How the 2025 Brewers’ current win total compares to preseason projections

Even the most enthusiastic Milwaukee Brewers fans didn't expect the team to have 89 wins on September 12. Such a prediction would mean that they expected the 2025 Brewers, after losing Willy Adames in free agency and Devin Williams to a trade with the New York Yankees, to be the best team in franchise history. Sure, your uncle may have offhandedly said that the Crew was going to be the best team in baseball this season, but did he really mean it?

However, as the second week of September comes to a close and just 15 games remain in the regular season, to say that the Brewers are the best team in baseball is not some throwaway comment; it's the truth. With a record of 89-58, the Brew Crew has already matched their win total from the 2019 season in which they qualified for a Wild Card spot. They are on the cusp of officially clinching a postseason berth and need a modest 8-7 record the rest of the way to set a franchise record for wins in a single season.

No matter how you spin it, the Brewers have exceeded expectations this year. However, that statement holds far less weight without facts to show just how much better they have been than people in the industry expected. Therefore, let's take a look at how the Brewers’ current record compares to their preseason projected win total.

The Brewers have already surpassed the most bullish preseason win projections

Preseason projections come from every corner of the baseball world. From journalists making bold predictions about where the team will end up, to analysts taking into account every detail to craft their most accurate predictions, to sports books setting a projected win total for fans to bet the over or under on.

As analytics have taken the baseball world by storm, so too have projection models that generally churn out shockingly accurate predictions of where teams and even individual players will end the season. Two of these projection models have become widely regarded as some of the most accurate in the game: ZiPS and PECOTA. ZiPS was created by the legendary Dan Szymborski, who currently works for FanGraphs but was with a group called Baseball Think when he developed the model. PECOTA, standing for Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm, was developed by the expert statistician and founder of FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver, who created the algorithm way back in 2002 and has worked to perfect it ever since.

Both projection models have an incredible track record of success given how difficult it is to control for all of the variables that arise throughout a 162-game season. However, when it comes to the 2025 Brewers, not even the expertly crafted ZiPS or PECOTA models could predict what Pat Murphy's squad has accomplished over the last five months.

ZiPS predicted that the Brewers would win 84 games in 2025, which is nine fewer games than they won a season ago. While some in the national media were predicting that the Brewers would end up in third or even fourth place in the NL Central in 2025, at 84 wins, ZiPS had them losing the division to the Chicago Cubs by just two games. At the time, when the noise of Adames' departure and the Williams trade was growing loud, 84 wins actually felt like an optimistic prediction. However, based on the rest of the NL's projected win totals, ZiPS didn't view the Brew Crew as a playoff team in 2025.

Meanwhile, PECOTA was far less optimistic about the Brewers' chances in 2025. The model had Milwaukee finishing with a record below .500 at 80-82, and clearly missing out on the 2025 postseason. With projections like that coming from highly-trusted sources, it was difficult for Brewers fans to remain optimistic about their team's chances in the upcoming season.

The betting markets were closer to ZiPS, but still reflected the widespread belief that the Brewers were going to be worse in 2025 than they were in 2024. Just before Opening Day, DraftKings' betting line on the Brewers' 2025 win total sat at 83.5 wins, meaning, for those less familiar with the world of sports betting, that bettors were forced to decide whether they thought the Brewers would win more or less than 84 games.

Already with 89 wins and still with 15 games left to play, the Brewers have far surpassed the preseason expectations. In that sense, Pat Murphy not winning NL Manager of the Year this season would be criminal. If projection models and the national media are going to continue to doubt the Brew Crew year in and year out, they better be ready to crown the team's manager as the best in the league when those low expectations are exceeded.

Regardless of projection models and Manager of the Year awards, what the Brewers have already accomplished this season is special. In some ways, it confirms what many people believed about them this season: that they would be a scrappy bunch of ballplayers that didn't take a single win for granted. In other ways, it completely defies belief. What matters now is that the team keeps pushing. Despite what they have already accomplished, there's always another goal to achieve, and until they do so, you can bet that Murphy and all of his players will continue to look forward rather than dwell on their accomplishments of the past.