AS PANCAKES ARE SERVED, NOT BRATWURST, THE MILWAUKEE BREWERS ARE 73-44
With Aaron Boone losing his job and Craig Counsell possibly asking why he left, the Brewers are baseball’s best team — with a $108.8 million payroll — while selling their manager’s pocket pancakes
In the Bronx, Aaron Boone might be ass-canned by the Yankees before his next temper tantrum. He manages a team that hasn’t won a World Series in 16 years and where Mariano Rivera, at 55, tore his Achilles in an Old-Timers’ game Saturday. In Chicago, Craig Counsell joyfully took a $40 million hitchhike on I-94 to run the Cubs. Those franchises were two of baseball’s three biggest revenue-generators last season, and this October, they would be watched nationally when others are ignored.
Right now, they are mesmerized and bedraggled by … the Brewers?
Up there in Milwaukee, a town more famous for foiling the sport’s operational norms than overhyping flat beer, the manager loves Bruce Springsteen and has turned pocket pancakes into the new eating craze at American Family Field. Not only that, Pat Murphy is running a 73-44 club that is better than the Yankees, better than the Cubs, better than the Dodgers, better than the Mets and better at this point than every other entree in the major leagues. You would be hard-pressed to name more than four or five players unless you are a savant. It seems impossible to blow the mind amid today’s extravagant philosophies, when the Dodgers will spend $500 million this season with luxury taxes.
The spreadsheet in Wisconsin reads $108.8 million. Even those who are interested in this startling August coma could name the people who recently left: Counsell, who preferred to run a big-market team in the same division and continues to slumber; general manager David Stearns, who joined net-worth king Steve Cohen with the Mets; free-agent shortstop Willy Adames, who signed with San Francisco; pitcher Corbin Burnes, who was traded; and closer Devin Williams, who was dealt and has become the symbol of the Yankees’ demise. “I stink right now,” he said after blowing three games in a week.
Full-blown departures haven’t stopped the Brewers. Being in Milwaukee hasn’t stopped the Brewers. Don’t bother mentioning injuries after they lost power hitter Rhys Hoskins and renegade All-Star Jacob Misiorowski, who is out with a tibia contusion after failing to pitch enough to legitimately make the National League team. Of course, until he returns to the mound, he was dispatched to the Wisconsin State Fair, where he ate a donut with edible ants. “The donut itself is good. The bugs? Three (out of 10),” the Miz wrote, kindly.
This is how the team tends to function. Food and oblivion rule. As we attempt to figure out five of the first six hitters in Sunday’s lineup — Caleb Durbin, Isaac Collins, Blake Perkins, Andruw Monasterio and Andrew Vaughn, once spotted on the South Side with the losingest franchise in MLB history — the Brewers thrive on the idiosyncratic side. They still have Christian Yelich and William Contreras, but keep on guessing. The Dodgers have 10 pitchers making more than $5 million and have struggled all year, yet the Brewers are among the ERA leaders. You might know Freddy Peralta. You don’t know Quinn Priester, who was signed in April after he failed to make Boston’s roster. He hasn’t lost in nine appearances as a starter.
A last-place team, on paper, is the best in baseball. “That’s why you’re all in here. Because you don’t know why, and I don’t know why,” said Murphy, noting a larger media audience than usual.
Sunday, the Brewers won their ninth straight game, 7-6, when Collins homered off Edwin Diaz in the ninth inning. They swept the Mets, whose payroll is $339.4 million and includes Juan ($765 million) Soto. A 5-0 deficit was irrelevant as 42,461 watched and devoured the manager’s pocket pancakes. Would I lie? What if I said they played as flash floods and rainfall blitzed the city? What if I said Murphy describes his players as “the Woodpeckers,” saying, “You keep pecking away until the game is over”?
“I just hope the fans keep showing up because this is really magical — in terms of some guys that nobody has ever heard of just coming to play every night. It’s fun,” Murphy said.
“We’re going through a great moment right now, one of the better moments the franchise has gone through,” said Contreras, who hit two home runs. “It’s great vibes in the clubhouse when you’re going through a stretch like this. In any clubhouse you’re in, this is a feeling you’re chasing after.”
The owner is Mark Attanasio, who is accustomed to winning after reaching the playoffs five times in six years through 2023. Unlike Jerry Reinsdorf in Chicago, who loses badly as a cheapskate, he wins as a cheapskate. “In the last eight years, we are one of the three best teams in the National League, and since I bought the club in 2005, we are one of the four best,” Attanasio said. “We have an expectation to win this year, and we will have a lot of young players who have their first real opportunity to shine in the major leagues. We'll see who seizes that opportunity.”
Credit the culture. Murphy, once the head coach at Notre Dame, continues to keep tabs with Counsell but appeals more to the Cheeseheads. They happen to like bratwurst. When he is hungry during games, he places a pancake in his uniform pocket. They are known as “Murph’s Pocket Pancakes” and are available Sundays at the home ballpark. Too bad the national media were late on the craze.
“A little late, we’ve been doing this since 2017,” Murphy said. “I guess I never did it during an interview (before). It used to be mostly bagels. I had bagels in the morning. I’d always have one (during) day games usually — a bagel, a waffle, a pancake rolled up, something. Day games, the day gets away from you and you need a little something.”
If not flapjacks? “Waffles, pizza,” he said. “If it’s cold pizza, you fold it up like a sandwich, you know what I mean,” Murphy said. “You can eat it during the game. And then when I wear a hoodie, I have the pocket right here, and that’s full of crumbs.”
That’s better than Boone, who was ejected Sunday for the fifth time this season and the 44th time since 2018. “I’ve heard you enough,” said plate umpire Derek Thomas, who watched the Yankees fall to sixth in the American League.
“It was the first couple of innings," Boone said after a 7-1 loss. “I was on him a lot. That's over and done with and it is what it is, and that isn't the reason we lost this game.”
The difference in moods might not be worth $40 million to Counsell. He was riding high, with a monster offense, until baseball president Jed Hoyer played the trade deadline the way the Cubs have played 115 of the last 116 seasons. He lost, failing to markedly improve the rotation and bullpen and trading for injury-plagued Michael Siroka, who didn’t survive three debut innings and is on the injured list with a right shoulder strain.
“Right now, it’s not looking like a good bet,” said Hoyer, who only days earlier received a multi-year extension from chairman Tom Ricketts.
So who’s in good shape? No one in Chicago, including the big-city reporter who showed up Friday and asked Murphy about “the secret sauce.” He wasn’t referring to pancakes.
“There’s certainly no secret sauce,” he said. “That’s comical. We’re playing the same game everybody else is. … I just think it’s about people. It’s about people and hungry players. In today’s game, you don’t have as many veterans hanging around and stirring the drink. When you do, it’s easy to have divided attention. (But) these guys are just worried about whether their locker is going to be there when they get back (into the clubhouse) that night.”
The lockers are intact. The pancakes have plenty of flour. Can we see late October?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.