Yelich sums up the twists, turns and countless story lines that go into a single season
Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich sums up the twists, turns and countless story lines that go into a single baseball season.
The Milwaukee Brewers regular-season is in the books, and with it comes a wide array of statistical oddities and intrigue. Here are some of the best stat nuggets we could find.
The Brewers won 19 consecutive Quinn Priester appearances
On May 24, the Brewers lost a tough 2-1 game at the hands of the Pirates, but it wasn’t Quinn Priester’s fault; the starter allowed just one earned run in six innings with seven strikeouts.
The Brewers didn’t lose another game in which Priester appeared until the end of the season, when the Reds defeated Priester and Brewers 3-1 on Sept. 26.
A run of 19 consecutive starts/volume appearances helped the Brewers win 97 games and made the April trade for Priester look like genius. And had the Brewers scratched across more runs on May 24, it would have been a 21-game streak. It obviously wasn’t always because Priester pitched well; he didn’t make it through the fourth inning against Minnesota on June 22 and he allowed six earned runs on 10 hits against the Mets in Aug. 10 (only to have the Brewers win on a walk-off home run). But needless to say, Priester was pretty dang good, too, posting a 3.32 earned-run average and 13-3 record this season.
With “bulk pitcher” categorized as someone working three innings or more, it’s the longest team streak in a single season since the Yankees won 20 straight Roger Clemens outings in 2001.
The @Brewers have won the last 18 games Quinn Priester has appeared in as the bulk pitcher (3+ IP). That’s the longest such winning streak by a pitcher in a single season since the Yankees won 20 straight games Roger Clemens pitched in back in 2001, per @Sportradar.
Priester…
— Stephen Watson (@SWatsonTV) September 13, 2025Everyone is pulling their weight, again
In the history of the National League, only three teams have ever included seven qualified players with an on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) in the .700s. Two of those teams are the Milwaukee Brewers in the past four years, including this season.
That doesn’t even include Andrew Vaughn, who has 254 plate appearances with the Brewers and an .869 OPS. It also doesn’t include Rhys Hoskins (.748), Jake Bauers (.752) or Andruw Monasterio (.755), all below that plate-appearance threshold.
Otherwise, you have Christian Yelich (.795), Brice Turang (.794), Isaac Collins (.779), Jackson Chourio (.770), Sal Frelick (.756), William Contreras (.754) and Caleb Durbin (.721).
Grant Anderson pitched a lot for someone who didn’t start the season in the big leagues
Right-handed reliever Grant Anderson finished third on the team with 66 appearances and second among relievers with 69⅔ innings despite starting the season in the minors.
Kyle Lobner, who often covers Brewers-related matters, including the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, believes that’s the most appearances for a Brewers player who started the year in the minors.
Freddy Peralta and Caleb Durbin led the league
In more straightforward stats, Freddy Peralta led the National League with 17 wins, becoming the first Brewers pitcher to hold that honor since Pete Vuckovich tied for the American League lead with 14 in the strike-shortened 1981 season. They’re the only two pitchers to do that in Brewers history.
Peralta joins Corbin Burnes (2021-23) as the only Brewers pitchers to register 200 strikeouts in three consecutive seasons. Only Yovani Gallardo (2009-10, 2011-12) has done it more seasons (4), although not consecutively. Peralta will become the first and only Brewers player to appear in six postseasons with the organization.
Caleb Durbin led the National League with 24 hit-by-pitches, becoming the first Brewers player atop that leaderboard since Brewers associate manager Rickie Weeks in 2010 (25) and 2006 (19). Geoff Jenkins shared the lead in 2005 with 19, and Jim Gantner had the AL honor with 10 in 1989.
The same batter has authored two of the three most important at-bats, statistically, to Milwaukee’s championship odds
Stathead has calculated “Championship WPA (win probability added)” for events during the baseball season, essentially calculating which moments most greatly improved a team’s chance of winning a title. These are typically at-bats that most significantly change the outcome of a game from a win to a loss, particularly when a team is in a playoff chase.
That’s obviously a complex and nebulous pursuit, but it’s still fun. And the same Brewers batter authored two of Milwaukee’s three biggest hits, using their formula.
The first came July 9, when Andrew Vaughn singled against Tanner Scott of Los Angeles and tied the game in the ninth inning, also moving the winning run to third base. The Brewers didn’t score then but later won the game on a Jackson Chourio single in the 10th.
The second was Vaughn on July 12, when his two-run double brought home two runs in the bottom of the ninth against Washington. The Brewers won the game later in the inning on a Caleb Durbin single.
Respectively, the plays elevated Milwaukee’s chances of winning a championship by 0.44% and 0.42% — small but still decent for a single swing.
