The Brewers Didn't Outspend Anyone. They Out-Prepared Everyone.

As a Brewers fan, I've waited a long time to write this sentence: last night, the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-1 in Game 5 to win the first World Series title in franchise history.

Last week I wrote that the Brewers didn't buy a superstar, they built a team. That post was about payroll, and how a $146 million roster beat a $339 million one. This one is about something money can't buy on its own: where an organization spends its time.

The Brewers spend time on the things most organizations rush past. They wait for the right pitch. They study the data before they spend. And they trust a leader to fit the pieces together. That's the lesson for any business: invest time in data and analysis first, then lead the plan.

The most Milwaukee stat of the season isn't a home run total. It's all the pitches the Brewers didn't swing at.

Heading into the World Series, The Ringer ranked the Brewers last in baseball in chase rate. No team swung at fewer pitches outside the strike zone. They also swung less often overall than anyone, drew walks at the highest rate and saw the most pitches per plate appearance.

That isn't passive. It's preparation. Taking a pitch means you know your zone well enough to wait for the one you can drive, and every extra pitch wears down the other side.

Most businesses chase. A new platform, a trend on LinkedIn, a competitor's shiny campaign. Chasing feels like action, but it usually produces weak contact. The discipline is knowing your zone, meaning what your own numbers say a good customer, channel or offer looks like, and swinging hard when one shows up. Without that analysis, you don't know your zone, so you swing at everything.

The Brewers don't win free-agent bidding wars. They rarely sign big free-agent contracts, and they often trade veterans like Corbin Burnes and Josh Hader before free agency instead of paying to keep them.

Where they do spend is on the people who study the game. Baseball America describes the Brewers and Rays as employing two of the largest analytics staffs in baseball, covering research and development, systems engineering and data analysis. By one count reported by Yahoo Sports, that's about 46 people in Milwaukee's analytics and R&D group, nearly double the amount of players on the World Series roster.

And it isn't analytics instead of people. Entering the season, the Brewers also had 78 scouts, tied for the 10th-largest scouting staff in the majors. Their head of scouting told Baseball America that data has made their scouts better by giving them more tools, not by replacing them.

Most businesses spend in the opposite order. They buy the media, the software and the hires, then try to work out what's paying off. The Brewers plan first: the analysis tells them what kind of roster to build, and only then do they spend. In marketing, the cheapest dollar you'll spend is the one that goes to understanding your numbers before you spend the rest.

The Brewers had one true headliner this season. Jacob Misiorowski led the majors in ERA (1.80), strikeouts (252), WHIP and opponents' batting average, then threw 5 2/3 scoreless innings to win the clincher.

The lineup was a different story. In late August, with the best record in baseball, the Brewers had hit the fewest home runs in the majors while leading MLB in on-base percentage. No slugger carried them. Everybody contributed.

That showed up most at the bottom of the order, which is usually where a lineup thins out. By the middle of Game 5, Fox Sports tallied the Brewers' seventh-, eighth- and ninth-place hitters at a .288 average with three home runs and 13 RBIs in the series. The Rays' bottom three were hitting .122.

Look at who those hitters were:

• Cooper Pratt, a rookie the Brewers took in the sixth round of the 2023 draft, batted seventh and drove in a team-high seven runs. He hit .421, set a World Series rookie record with six straight hits and finished second in MVP voting.
• David Hamilton, picked up in an offseason trade with the Red Sox, homered to tie Game 4 and drove in a run in the clincher.
• Sal Frelick homered to tie Game 2 in the fifth inning.
• Jake Bauers, re-signed on a minor-league deal, was the MVP of the NLCS.

Think about the bottom of your own lineup: the follow-up email, the business listings, the conversion tracking, the person who answers the phone. In most companies, that's where things fall off. The analysis is what shows you where your weak spots are, so you can fix them before they cost you the game.

One spring training after Aaron Ashby's 2023 shoulder surgery, Pat Murphy looked out his office window, saw someone struggling in the bullpen and assumed it was a fantasy camper. It was Ashby.

