The recent surge of the Milwaukee Brewers triggered me to let out an audible “Why won’t you die!” statement of exasperation. Every year, after they are knocked out of the playoffs, I believe they’ve lost too much talent from free agency and trades to continue to contend in the NL Central, and every year I am wrong. Even this year, with the loss of their karmic talisman, Bob Uecker, they have managed to cobble together a decent starting rotation and keep themselves in the race. And now they are getting healthy.
The only comparison I could think of are some of the classic horror movie villains – Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers. You think they’ve been vanquished for good at the end of each movie. But no! They always manage to come back to life, one way or another. In the movies, the victims are often teenagers or other unfortunate people who happen to get in the way. In the NL Central, it’s the Cubs, Cardinals, Reds and Pirates who have fallen victim.
There is one other similarity, which is not as flattering, is that the horror villains never win in the end. And despite going to the playoffs for 6 of the past 7 years, they have only made it to the NLCS once and never to the World Series. Just when you think they have a chance, something always happens – like a Francisco Lindor home run off Devin Williams, or a Trent Grisham misplay in right field.
There is still a lot of this season yet to go, but the Brewers seem poised to continue to complete – especially with the return of Brandon Woodruff, and the eventual return of Nestor Cortes, who should give the Brewers and excellent rotation moving forward.
Here are some of the players they’ve lost who were in their top 10 WAR the previous season:
2025 – Willy Adamas, Devin Williams
2024 – Corbin Burnes
2023 – John Hader (traded in 2022), Kolten Wong
2022 – Luis Urias (traded in 2023), Avisail Garcia
2021 – Jedd Gyorko
2020 – Mike Moustakas, Zach Davies, Yasmani Grandal, Jordan Lyles, Gio Gonzalez
Cubs in 7 
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