Pat Murphy wins unprecedented third straight NL Manager of the Year award after Brewers' World Series title

· Yahoo Sports

Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy is officially 3-for-3 when it comes to winning NL Manager of the Year. But that wasn't his biggest accomplishment this season.

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Two weeks after leading Milwaukee to the franchise's first World Series title, Murphy became the first manager in MLB history win a Manager of the Year Award for three straight seasons. Only two other managers, Bobby Cox (2004-05) and Kevin Cash (2020-21), had won one even twice in a row.

Naturally, the 67-year-old accepted the award from a hospital bed.

All votes are submitted at the end of the regular season, meaning the Brewers' postseason success did not factor into the voting. Murphy simply won on the strength of a regular season in which the Brewers won a franchise-record 103 games.

On the American League side, Chicago White Sox manager Will Venable won the award after a remarkable turnaround in the South Side.

No Brewers manager in club history had won a Manager of the Year award before Murphy's first season in 2024.

Murphy's tenure began under inauspicious circumstances. The position was available after then-Brewers manager Craig Counsell, a Wisconsin native and one of the game's most respected skippers, left Milwaukee in free agency to join the division rival Chicago Cubs on a record contract. Few people in Wisconsin were happy about that.

The Brewers opted to replace Counsell by promoting his bench coach, Murphy. Up to that point, Murphy's coaching experience consisted of decades in the college ranks, which ended under a cloud of sanctions at Arizona State, assorted assistant jobs with the Brewers and San Diego Padres and an interim stint with the Padres in which the club went 42-54. Murphy had previously coached Counsell at Notre Dame.

At this point, it's impossible to argue the Brewers aren't enjoying the better end of that divorce.

Milwaukee won 92 games in Counsell's final season in 2023, with their season ending via a two-game sweep in the wild-card round. Despite an upheaval in talent on both the roster and in the front office, they won 93 games the next year in 2024. They won 97 games and reached the NLCS in 2025. And, of course, 2026 went better than they could have possibly hoped.

Murphy has received plenty of credit for that renaissance, in which the small-market Brewers have adapted in an ever-changing game. Their roster was clearly built with intent, from a lineup that led MLB in walks to a bullpen willing to pitch whatever innings are needed. They embraced old-school facets of the game like bunting and stealing bases while also employing openers and platoons to cover the roster's soft spots.

It was on Murphy to make all of that work. He obviously succeeded.

As happy as anyone is to win a trophy, the Manager of the Year awards can land as a backhanded compliment.

After all, voters don't know what's happening in every clubhouse. It's hard for a voter in one market to properly judge where credit belongs in another, whether the roster was loaded enough to win no matter what or if it needed the right guy to lead them, and that's to say nothing of deciding whether it's more impressive to win 100 games with a good roster or 85 games with a bad one.

So Manager of the Year is often treated as the award for whichever team exceeded expectations the most, usually based on results from the previous year (as we saw with Venable’s White Sox going from 60 wins in 2025 to 84 this year). In other words, "Wow, he won with that roster?"

There's a reason Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has won the award just once (his inaugural season, in 2016), but never for any of his MLB record-tying six 100-win seasons. The Dodgers were supposed to do that.

The Brewers, meanwhile, were never supposed to do anything like this. It is an annual tradition for Murphy and the Brewers to grouse about preseason projections that doubt them as even a contender, such as one model that had them winning 81 games this year. As much as Murphy complains, those projections also capture why he has won Manager of the Year in every season he's had the full-time job.

People have expected the Brewers to fade for years given the talent they've lost. And now they're stronger than ever, with a 103-win championship roster supported by one of the best farm systems in MLB. Odds are the wins are will continue for years, and expectations should be adjusted accordingly.

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