Why Jake Bauers is confident in his approach, Brewers' chances in October this year

At 30 years old, Milwaukee Brewers' first-baseman and corner outfielder Jake Bauers not only turned in his best season on the field by a fair margin, he also emerged as a leader of the best team in baseball. Bauers, who was reportedly on the cusp of retirement after the 2024 season, according to an excellent story by Brewers beat writer Curt Hogg which is available over at jsonline.com, broke out at the plate in large part due to a mentality shift that has him remaining present and letting the game come to him.

Throughout the season, Bauers frequently attributed his success to an improved ability to not dwell on past results, whether good or bad. The left-handed slugger, who always had the talent to be an impactful player at the major league level, but struggled to maintain above-average production throughout the course of a 162-game season, stopped trying to force results and rather started taking what the game presented him with.

This mindset shift led Bauers to career highs in home runs (26), RBI (86), batting average (.266), on-base percentage (.389), and slugging percentage (.484), and put the Brewers' slugger among league leaders in many offensive categories. When times were good, which was most of the season, Bauers was sure to remain grounded and acknowledge that his past success didn't ensure future results. On the rare occasion that he hit a rough patch, Bauers didn't let the minor setback affect his mindset or approach at the plate, knowing that trying to force results would only hurt him further.

However, this ability to not dwell on past results inevitably becomes more difficult in the postseason, when the urgency is accelerated compared to a 162-game season, and there are fewer opportunities to make up for a cold stretch.

When I asked Bauers about the challenges of remaining present and letting the game come to him in October, during his pre-NLDS interview on Friday afternoon, he replied in regard to his mindset, "It's a skill...It's a learned skill. If it's not something that you've been practicing for a season, two seasons, then yeah, it's going to be tough. But if it's something that you put your focus on every day and your goal is to be in the moment and move on from a mistake, then you're going to put yourself in a position to move on quickly and be ready for the next opportunity."

This theme of being more prepared for this year's postseason because of the added experience he and his teammates possess persisted throughout Bauers' interview. In fact, Bauers became the representative of a team-wide mindset shift that has the Brewers, and should have their fanbase, more confident in the 2026 squad than past teams.

Brewers, Jake Bauers rid last year's lack of belief as 2026 postseason run begins

During Pat Murphy's first two seasons as the Brewers' manager, he frequently commented on the Brewers' status as the league's perennial "underdogs," in which he was referring to the organization's inability to sign top-tier free agents or give their home-grown stars long-term contract extensions. Murphy, using the term "Average Joes" in 2024 before noting how few people knew the names of the Brewers players ahead of their 2025 NLCS matchup with the star-studded Los Angeles Dodgers, isn't wrong -- the small-market Brewers will always have a tougher hill to climb in MLB's broken financial landscape. However, the underdog mentality started to feel less real as the Brewers continued to prove they were among the league's best teams.

This year, Murphy and his squad aren't calling themselves the underdogs anymore, but rather they are acknowledging what they are truly capable of. Said Murphy earlier this week, “We don’t use that underdog card anymore because we proved what we proved over the last few years...we ain’t going to be anyone’s underdog.”

Bauers echoed his manager's sentiment on Friday afternoon, but with a slightly different angle, saying, "When I think back to last year, I think there was an element of a lack of belief that we could do it, maybe a little too much doubt...Going into this postseason there's a different feeling around the team. I think there's a concerted effort to make sure that everybody in the room knows what we're capable of, and that it doesn't require anybody to do something that they're not able to do."

That last line from Bauers is perhaps the most important. The acknowledgement that no one has to do anything out of the ordinary or far out-perform their regular season production in order for the Brewers to find success in the postseason is exactly the type of mindset that led Bauers to success this year, and it's a shift from Milwaukee's past mentality as the underdogs. When a team is the "underdogs," it implies everything has to break their way in order for them to topple the favorites, but that's not the situation the Brewers find themselves in. Rather, Murphy's squad simply needs to let the game come to them, not try to force results, and they will find the same success they found in the regular season. With a leader in Bauers who has turned that exact mindset shift into tangible results, the Brewers are in an excellent spot as their postseason run begins.

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