Disrespect for Pat Murphy in 2026 NL Manager of the Year race makes no sense

The Milwaukee Brewers are defying preseason predictions once again. It's become something of an offseason trend for analysts and projection systems to predict that the Milwaukee's period of sustained success will come to an end during the upcoming season, but the small-market Brewers continue to prove them wrong.

Despite an ugly loss to their arch-rivals, the Chicago Cubs, in last night's series opener at Wrigley Field, the Brewers still have the best record in MLB (85-53) by 2.5 games as the calendar reads September 1. Those 85 wins are already more than projection systems expected the Brewers to collect throughout the entirety of the regular season, and Milwaukee reached the mark on August 30, with one month still left to play. Oft-cited projection systems like PECOTA and FanGraphs set the Brewers' win total at 80.5 and 82, respectively, but the Brewers are currently on pace to win 100 games this year.

The projection systems, which, to be fair, are often scarily accurate in their predictions, had some reason to believe in the Brewers taking a step back this year. Milwaukee traded away their ace, Freddy Peralta, during the offseason, left their third base situation in question after dealing Caleb Durbin to the Boston Red Sox, and were set to rely on an unproven, inexperienced roster that was very difficult to predict.

However, as was the case in 2024 and 2025, when the Brewers trading away a key player was supposed to lead to their downfall, Milwaukee has remained the perennial contender that they've been for the last eight years. Such a discrepancy between the Brewers' projected win total and their eventual real win total should earn manager Pat Murphy and his coaching staff a great deal of respect for the job they've done this year.

According to the projection systems, Murphy's squad was only expected to win 80-82 wins this year, but in large part due to his guidance, the Brew Crew surpassed that win total in late August. Surely that means the Brewers' skipper is once again running away with the NL Manager of the Year Award, right?

Brewers' manager Pat Murphy somehow not the favorite to win NL Manager of the Year after offseason disrespect

On MLB Network's program "MLB Central" yesterday, a graphic of the current odds (according to FanDuel) of the NL Manager of the Year Award race was shown. The graphic, as seen in the video below, showed Atlanta Braves manager Walt Weiss (+210) with the best odds of winning the award, Murphy with the second-best odds (+230), and Craig Stammen of the San Diego Padres (+500) and Don Mattingly of the Philadelphia Phillies (+500) rounding out the top four.

Here's the deal: if you're going to disrespect the Brewers in the offseason, as has become a tradition in the industry, you better be ready to admit your mistake when they disprove you over the course of the season.

The Manager of the Year Award has essentially become the award for which team out-performs their preseason projections by the most, with the logic being that the difference between expected outcomes and actual ones is the value that the manager adds. That line of thinking has led Murphy to be named the NL's Manager of the Year in each of the last two seasons, after his team was discredited during the offseason and went on to win the NL Central. Why then, would the 2026 Brewers, who were picked by many to miss the postseason and are now on pace to win 100 games, not have the manager of the year?

Weiss, who has been excellent in his debut season with the Braves, inherited a team that PECOTA expected to win 92 games this year. Sure, the Braves have out-performed that number slightly -- they are currently on pace to win 96 games -- but it's nothing compared to what the Brewers have done. One could make the argument that Weiss and the Braves have found success while enduring a number of difficult injuries this year, particularly to their starting staff, which has lost Spencer Strider, Spencer Schwellenbach, and Hurston Waldrep for the season, but the Brewers have been without Quinn Priester and Brandon Woodruff, who were expected to be the top two arms in the rotation, for much of the 2026 campaign as well.

Given the Brewers' success and their constant disrespect during the offseason, Murphy, who likely couldn't care less about the individual accolade, should be running away with the 2026 NL Manager of the Year Award, not sitting in second place behind Weiss. Call it voter fatigue or folks unwilling to admit that they doubted the Brewers during the offseason, but whatever it is, there isn't a good reason for Murphy not to be the clear-cut favorite for his third consecutive Manager of the Year Award.

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