Brewers just won their first World Series, but now the hard part begins

The parade is over. The Milwaukee Brewers are World Series champions for the first time in franchise history, after 57 seasons, a 103-win season and an 11-2 run through October. Now comes the question nobody in Wisconsin wants to ask out loud ... what happens next?

History has an answer ... and it's blunt. No first-time World Series champion has ever repeated the next year. The year after a first title is where champions get sorted into dynasties and footnotes.

A historical look at MLB's first World Series winners

Let's start with the good news. The teams that stayed good were usually better the next year than in the year they won it all.

The 2017 Chicago Cubs went 92-70, won the NL Central again and reached the NLCS, where they lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in five games. The 2018 Houston Astros were even better: 103-59, an AL West title and a five-game ALCS loss to a 108-win Boston Red Sox team. The 2002 Arizona Diamondbacks went 98-64 and won the NL West again, even if the St. Louis Cardinals swept them in the NLDS.

Then there's the middle. The 2005 Red Sox went 95-67, made the playoffs and got swept in the ALDS by the eventual champion Chicago White Sox. The 2006 White Sox won 90 games the year after their title and still missed the playoffs entirely. Good teams, but not champions anymore.

The 1998 Marlins are the nightmare scenario. Owner Wayne Huizenga dismantled the team weeks after the parade, trading away the team's star players and the defending champions went 54-108, the worst record in baseball. They are still the only team ever to lose 100 games the year after winning the World Series.

Washington went 26-34 in the shortened 2020 season and finished last in the NL East. The 2024 Texas Rangers went 78-84 and missed the playoffs. The 2003 Angels went 77-85. Nobody sold those teams off. They just got older and thinner, which is how most windows close.

So what separates the teams that stayed good from the ones that fell apart? It's the core. The Cubs and Astros kept theirs, and their pitching held up. The Marlins sold theirs. The Nationals and Rangers watched theirs age out and get hurt.

A first title is proof you built something real. The next season is the test of whether you can keep it.

The biggest tests ahead for the Brewers

That's the test Milwaukee faces now, and the Brewers have more going for them than most first-time champions did. They won 103 games. Jackson Chourio set a World Series record with 11 hits in five games. William Contreras was the Fall Classic's MVP. The core is young, Pat Murphy just won it all in his own way and the organization has made the playoffs in eight of the last nine seasons. This was not a fluke.

But Milwaukee is also the smallest market in baseball (according to Nielsen's television media market rankings) and keeping a championship core together costs money small markets don't always have. The front office has spent a decade proving it can find pitching and develop players better than almost anyone. Now it has to prove it can keep them.

The 2026 Brewers don't have to repeat to prove this was real, but the teams that stayed in the fight the next year (Cubs and Astros) did it by treating the title as the start of something, not the end of it. The teams that didn't are the cautionary tales. Milwaukee now gets to choose which one it becomes.