactly putting a scare into the Crew, either.
FanGraphs gives Chicago a 10.5 percent shot of winning the division, with the Redbirds next in line with a dinky 3.3%.
Just for kicks … and to note the runaway-train nature of the Brewers since the start of the 2018 season … let’s take a look at the NL Central standings, regular season, from 2018 through now.
I’ll just list each team’s winning percentage and how many games they’d trail the Brewers in the NLC standings over the last eight-plus seasons:
— Brewers .570, division kings.
— Cardinals .525 … 61 games out.
— Cubs .518 … 72 games behind.
— Reds .468 … 131 games in arrears.
— Pirates, .562 … 170 game deficit.
What is this? A runaway freight train from the Wisconsin & Southern Railroad? The Brewers own the NL Central. They’ve booted the Cards out of first place. They put the Cubs on a forklift and moved them to the side, out of the way.
Even though both franchises have invested a lot more money to fund the player payroll, it’s a no contest. The Brewers rule the NL Central precinct, at least until someone can rise up and knock ‘em out.
Since I mentioned payroll, here’s how much each NL Central team spent, total, on the 26-man payroll from 2018 through 2025.
– Cubs, $1.46 billion
– Cards, $1.24 billion
– Reds, $885 million
– Brewers, $877 million
– Pirates, $537 million
Over the eight seasons the Cubs outspent the Brewers by $583 million.
The Cards outspent the Crew by $363 million.
Milwaukee has made the postseason seven times in the previous eight seasons. Only the Dodgers – 8 for 8 – can top that among NL teams. (Though Atlanta has also made the tournament seven times in the past eight years.
The Cardinals made the postseason four times during the past eight seasons. Hey, at least that’s 50 percent. The Cubs did it only three times. The Reds are 2 for 8. The Pirates are 0 for 8.
What’s really cute is to take a look at other MLB big spenders and how they’ve been embarrassed by the team from America’s Dairyland.
* The Mets made the playoffs just twice over the past eight seasons despite spending $1.083 billion more than Milwaukee.
* The Giants outspent the Brewers by $483 million and missed making the playoffs seven times over the past eight years.
* Boston has qualified for the postseason three times in eight seasons – four fewer times than Milwaukee – even though the Red Sox had a spending advantage of $803 million over the Brewers.
* The dysfunctional Angels invested $543 million more in the payroll than Milwaukee’s total, and those sad-sack Halos didn’t make the postseason one time.
* Between 2018 and 2025 the Blue Jays outspent the Brewers by $403 million. The Rangers: $343 million more than MIL. On and on.
With information provided by the Spotrac salary-tracking site (I’m a subscriber), from 2018 through 2025 the Brewers spent $877 million on the 26-man payroll, an average of $109.6 million. To avoid confusion the salary accounting was to the full size during the abbreviated 2020 season.
Anyway, during the eight-season run (2018-25) the Brewers ranked 13th in payroll spending among the 15 NL teams. And they were No. 23 among the 30 MLB franchises overall.
I’ll state the obvious: the Brewers are smart, really smart, about their spending choices.
Sitting at 55-33 through July 5, and coming off a 97-win season under manager Pat Murphy in 2025, the Brewers operate with a $145.9 million payroll that ranks 19th in the majors. (Though it isn’t unusual for the Crew to be in the bottom third.) The spending gap between the top five and bottom five MLB payrolls is at the largest divide since 1985.
Yet, recent studies continue to point to Milwaukee as the most efficient spend-to-win franchise in baseball. They are essentially paying $1.06 million less per win compared to the average major-league front office. If we strip the competitive balance tax calculations and go with their season-opening active cash payroll of $129 million, the Brewers are roughly 44 percent more efficient than the league average.
How can the Brewers manage to pull this off year after year after year?
1. Pitching Infrastructure: Loving the lab. Do you see the Brewers pay massive premiums for career-peak free-agent pitchers? No. President of baseball ops Matt Arnold and his brilliant staff would rather manufacture them in the pitching lab. According to multiple media reports, the Brewers' pitching lab prioritizes "stuff" over track record and makes a speciality out of identifying undervalued arms and optimizing their pitch arsenal to maximize run prevention.
This season the Brewers have the best team ERA in the majors at 3.35. Their rotation is No. 1 in the land with a 3.24 ERA, and the bullpen is fourth best.
While making the playoffs in 2023, 2024 and 2025, the Crew had the No. 2 starter ERA, the No. 2 bullpen ERA, and the No. 1 overall ERA. Moreover, their pitching staff had the highest Win Probability Added rating in the majors over the three seasons.
The Crew is constantly evolving in personnel usage. Since their current playoff streak began in 2023, Milwaukee has used 54 different pitchers to start games – many of whom were refashioned in the lab.
