Milwaukee Brewers

A club that arrived from somewhere else

Milwaukee's team began life in another city. The Seattle Pilots were an American League expansion side that played a single season, 1969, before the franchise was relocated to Wisconsin for 1970. It has stayed there since, and it has switched leagues once: an American League club through 1997, a National League one from 1998. That is why a team holding an American League pennant now competes for a National League one.

Ten Hall of Famers spent part of their careers with the Milwaukee club, among them Robin Yount, Hank Aaron and Rollie Fingers. Yount is the only one of them who played his entire career in Milwaukee. The club is owned by Mark Attanasio; Matt Arnold holds the dual title of president of baseball operations and general manager, and Pat Murphy manages.

The 1982 pennant and the long wait after it

The high point for most of the franchise's existence remains 1982, when the Brewers won the American League pennant and lost the World Series to the St Louis Cardinals in seven games. They have never been back. Milwaukee is one of five current major league clubs that has never won a World Series.

The modern run is the most sustained stretch of winning the club has had. The 2025 side went 97-65, at that point the best record in Brewers history, and lost in the National League Championship Series. The 2026 team beat that mark comfortably.

The season that broke the club record

Milwaukee finished 2026 at 103-59, a winning percentage of.636, and took the National League Central for a fourth consecutive year, 14 games clear of the Chicago Cubs. It was 55-26 at home and 48-33 on the road. No team in baseball won more, which handed the Brewers the No. 1 overall seed, a first-round bye and home-field advantage for as long as they survive, up to and including the World Series.

Two dates anchor the run. On 11 September the Brewers clinched a postseason place with a 20-0 win over the Cincinnati Reds. On 24 September, against Philadelphia, they recorded win number 100 — the first 100-win season in the franchise's history.

October 2026, game by game

The Division Series against the San Diego Padres ran from 3 to 7 October and Milwaukee took it 3-1. The Brewers won Game 1 at home 3-2 on 3 October, William Contreras supplying the go-ahead solo home run, and Game 2 4-3 on 4 October, settled by a walk-off two-run single from Jackson Chourio in the ninth. San Diego took Game 3 at Petco Park 4-3 on 6 October before Milwaukee closed the series out 3-1 on 7 October, with Garrett Mitchell robbing Manny Machado of extra bases in the eighth. The four games drew 179,946 spectators, an average of 44,987.

The Championship Series against the Dodgers began on 11 October at American Family Field and is scheduled through 19 October: Games 1 and 2 in Milwaukee, Games 3 to 5 in Los Angeles on 14-16 October, Games 6 and 7 back in Milwaukee on 18-19 October if required. Los Angeles arrived at 100-62 and as the two-time defending champion, and had won all three of its previous postseason meetings with Milwaukee.

Game 1 went to the Brewers 2-1. Jacob Misiorowski was matched against Tarik Skubal, whom the Dodgers acquired from Detroit at the trade deadline. Skubal held Milwaukee scoreless for three innings before Brice Turang pulled a solo home run the other way in the fourth to level it. In the fifth, Mitchell drew a leadoff walk, a sacrifice bunt moved him up, and Luis Lara singled through the middle for the lead. Misiorowski gave up one run across four and a third innings with five strikeouts. Milwaukee leads the series 1-0.

A record-breaking arm on a mid-table payroll

Misiorowski's season is the individual story of the year. Across 30 starts and 174⅔ innings he went 16-5 with a 1.80 earned run average, 252 strikeouts and 44 walks. He led the majors in ERA, strikeouts, ERA+ at 232, fielding independent pitching at 2.17, walks and hits per inning at 0.802, hits allowed per nine innings at 4.9 and strikeouts per nine at 13.0. The 1.80 broke a club record that had stood since Mike Caldwell's 2.36 in 1978, and it is the lowest figure to lead either league since Justin Verlander's 1.75 in 2022.

The raw stuff matched the results. In June 2026 he threw a fastball measured at 105.5 mph, the quickest pitch by a starting pitcher since tracking began in 2008 and the third-fastest by anyone. He threw 1,115 pitches at 100 mph or above during the season; the next pitcher on that list managed 155.

Chourio, 22, posted 4.9 wins above replacement with 152 hits, 96 runs and 25 home runs in 127 games. Contreras and Turang have both delivered in the postseason. Milwaukee did it on a payroll of $143.7m as of 30 September, 19th in the majors. Murphy is the only manager in club history to win Manager of the Year, and he has won it twice.

The ballpark

American Family Field holds 41,900 under a fan-shaped retractable roof, the single most recognisable piece of architecture the city has. The roof is also the ground's main structural compromise: the outfield panels are not transparent, so when it closes the interior reads as indoor baseball, and even open it feels enclosed. Critics of the building also point to the upper deck, set back 45 to 48 rows from the field, the suburban setting that limits walking access, and a concourse that is awkward to navigate.

What the site does better than almost anywhere else is the car park. Pre-game tailgating at American Family Field is the largest of its kind in baseball and closer in scale to an American football Saturday. Inside, the food leans local: bratwurst with Secret Stadium Sauce and Wisconsin cheese curds are the signatures.

Several additions landed in 2026. The right-field concourse was rebuilt with interactive games and better accessibility, and the right-field playground reopened as The Glove Playground, presented by Aurora Health Care. The UW Credit Union Plaza opened outside the ground in June 2026 with a Wisconsin-themed mini-golf course, a play yard and a performance stage. A 3rd Street Market Hall annex sits on the Loge Level in right field, and a new sweets stand brought in Bebe Zito ice cream, dirty sodas, Drip Chocolate and Can-D Shop. Regular-season home attendance came to 2,788,934, up 5.2 per cent on 2025; the club has passed three million only in 2008, 2009 and 2011.

The shape of a night there

Nine innings in 2026 took an average of two hours and 42 minutes across the majors, up from 2:38 in 2025 — the first year the pitch clock's gains have started slipping back, partly attributed to the new automated ball-strike devices. Playoff games run longer than that average.

The in-game furniture is fixed and fans time their evening around it. The Famous Racing Sausages run in the sixth. 'Roll Out the Barrel' plays at the seventh-inning stretch. Bernie Brewer's slide sits behind the left-field stands as part of the children's area, which the harsher reviews find oversized.

For the current series, parking opens three and a half hours before the first pitch and the gates two and a half hours before, with pre-paid parking sold online to handle the crowds. DJs Scary Terry and Stretch are playing the plaza before games alongside tailgate games and a container bar. Coverage is on Fox and FS1, with radio on 620 WTMJ.