So much of the discourse surrounding the Brewers following their incredible postseason run has been around their offense. And to some degree, rightfully so. They put the ball in play, they grind out and connect at-bats, they make ground balls work more than we've been led to believe is possible with their speed, and perhaps most importantly, they score without relying on home runs (they tied for the second fewest in all of baseball in 2026).
Personally, I love this story, and I want it to to be true. Baseball is simply a better game when the ball is in play more often. Once contact is injected into the equation, defense, strategy, steals, speed and situational awareness matter more.
However, as much as the Brewers did this these things with their bats, it would be foolish to ignore how much of their success was also due to the fact that their pitching — and in particular their bullpen — did not allow the opposition to do these same things.
To cut to the chase, opposing batters hit .173 against the Brewer bullpen in the playoffs and struck out a whopping 33 percent of the time. This is the driving force behind their success, and unfortunately, it's the lesson most front offices are probably going to learn from their dominant October.
Below is a table showing the seven playoff games the Brewers won in comeback fashion – games where the highlight reels were no doubt weighted towards the comeback hits. To keep it simple, I took all the full frames (so the start of the next inning) from each of these games after the Brewers first fell behind (trying to be fair and not grab the extra out that automatically has to come from ending the inning where the runs are scored). Here's what you get:
That comes out to a 0.94 ERA over 48 innings pitched. Yes, the Brewers lineup did mount comeback after comeback, and again, they deserve immense credit for the way they take their at-bats. However, it's also a hell of a lot easier to come back (particularly when you don't hit home runs and instead chip away with small ball frame by frame) when your pitching staff isn't allowing the opponent to score any additional runs.
Also, if I slightly change the wording in the paragraph above the table to say "all the full frames from each of these wins after the Brewers *last*fell behind," their ERA becomes ZERO! (Same ERA Aaron Ashby had for the entire postseason by the way.) This is because both Game 2 of the NLDS and Game 2 of the NLCS featured multiple comebacks in the middle innings, but they didn't fully stick until the game got to the point where the backend of the Brewer bullpen took over and dominated, which again, is kind of the point here.
In the modern postseason format, you win games by smothering opponents with pitching. And not just the classic "find a starting pitcher who can go deep and shut someone down for eight or nine innings" smothering. It's now morphed into "use the ridiculous amount of off days (the Brewers had 18 of them between the end of the regular season and the final game of the World Series) to power up your pitching staff," and then use the rested arms in bulkier bullpen rolls than you would in the regular season. (By the way, I have some thoughts on how to "fix" this with a different postseason format , and I will be writing A LOT MORE on that idea in the coming weeks.)
The bottom line here is there's a lesson to be learned from the Brewers: Get as many dominant relievers as possible and win games with a bullpen that smothers opponents after you pull the starter early. And you know what's funny, that's kind of the formula the Red Sox were using when they went 32-5. They of course had to rely more on their starters because there's not as many off days in July as there are in October, but don't discount the fact that so much of their success came right around a period where the All Star Break gave them four days off and they could keep leaning on guys.
Of course, the pitching staff eventually ran out of gas and then fully imploded at the end, but during their 32-5 run from June 25th through August 7th, their arms not only led all of baseball with a 7.20 WPA, but they were well clear of the second place Rays, who came in with a WPA of 5.84 during that stretch. The Brewers were fourth, almost three WPA wins behind at 4.32.
You want to do it by ERA? The Red Sox with fifth in baseball in starting pitching ERA and No. 1 in all of baseball in bullpen ERA during their scorching stretch. This is a huge reason why the small ball was working. It's one thing to put pressure on a team by playing for one run when you've got an arsonist on the mound. It's a whole different level of pressure when your pitching staff can lock down even a small lead from the middle innings.
You can kind of see what the Red Sox were going for in a slightly different universe. In their postseason dreamworld, they would have five guys who they might be able to deploy in the way the Brewers used their bullpen: Garrett Whitlock, Aroldis Chapman, Erik Miller, Tyron Guerrero, and Justin Slaten. But Slaten can't stay healthy, Guerrero is far less effective if he doesn't have enough gas in the tank to throw over 100 mph, Miller melted into a puddle, Whitlock was pitching with a broken leg, and they never got a game remotely close to where Chapman mattered.
So, the blueprint is kind of there. It even seems somewhat attainable going forward as Craig Breslow is really good at identifying and developing pitching. But boy is getting it to work in practice after a 162-game regular season an entirely different animal than drawing up plans months in advance. Either way, it's all good food for thought as our attention turns to next year.
