Revisiting preseason predictions after Brewers’ record-breaking 98th win

With their sweep of the Baltimore Orioles over the weekend, the 2026 Milwaukee Brewers have officially set the all-time franchise win record in a single season with 98. With a couple more victories in the final week of the season, they'll cross the triple-digit threshold for the first time ever and establish themselves as (at the very least) the best regular-season squad in franchise history.

Of course, this is really just the next evolution of what the Brewers have been building over the past decade, as this marks the fourth consecutive season (and fifth time in six years) that the Crew have won 90-plus games and the NL Central. That's not meant to diminish what this year's team has accomplished; instead, it's a testament to the philosophies of the organization that they continue to dominate year after year in a league where parity (beyond the Dodgers) has become king.

Which is why, year after year, it never ceases to amaze me how wrong the "experts" and projection models always are about the Brewers. They constantly over-forecast the importance of key losses (e.g., Freddy Peralta, Devin Williams), give far too much credit to other division rivals (looking at you, Cubs), and simply don't seem to appreciate exactly what it is that makes this team tick. In the end, they all just look foolish.

Let's pull up some receipts.

Brewers continue to prove experts wrong, blowing all preseason projections out of the water

Starting with ESPN, the Brewers were given a 41% chance to make the playoffs with a projected record of 83-79. They also found themselves 11th in the Opening Day power rankings, behind such teams as the Tigers, Cubs, and Mets. To their credit, Bradford Doolittle did predict that Pat Murphy would win his third consecutive Manager of the Year award, which is looking more and more likely by the day at this point.

Moving on to Baseball Prospectus, they boldly claimed that the Crew would finish with a dead-even .500 record at 81-81. The outlet doesn't give out playoff odds, but had that record held, the Brewers would already have been eliminated from the playoff race. But again, to give credit where it's due, author Craig Goldstein did say: "Look, get mad if you need to, but the Brewers can't outperform expectations unless we set some."

Finally, let's check back in with the almighty FanGraphs. They forecasted an 83-79 record for the Brewers, which was insultingly worse than how the Pirates were expected to perform. That left them with playoff odds of just 41.7%, worse than the chances given to the Royals and Orioles.

With 98 wins and counting now in the bag, perhaps next year will finally be the one in which the experts and models learn to defer to the Brewers' greatness. If not, we can always just reconvene here and have ourselves another laugh.

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