Then you have the Danny Jansen home run Sept. 28, turning a 2-1 deficit in the fourth into a 3-2 lead and eventual Brewers victory over the Reds. That’s given a 0.44% boost, though it bears mentioning that the Brewers already had their playoff destiny cemented by then, so it’s hard to see why it would matter to such a significant degree.
The biggest swing all season across baseball happened on the last day of the season: Ben Rice’s leadoff homer in the bottom of the eighth of a 2-2 game against Baltimore on Sept. 28. The Yankees won the game, and the swing improved New York’s chances by 0.81%.
Joey Ortiz with the bases loaded is just destined to happen
Shortstop Joey Ortiz stepped to the plate for a staggering 31 plate appearances (30 at-bats) with the bases loaded. He struggled, collecting just five hits (one double, one homer) for a .167 average and .494 OPS.
As a whole, the Brewers were still very good with the bases loaded, posting a .304 batting average and .756 OPS. That’s in 174 plate appearances and 148 at-bats, meaning Ortiz accounts for a full 17.8% of the PAs and more than 20% of the ABs.
Subtracting Ortiz’s at-bats would give the Brewers a .339 batting average with the sacks juiced. It’s also a .336 on-base percentage and .796 OPS.
Overall, Ortiz had a rough .593 OPS for the season … and still graded out positively in WAR according to both Fangraphs (1.4) and Baseball Reference (0.3), an indication of his defensive value.
Jacob Misiorowski’s rapid rise to stardom was unlike anything baseball has seen before
It was an oft-repeated stat at the time, but Jacob Misiorowski made just five MLB appearances before appearing in his first all-star game. That obliterated the old record, set just last year when Paul Skenes appeared in 11 games before appearing in the Midsummer Classic.
Nestor Cortes pitched for the Brewers twice; one of the worst starts in baseball history and then one of their best starts of the year
Nestor Cortes had legitimately one of the worst starts in big-league history in his Brewers debut. But it takes some twists from there.
Facing the Yankees, the team that traded Cortes to the Brewers in the offsason, Cortes yielded home runs to each of the first three batters he faced … on the first three pitches he threw. Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge got the Yankees out fast in a 20-9 win on the second day of the season. Cortes allowed two more homers (Austin Wells in the first, Anthony Volpe in the second) and also walked five, all over the span of 17 batters. That made him the first MLB pitcher since Ralph Branca in 1949 to allow five homers and five walks in a game, and that was over nine innings. Cortes did not record an out in the third.
And yet …
In his second start against Cincinnati, he allowed one hit on two walks over six shutout innings. The Brewers won, 1-0. And then he got hurt and never pitched for the Brewers again, sent to San Diego at the trade deadline.
He twice gave up back-to-back-to-back homers with San Diego this year, making him the first pitcher in MLB history to do that three times in one year. He ended the regular season back on the injured list.
No division lead was safe, including in the National League Central
Every single division in baseball featured a team blowing a lead of 5½ games or more. That included the National League Central, where the Cubs were up 6½ games on May 28 before the Brewers caught them July 20. The Brewers took the lead for good July 28. They went from tied to a nine-game lead in the matter of 19 days.
Home run production by month was consistent, then boomed, then went bust
Brewers home runs by month: 27 in March/April, 26 in May, 26 in June, 25 in July, 45 in August (!) and then 17 in September (?).
1-3, three times, for Jose Quintana
Brewers starting pitcher José Quintana became the first pitcher to record three 1-3 putouts (pitcher to first base) in a 1-2-3 inning since Detroit’s Chad Bell on Sept. 29, 2017. Quintana turned the feat Sept. 3 in the second inning against the Phillies.
He was the first Brewers pitcher to pull it off since Teddy Higuera on April 17, 1988.
Now the question is, will Quintana start Game 3 of his team’s playoff series, one year after facing his new team in Game 3 of a playoff series, back when he was with the Mets?
No free passes for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2025
Milwaukee was intentionally walked only 15 times this season, tied for the fewest free passes in a full season in franchise history with the 2023 team, and the 2025 team had 143 more plate appearances.
A wild collection of winning streaks
The Brewers have had multiple winning streaks of eight or more in three different seasons (2008, 2018, now 2025). But in 2025, the eight-game streak was the third-longest streak of the year, behind the franchise-record 14 and the 11.
The eight-game winning streak would have been the longest winning streak in 39 of 57 Brewers seasons. The Brewers are the first team since the 2023 Atlanta Braves to have three separate winning streaks of eight games or more. They’re the first team since the 2019 Houston Astros to have three eight-game streaks in which two were double-digits. They’re the first team since the 2013 Atlanta Braves to have a 14-game streak, another double-digit streak and a third streak of eight or more.