The cost of acquiring a single win of fWAR on the open market has surged over 170 percent since 2021. Teams relying on free agency for pitching are experiencing less value in the return for the investment, and Milwaukee’s internal development creates high value and surplus value.
2. Fueled by fastballs. The Brewers didn’t hop on the sweeper-pitch bandwagon. Led by Jacob Misiorowski, Milwaukee ranks near the top of the leaderboard for the highest percentage of fastballs (all types) used this season. According to SI.com, they prefer pitchers that have a “high-carry” or unique fastball characteristics and teach them to pitch at the top of the zone. The high-velo Misiorowski is a fantastically entertaining show, but he isn’t alone on the stage. The Brewers as a staff have the highest strikeout rate (26.5%) in the majors. That includes the No. 1 strikeout rate for starting pitchers (28.7%) and the seventh-best punch-out rate (24%) by relievers.
3. Aggressive roster churn. As one scribe put it, “Arnold’s front office operates with clinical detachment” regarding arbitration-eligible stars. The formula: draft and develop elite talent, maximize their pre-arbitration years, and trade them 12 to 18 months before they hit free agency. For more info see: Corbin Burnes, Devin Williams, Josh Hader, Freddy Peralta and (once upon a time) Zack Greinke.
4. Working the margins. Going against the grain. The Brewers don’t have a slugging offense. They have an engineered offense. A diversified offense. Utilizing speed, excellent baserunning, platoon-split advantages, and an intense focus on going against the grain.
I bet you didn’t know this: this season the Crew leads the majors in opposite-field hits and hits to the middle of the field – but last in MLB in hits when pulling the ball. That’s the opposite of what nearly every other team is trying to do offensively. Milwaukee’s pull rate of 36% is last in the majors.
Do you like home runs? If so, the Brewers aren’t your boys because they rank 28th in homers. But they’re sixth in steals, eighth in doubles, 10th in triples, first in sac bunts, second in bunt hits. Do you like situational hitting? The Brewers fourth-best team in the majors at performing with runners in scoring position, and sixth best with men on base, and fourth four the most two-out RBIs.
It doesn’t matter how an opponent sets its defense; the Brewers like nothing better than hitting the ball to defensively vacated spots in the outfield. The Brewers play good defense and work the margins by excelling at pitch-framing.
5. Organizational Alignment: Milwaukee’s messaging starts from Matt Arnold’s office and moves down to the field level. This is a unified, highly synchronized group of baseball people with a sharp eye for detail. The team culture has been described as “collegiate,” with players spending time each day to sit and discuss ways to hunt for marginal advantages that add up over time. The Brewers make a lot of in-game adjustments, and will do it on the fly – deviating from the original plan of attack to call more audibles than the NFL Packers.
6. Matt Arnold’s relentless impact. There’s a reason why he’s the first person ever to win MLB Executive of the Year in back-to-back seasons (2024 and 2025). The Brewers must have some “secret sauce” for drafting, developing, and finding gold in the amateur international markets, because they pretty much kick every other organization’s arse in these areas. The Crew has routinely ranked either first or second in the farm-system rankings since 2024. And in Baseball America’s recent update of its Top 100 prospects list the Brewers had nine guys in the 100 ranking.
Another Brewer superpower is value drafting. They’re outstanding at identifying hit tools and physical projectability that other teams overlook or bypass. They have a long list of prospects and players that were chosen long after the Draft Night TV lights go off to end the show – then it’s time to find the gems in the later rounds.
Oh, and the Brewers will swindle you in trades – as they did last offseason by stealing lefty starter Kyle Harrison from the Red Sox. Three of their current starting pitchers were acquired in trades. Four of their starting position players were collected in trades. Arnold’s 40-man roster includes 19 players obtained in trades, and 15 secured through the MLB Draft, and former amateurs signed from four different countries. The word “resourceful” is a massive understatement.
Cardinals president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom has studied the Milwaukee model to go with all that he learned during his long-term residency in the brilliant Tampa Bay front office. The previous baseball regime – hopelessly outdated – had no chance whatsoever to match the work being done in Milwaukee’s baseball operations department. With Bloom in place, the Cardinals can at least begin the process of catching up to the Brewers. But it won’t be easy.
Thanks for reading …
—Bernie
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015.
Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach.
Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil on a daily basis.
Bernie has covered and written about many great St. Louis sports team athletes including Albert Pujols, Kurt Warner, Brett Hull, Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, Jim Edmonds, Marshall Faulk, Scott Rolen, Mark McGwire, Orlando Pace, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, Al MacInnis, Brian Sutter, Bernie Federko, Chris Pronger, Keith Tkachuk, Dan Dierdorf, Jackie Smith and Aeneas Williams.
Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues, Saint Louis U, and Mizzou football and basketball.
Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STLSportsCentral, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows.
And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.