Five Takeaways From the Milwaukee Brewers’ 2025 Season

It was a fine year for Jackson Chourio on the surface level, but there’s more here than meets the eye — Chourio showed us all in the postseason that he is everything that was promised.

In his nine postseason games this year (35 plate appearances), Chourio hit .303 and slugged .576 for a 139 wRC+ and .890 OPS. Mind you, he was essentially playing on one leg, as he played through a reaggravated hamstring that he suffered in Game 1 of the NLDS, an injury that put him on the shelf for a month in August.

Chourio has 12 postseason games under his belt to this point, and in those games he is slashing .341/.362/.682 for a 1.044 OPS and 182 wRC+. Remember, Chourio is just 21 years old and is still coming into his own in the big leagues. But even at such a young age, he is already demonstrating his ability to show up on the biggest stage when the lights are brightest.

From June 1 to when he landed on the injured list with a hamstring injury on July 30, Chourio hit .303/.348/.515 for an OPS north of .860. That includes a month of July where he was one of the best hitters in MLB with a 177 wRC+.

Had it not been for the hamstring injury that derailed all of his momentum heading into August, Chourio’s end-of-season stat line would look a whole lot different. But what the budding star showed in the playoffs, while battling through an injury, proved that the Brewers have a special talent on their hands.

The Brewers’ Talent Identification and Development Is Second to None

The Brewers made two key trades during the season, and it’s safe to say that the season may have gone differently if not for those two additions.

The first move was for Quinn Priester, a young arm who greatly struggled to gain his footing in Major League Baseball heading into the year. Milwaukee acquired Priester from the Boston Red Sox back on April 7, and many criticized the Brewers for how much they gave up to get him at the time of the trade.

Flash forward to season’s end, and he was a major stabilizer in the Brewers’ rotation.

At one point during the year, the Brewers won 19 consecutive games where Priester took the mound. He ended the year with a 3.32 ERA, and he turned into one of the premier ground-ball artists in the game thanks to his revamped sinker.

Priester ended the season in the 93rd percentile in ground-ball rate (55.7%). Among arms with at least 500 plate appearances against this season, that was the sixth-highest mark in all of baseball.

I applaud the Brewers for actually parting ways with valuable prospect capital in order to improve the current big-league roster. The organization typically shies away from those types of moves, and they’re very strategic about the players they bring in.

They identified an arm who had untapped potential, and they managed to develop his arsenal and instill confidence in him over the course of the regular season. That’s not easy to do, and they deserve an immense amount of praise for that accomplishment.

The next was Andrew Vaughn, who was acquired for Aaron Civale back on June 13. Vaughn, a former third-overall pick from the Chicago White Sox, hit just .189 with a .521 OPS this season in the South Side. Pair that with a 2024 campaign where he posted a sub-.700 OPS, and his time with the White Sox had ran its course.

Similar to Priester’s impact on the rotation, Vaughn ended up being the stabilizer in the heart of Milwaukee’s lineup from July onward. Vaughn got the call on July 7 to replace an injured Rhys Hoskins on the big-league roster, and he never looked back.

In 64 games with the Brewers this season, Vaughn slashed a whopping .308/.375/.493 for an .869 OPS and 142 wRC+. He had a pair of enormous home runs in the NLDS against the Cubs as well, helping lead this team to its first postseason series win since 2018.

Milwaukee’s ability to identify and develop talent is second to none in MLB. Time and time again they demonstrate their expertise in getting the most out of reclamation projects, and Priester and Vaughn were the latest examples of that. Against all odds, they both were essential parts of Milwaukee’s success in 2025.

The Pitching Staff Has a Bright Future

Priester is entering his second year of pre-arbitration in 2026 and still has five more years of team control remaining. At just 25 years old, he has established himself as a key member of a Brewers rotation that has an extremely bright future.

Of course, this conversation is headlined by Jacob Misiorowski. He was one of the biggest storylines for Milwaukee this season, as the flamethrower made an All-Star Game after just five career starts. It was clear from the get go that his potential was off the charts.

Tt wasn’t smooth sailing for Miz, who ended the year with a 4.36 ERA and had his share of blowup outings. However, there were points where he had some of MLB’s best hitters in a pretzel in the batter’s box, and what he showed in the postseason is so encouraging for his outlook heading into 2026.

There was a chance Miziorowski was left off the NLDS roster with how he ended his 2025 campaign. Instead, he ended up making the roster, and you could argue the Brewers wouldn’t have made it past the Cubs without him. He later shined against the most potent lineup in MLB in the NLCS.

Overall, Miz struck out 16 in three postseason appearances (12.0 IP) and threw to a 1.50 ERA with an opponent average of just .163. He was tremendous, and for him to harness his nerves on baseball’s biggest stage is an enormous step forward in his development as an MLB arm.

