Pat Murphy has a strong chance to do what no manager has ever done before

Major League Baseball's end-of-the-year awards season is in full swing. On Sunday evening, the Gold Glove Award winners were announced, and the Milwaukee Brewers, despite having two finalists, came up empty-handed. Then, on Monday night, the Baseball Writers' Association of America released their finalists for the MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, and Manager of the Year awards. With a finalist for the NL Rookie of the Year in Caleb Durbin, the Brewers continued to demonstrate their aptitude for getting the most out of their young players.

The man charged with leading those young, budding stars to success also unsurprisingly found his name among the BBWA's list of finalists when it was released last night; for the second consecutive season, Pat Murphy has been named a finalist for the NL Manager of the Year Award.

Murph's status as a finalist isn't just significant because he would be the first NL manager since Bobby Cox won in 2004 and 2005 to win back-to-back Manager of the Year awards, but it's also noteworthy because no manager in the history of the award, which dates back to 1983, has won Manager of the Year in each of their first two seasons as the skipper. Murph, pocket pancakes and all, has a strong chance of accomplishing that feat this year.

Pat Murphy has a strong case for being the first skipper to win Manager of the Year in each of their first two full seasons as a manager

First of all, Murphy was the interim manager for the Padres in 2015, so the notable caveat here is that the last two seasons were his first "full" seasons as manager. Murphy will have to beat out Philadelphia Phillies manager Rob Thompson and Cincinnati Reds manager Terry Francona to add some more hardware to his trophy case this offseason, but the Brewers affable man in charge has a strong chance of doing so.

One of the best ways to determine just how good of a job a manager did in any given MLB season is to compare their team's projected win total prior to the season beginning and their actual win total at the end of the season. Nowadays, with numerous projection models spitting out more accurate projections than ever before, it's rather easy to see just how much a team outperformed their preseason expectations.

The Phillies, winners of the NL East whose season was also ended by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the postseason, were projected to win 88 games by the popular projection model PECOTA. FanGraph's projection model produced a very similar projection, making the 96 wins that Thompson's squad ended up winning a significant improvement on their preseason expectations. Francona's team, who also fell to the Dodgers in the postseason (all three NL MOY finalists lost to the Dodgers in the postseason), collected an impressive 83 wins after PECOTA projected them to win 74 games and FanGraphs predicted they would win 78.

While both final win totals are impressive when compared to the preseason projections, neither compares to how Pat Murphy's squad outperformed expectations in 2025. With both PECOTA and FanGraphs expecting the Brewers to win 81 games, Milwaukee set a franchise record with 97 wins during the 2025 regular season. With many expecting them to take a step backwards in the NL Central after losing Willy Adames and Devin Williams, the Crew instead took an impressive leap forward and defended their division crown for the second consecutive season.

On top of that, Murphy navigated around a swath of early-season starting pitcher injuries, having to rely on a creative use of his bullpen to tread water for the first two months of the season. He got his entire squad to buy into his selfless mentality that focused solely on "winning tonight" and instilled a necessary confidence in his young players and those who came to the Brewers after being cast off by other teams.

For a manager who denounces individual accolades and does whatever he can to make sure the spotlight isn't on himself, being the first skipper to win back-to-back MOY awards in his first two seasons at the helm would be an ironic development for Murphy. It doesn't, however, change the fact that there is no one more deserving of this unique honor.