He had gone 5-12 as a starter before his shoulder gave out, and he missed all of 2023. In 2024 he posted an 8.04 ERA at Triple-A, and the Brewers moved him to the bullpen. That August, a trainer worked out scar tissue in his shoulder, his velocity came back, and he started throwing a hard knuckle-curve. This season, that curve had the highest whiff rate of any curveball in baseball, at 52.4%.

This October, Ashby threw 18 straight scoreless innings, the longest streak ever by a reliever in a single postseason. He passed Andrew Miller's 16 from 2016. The organization didn't give up on a struggling piece. It changed his role to fit what the evidence said he did best, then gave him time.

William Contreras won World Series MVP for his bat: he hit .381 with four RBIs. But the reason he belongs in this post is a skill that's brand new to the majors this season, challenging ball-and-strike calls under the automated ball-strike (ABS) system. In the World Series, 10 of his 13 challenges were overturned, about 77%, against a 60% regular-season success rate for fielders. He also threw out four of nine runners trying to steal, after the Rays had gone 11-for-11 earlier in the postseason. Murphy's explanation was simple: Contreras "has a knack for it."

That's a knack built on reps. When the rules of the game changed, Contreras learned the new system better than almost anyone. Marketing is going through its own rule change right now, as AI assistants start choosing which businesses to recommend. The teams that study the new system will beat the ones waiting for the old one to come back.

Analysis tells you what to do. Someone still has to get a clubhouse full of people to do it.

That's Pat Murphy. He spent 25 years as a college head coach, including at Notre Dame, where he coached Craig Counsell, then eight seasons as Counsell's bench coach in Milwaukee. Since taking over in late 2023, he has won NL Manager of the Year twice, in 2024 and 2025.

Watch how he used the pieces this October:

• Before Game 1 of the World Series, he reshuffled the lineup in response to the Rays' pitching plan. He moved Yelich up because of his history against the Rays' starter, and paired the left-handed hitters so he could bring right-handed bench bats in late.
• Through Game 1 of the World Series, he had used Ashby in every tied or one-run game of the postseason.
• He kept Yelich, who'd had a below-average season at the plate, as the designated hitter for all four NLDS games, and Yelich got a hit in each. Then Murphy sat him for Game 1 of the NLCS. Yelich didn't sulk. He came back the next day with a go-ahead, two-run hit, and teammates say that kind of humility sets the tone for the roster.

That's what leadership looks like on top of good data. The numbers suggest the move, and the leader makes the call, explains it and keeps the room together. Yelich, the first captain in franchise history, has said the organization takes really good care of its players, and that shared experiences build the relationships that hold a team together.

The Brewers' plan was built for the Brewers, from their own numbers and their own people. It wouldn't drop into another organization unchanged, and it doesn't need to. Copying another company's playbook rarely works. Building your own from your numbers does.

You don't need a $146 million payroll to borrow the Brewers' approach. You need to spend your time in the same places.

Analyze before you spend.

Before you buy media, software or headcount, work out what a customer is worth and what each channel actually returns. Then size the budget from those numbers.

Know your strike zone.

Write down what a good customer, channel and offer look like for your business. It's much easier to let a pitch go by when you already know it's a ball.

Check the bottom of your lineup.

Look hard at the unglamorous parts: listings, tracking, follow-up and the hand-off from marketing to sales. That's where most businesses quietly lose games.

Put each piece where it fits.

Ashby wasn't a bad pitcher. He was a good pitcher in the wrong role. Before you cut a person or a channel, check whether the evidence says they'd thrive somewhere else.

Learn the new rules first.

ABS challenges rewarded the catcher who studied them. AI search will reward the businesses that do the same.

Lead the plan.

Data doesn't make decisions. Someone has to make the call, explain it and keep the team together, whether that's you, a new hire or a fractional leader.

Pick each other up.

The Brewers lost a 12-inning Game 4, then won the title the next night. The bad night is part of the process, not a reason to abandon it.

The Brewers didn't win because they outspent anybody. They won because they spent their time on the right things: patience at the plate, analysis before spending, a plan built from their own numbers and a leader who could fit the pieces together. None of that requires a big-market budget.

If you want help building that kind of plan for your business, start with a let’s talk.

Let’s go Brew Crew!