Rookie Chad Patrick was thrusted into a key role for the Brewers, and he answered the call in a huge way. Patrick pitched to the tune of a 3.53 ERA this season, and he ended with the second-highest fWAR among Brewers pitchers at 2.6, despite spending nearly two months in Triple-A in the middle of the season, and had the lowest FIP in the rotation (3.53).

He may not be a frontline starter, but he showed in 2025 that he is more than capable of being a backend starter with middle-of-the-rotation upside. Moreover, Patrick was a serious weapon out of the bullpen for Milwaukee in the postseason, a role perhaps the Brewers entertain for him heading into 2026.

In nine innings of relief this October, Patrick struck out 11 and posted an ERA of 2.00. His velocity ticked up, and he was confident in high-leverage situations. Regardless of the role he is in next season, he should be a valuable piece of the pitching staff.

That’s not even mentioning Robert Gasser, who essentially lost all of 2024 to Tommy John surgery, and Logan Henderson, who flashed some really impressive stuff at the beginning of the season. Milwaukee’s rotation has an extremely bright future, and it will be fascinating to see how they utilize all of their young arms next season.

Abner Uribe May Be the Closer of the Future

In his first full season in MLB, Abner Uribe was a top 10 reliever in the game in 2025. Pitching to the third-lowest ERA among all relief pitchers (1.67), Uribe has the makings of being Milwaukee’s next great closer.

He did a little bit of everything in a setup role this season. In terms of swing-and-miss, he was in the 91st percentile in both whiff rate (32.0%) and strikeout rate (30.2%). Even when hitters made contact against his pitches, it was often hit weakly and on the ground.

Uribe was in the 96th percentile in average exit velocity (86.2 mph), and he kept the ball on the ground at a 54.3% clip. He minimized damaging contact, highlighted by his barrel rate of 2.9% that was the second-lowest mark in all of MLB.

Uribe’s greatest shortcoming has been his ability to stay within the strike zone, but he took an enormous step forward in that department this season. After walking nearly 16% of hitters in 2023 and 18.2% of hitters last season, Uribe slashed his walk rate down to 9.1% in 2025. It’s clear that simply being around the strike zone more made him a much more effective arm.

For the time being, Uribe will operate as one of the game’s best setup options for Milwaukee while Trevor Megill, who has two more years of team control remaining, holds down the closer role. But what we saw from Uribe in 2025 suggests that his time may be coming to close out games for the Brewers.

They Established an Offensive Core To Build Around

Heading into 2025, it was clear that this offense was led by the trio of Chourio, Christian Yelich, and William Contreras. But there were questions as to who was going to step up beyond those three hitters, and whether or not this team had enough length to compete with some of the other elite offenses in the National League.

Well, it’s safe to say that those worries were put to rest in a big way this season.

Brice Turang experienced a full-fledged breakout this year. He set career highs across the board offensively, but it was really the leap he took in the power department that led to such impressive results.

Turang’s slugging percentage increased by nearly 90 points this season, and his ISO went from a measly .095 last season (a previous career high) to .147 in 2025. After hitting a combine 13 homers across his first two big-league seasons, Turang hit 18 homers in 2025, highlighted by a month of August where he launched 10 long balls.

Turang’s barrel rate went from 2.4% last season to 7.9% this year. His average exit velocity jumped by over four ticks, his hard-hit rate went from 29.7% in 2024 (9th percentile) to 47.4% this year (76th percentile), and he cut his ground-ball rate by nearly seven percent this year.

While Turang still embraces a contact-first approach, the surge in power made such a significant difference not just for him, but for the offense as a whole. He led the team in fWAR (4.4) and wRC+, establishing himself as one of the key members of this offense alongside the aforementioned trio heading into 2026.

It was a similar story for Sal Frelick, who took a strong step forward offensively in his third MLB season. Frelick really focused on getting into his pull side to generate power, which led to a career-high in homers (12, he had five total in his previous two seasons) and wRC+ (114).

Frelick’s bat-to-ball ability is still his calling card, as he whiffed just 12.8% of the time (96th percentile) and struck out at a 13.5% clip as well. The results finally started to show for Frelick, however, as he slashing .288/.351/.405 and finished tied for second on the team in fWAR (3.6). Each one of those categories was a new career high for Frelick.

Add Caleb Durbin, who exceeded any and all expectations that were set for him heading into the season, into that mix of players who established themselves as everyday players in the lineup, and the Brewers really broadened the core of this offense heading into the offseason.

Among hitters with at least 200 plate appearances this season, the Brewers had 10 players finished with a wRC+ above 100; No other team in MLB had more than eight.

This offense went from being top heavy heading into the year to one of the deeper lineups in the sport come season’s end, and many of the names are here to stay heading into 2026.