The favorable conditions of the dramatic and explosive era of the Cubs Winemakers I-94 competition have been permeated for some time. Now, when the two clubs meet each other in the playoffs, they first meet the head, even though the brewers have changed the league for 27 years. Fan friction always happens when two sports-loving cities are close to each other (you can drive from Milwaukee to Chicago in about 90 minutes on the southwest coast of Lake Michigan), but when Cubs Manager Craig Counsell decided to jump from Milwaukee to Chicago from a boat in Milwaukee after 20223.
Milwaukee was rejected and abandoned by Kusel (and David Stearns), and although the team has been competing (it seems sustainable), it is a clumsy lagging squad based on contact, speed and defense. Despite dealing with the April pitcher injury which gave us an unnecessary torpedo bat discourse for the week, the brewers finished the game with a major’s best, winning five games at NL Central and winning the playoffs for the seventh time in the last eight years, even though they had only one NLC in this mix. The Cubs just won the Front’s Band Card Series title in the decisive Game 3, with their deep roster taking 13 hits, many of which were excellent (if taxed) San Diego’s rescuers. Let’s examine the components of each team in more detail to remind ourselves how each team is assembled and how they get to this part of the playoffs.
Start pitching
The bear spins filled with strikers. They have the lowest baseball speed this year, but are ranked fourth in K/9.
Chicago didn’t announce its first starter until mid yesterday, knowing left-handed Matthew Boyd would take a short break. The 34-year-old has had 3.4 revivals in 2025, better than his career season six years ago. Boyd had only 4 1/3 innings against Padres before being eliminated on Tuesday, which could mean he was more than most pitchers who lost some time between games than most pitchers. This is the first of several signs of Counsell’s use of the bullpen, and both Shota Imanaga and Jameson Taillon also played only four innings against the Padres. (Counsell chose to use a right-handed bottle opener to perform the second inning 2 so that he could maximize Imanaga’s workload without letting him face Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado twice.
The holiday days and travel styles of this series will allow Boyd (in the first year of two years, the first year of the $29 million deal) and the confirmed second game starter (imanaga and Taillon will at least start their normal breaks before Monday’s game, if necessary.
Milwaukee staff were led by 29-year-old Freddy Peralta, a super-heart right-hand, horizontal delivery and excellent secondary stuff. Peralta has been one of the top 15-20 pitchers for baseball since moving into rotation and enjoying a huge breakthrough in 2021. He will win 3.6 battles, 2.70 years, 176 2/3 innings, and is obviously the best starter in the series.
The brewers are frustrated about who will start the second game as manager Pat Murphy publicly stated that two 36-year-old veterans, Stalwart Jose Quintana (who has been working on the calf since mid-September and Live BP last Friday) and Quinn Priester live. Priest was obtained from Boston after the injury caused the brewer to eagerly spin the warm body. It seems Priester has joined his third organization at the age of 25, and it’s an emergency, short-term patch, rather than a long-term Milwaukee playoff puzzle. Instead, Priester’s 3.32 ERA contributed the Brewers’ starters, taking together the third best in the league. Priester’s pitch combination (especially his curve ball) is difficult to improve, and he ranks fifth among pitchers with at least 120 innings.
At some point, Murphy may have to rely on anyone among his several rookie pitchers. If the Rookie of the Year award can be presented to the entire freshman class of the team, this year’s brewers will get that distinction. Twenty-seven-year-old Swingman/fifth starter Chad Patrick was a former fourth-round match at Purdue, who passed from Arizona to Oakland in 2023 before reaching Milwaukee in 2024. Jacob Misowowski, 23, is easily the most talented of any winemaker pitcher, but he released too many walks in the regular season games and didn’t quite catch the playoff rotation location. It might make sense for him to start the third game, even if it’s just that, the youngest pitcher in the roster can maintain his pre-start habit, even if that means Murphy will keep his short traction in a short inning.
