ESPN struggles to come up with Brewers' biggest failure this season

2025 has been quite the year for the Milwaukee Brewers. Despite coming back to earth since winning 14 in a row during the early part of August, Milwaukee still holds the best record in baseball and is fast approaching another NL Central crown, which would also lead them to a first-round bye in the postseason.

With the regular season winding down, ESPN's Bradford Doolittle dove into all 30 teams' biggest success and biggest failure from the 2025 season. While some were probably obvious, the Chicago Cubs having a bad bullpen, Devin Williams flopping with the New York Yankees, or on the positive side, Cal Raleigh emerging as an MVP candidate. Be sure to read, Doolittle's article over on ESPN as it offers great insight into the best and worst parts of each MLB team's 2025 season.

When it came to the Brewers, the biggest success wasn't overly surprising, though there were a couple of candidates that could have been selected. On the failure side, Doolittle was hard-pressed to come up with anything, and his answer may make you laugh.

ESPN lists Brice Turang's breakout as the Brewers biggest success of 2025

One of the Brewers’ biggest questions heading into the season was "how do you replace the offense of Willy Adames?" Evidently, the answer was already in-house. Milwaukee's infield has had a number of moving parts, three first basemen, a platoon over at third base, and even some uncertainty at shortstop, especially when Joey Ortiz hit the IL. Brice Turang has been the steady presence.

In his three full seasons with the Brewers, Adames cranked 87 home runs, plus another 20 dingers in 2021 when Milwaukee acquired him. While Turang won't hit that 25-30 this season, he very well could exceed 20 homers, needing just two more longballs over the last 10 games. This far surpasses his combined pro total coming into the season, which was 13. He has also increased his batting average by over 30 points from last year, a huge boost to the Brewers’ offense.

While Turang got the nod here, there could be an argument for Sal Frelick, who also experienced a power and average surge in year three at the MLB level. Andrew Vaughn ultimately cooled down from his red-hot start with the Brewers, but is still hitting for a .315 average since joining the Brew Crew. On the pitching end, Brandon Woodruff's eventual return and Jacob Misiorowski's triumphant start to his career could both be considered, as well as Freddy Peralta's rise to being a Cy Young candidate.

"Reliever health?" included as Milwaukee's biggest failure of 2025

Yes, the answer has a question mark. Doolittle's only answer points out that just about everything has gone Milwaukee's way this season, a stark contrast from how things looked in the opening month or so of the season.

Knock on wood, things are turning positive for the Brewers pitching staff. Nick Mears returned, though it did lead to an IL stint for José Quintana. Robert Gasser seems to be on his way back to Milwaukee sooner rather than later. And, for now, it appears as if DL Hall will return for the postseason.

The only uncertainty is closer Trevor Megill. Per manager Pat Murphy, Megill threw on Tuesday but did not have a positive response to that session, putting his availability prior to the end of the regular season in doubt, as reported by MLB.com's Brewers beat reporter Adam McCalvy. Milwaukee may need to rely on Abner Uribe to close games, and the rest of the 'pen to step up, but the fact remains that there hasn't been a glaring failure in Milwaukee this season.