Cowpentry
If the brewers promise to deploy Misiorowski only from the bullpen, that means they will have three suitable relief workers with advanced late stuff. Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill also have 98-100 mph fastballs, followed by Jared Koenig and Aaron Ashby, who have very little speed for those trendy, deceptive left-handed guys. Expect the Cubs’ first half (mostly left-handed) to see a lot of Ashby and Koenig in key positions. Milwaukee also has several reliefists who can offer multiple inning lengths – Tobias Myers, Robert Gasser, Moslowsky, Patrick, DL Hall –
Chicago’s bullpen was pieced together with travelers in the middle and late 30s. Only Daniel Palencia and Michael Soroka are under 30 years old, while the relief recipients for five cubs are 35 or older. Based on their wildcard series usage, Counsell’s hierarchy is led by Palencia (at the biggest moments of the game, no matter the situation), sunken Righties Andrew Kittredge and Brad Keller and Brad Keller and Lefty Slider Dynamo Dynoo Drew Pomeranz. The Cubs have several other left-handed special types in Taylor Rogers and Caleb Thielbar, as well as some long men in Colin Rea (and maybe sneaky choices to start and more likely the next round if they go forward), Aaron Civale and Soroka. Kittredge and Pomeranz have kept their stuff up the way they were, and Keller has made a leap since joining the Cubs and relocating full-time, which has brought the real teeth of this bullpen beyond Palencia. Overall, the group of brewers is deeper and more distinct.
Location participants
Both the Winemakers and the Cubs have the highest productivity offense in this year’s baseball game. Both are the top six in the War Generation, with the Cubs ranked third. Both are in the top five of the stolen bases, walking rate, strikeout rate and WRC+ top 10. If there is a gap here, it is that the Cubs have more batsmen than winemakers. Only two winemakers (Christian Yelich and Jackson Chourio) hit 20 or more home runs, while the Cubs had six people doing so, including their eight-hole batsman Dansby Swanson. Second baseman Nico Hoerner is sandwiched among all these shaky people, one of the best pure contact hitters in the sport.
The winemaker is a team that keeps the line moving, filled with several smaller, fast, annoying contact hitters who complement each other’s skills and allow Murphy to play favorable games throughout the game. While we may see Matt Shaw’s Cub pinch crashes and make subs zeros for other locations in the game, the brewer may be able to clear the bench on any given night. Given how Counsell manages his starting workload in wildcard rounds, there will be a lot of chess here when he goes to the bullpen and Murphy decides whether to change his lineup early. Murphy is often the most active game with his corner outfielder and a director, while the likes of Yelich, Chourio and Brice Turang (he took a big step this year, and he took a big step and led Milwaukee in the war). The two aforementioned rookies (former III college player and offseason trade acquisition Caleb Durbin and former minor league 5 draft pick Isaac Collins) not only took a unique path here, but are both legal rookie candidates of the year. Durbin is one of the best pure contact batsmen in the league, and Collins is a full-blown conversion batsman who should be against leftists in this series.
However, maybe both teams will defend on both teams. Bears center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong has ridiculous range, even better ball skills. His ability to slide and twist his body in the ability to lock on may now be unparalleled. Swanson has been one of the best shortstop defenders in baseball games over the past decade and has shown several correlations in the wildcard series, while Hoerner is the shortstop disguised at second base. Milwaukee’s infield is full of viable shortstops. Turang is one of the better high school infield defenders I’ve ever met, playing second base on this team because Joey Ortiz is a better, more acrobatic shortstop. Blake Perkins is a dynamic outfield defender who can provide late defensive upgrades in both positions at the same time, as his fusion means moving Jackson Chourio to the corner, which is usually an upgrade too.
manager
Finally, the most fleshy narrative element in this series is the management showdown. Murphy coached Counsell at Notre Dame from 1989 to 1992 – after Counsell made many mistakes, he once broke Counsell’s nose while also hitting angry fungi – and then in the mid-90s coaching at Arizona, Phoenix overlapped with Counsell, which was associated with Raymond backke bone. After a major head coaching career in history (he was the youngest college coach to win 500 and competed in four college worlds with the Sun Devils), Murphy was deported by ASU in 2009 for recruiting violations, most of whom are not the case in today’s college athlete rules (although there are some Steve Ballmer-Kawhi Leonard parallels involving Murphy’s Steve Ballmer-Kawhi Leonard Parellels. Murphy worked for Padres for five years before Counsell became Milwaukee manager and hired him as a backup coach. The two worked together until Counsell left the Cubs job a few years ago.
I asked Hoagie’s Hoagie and ESPN University baseball broadcaster Mike Rooney, a teammate of Notre Dame’s Counsell’s and later ASU’s assistant, their dynamics. “They have always been so close, but they are so different, especially from a personality and style perspective,” Rooney said. “Cussel said that’s why he hired him. I’m certainly biased, but I don’t know if I’ve met someone, so be consistent with his own personal blind spots and biases. It’s a kind of superpower.”
