Note: I wrote this before last night’s game, which had, we shall say, some controversial managing in it. I stand by what I say here but the timing of this is objectively funny.
When it comes to end-of-the-year awards, the Brewers have cleaned up the past couple of years in the non-playing roles. Manager Pat Murphy and general manager Matt Arnold are both back-to-back winners in the awards for their respective jobs; Arnold is the only person to ever win the Executive of the Year award more than once
(the award started in 2018 and thus has only been handed out eight times), and last year Murphy and Stephen Vogt in the American League became just the third and fourth skippers to ever win Manager of the Year award in consecutive seasons (Kevin Cash in 2020-21 and Bobby Cox in 2004-05).
Let’s start with Arnold. He’s got a tougher road in one obvious sense: while the Manager of the Year award is given to one manager from each league, there is only a single Executive of the Year award, thus the pool is twice as large. That being said, in a vacuum, Arnold has as good a case as anyone; yet again, the Brewers traded a franchise cornerstone before the season. Yet again, the Brewers are just as good, if not better, than they were last season. In addition to the Peralta trade, Arnold came out ahead in the big swap with the Red Sox, even if all three players sent to Boston are contributing (a reminder: Caleb Durbin, Andruw Monasterio, and Anthony Seigler to the Red Sox for Kyle Harrison, Shane Drohan, and David Hamilton). At the trade deadline, Arnold chose not to deal for Tarik Skubal, but instead pivoted to Dustin May, a pickup that — barring his last outing — has looked quite good thus far.
I do not, however, think Arnold is going to win this award a third time running. There are a couple big reasons, whether justifiable or not.
First things first: while most Brewers fans and even some more sensible pundits think that Arnold made the right call by not trading for Skubal, there are a lot of people out there who think he was too passive. Add in that Skubal ended up with the Dodgers, the team that knocked the Brewers out of the playoffs last year, and the optics aren’t great. I am not here to re-litigate the decision to not trade for Skubal — I am firmly on the side of believing that it was the right call — I am here simply to state that among the people voting for this award — people who are not as plugged into the Brewers as we are — there is still a bit of a perception that Arnold blew it.
The second big factor is voter fatigue. People don’t like giving awards to the same person over and over again. Sometimes, there may not be an alternative that makes a whole lot of sense, but I think there are a couple of options that people will be able to talk themselves into instead of Arnold. One of those is the guy who did trade for Skubal, the Dodgers’ Andrew Friedman. Friedman won this award back in 2020, but that was a weird season. This year, his team should finish with one of the top two records in the league, he did trade for the biggest fish at the trade deadline, and he now presides over the farm system that most outlets see as the best in the league, even after trading for Skubal. The counterpoint here is that Friedman’s two very expensive free agent pickups, Kyle Tucker and Edwin Díaz, have both been quite bad.
Another option, and in my opinion the more likely one, is the Rays’ Erik Neander, who also won the award back in 2019. The Rays may not be quite at the level of the Brewers or Dodgers this season, but it looks like they’re going to waltz to the best record in the American League. Yes, their path has been made far easier by the absence of Aaron Judge, and yes, the AL Central and West divisions are embarrassing. But the Rays were far from a preseason favorite — ZiPS, PECOTA, and ESPN all predicted they’d finish last in the AL East, just to name a few quickly chosen projection systems.
That type of narrative is very often a harbinger of success for these types of awards. My prediction is that it leads to Neander supplanting Arnold as the reigning Executive of the Year.
It may very well also lead to Cash’s third Manager of the Year award, but as we do have separate AL and NL awards, that has no bearing on whether Murphy wins or not. In my opinion, Murphy winning MotY again is far more likely than Arnold winning a third straight EotY, but who could be standing in his way?
Well, let’s look at the other contending teams in the NL.
- Dave Roberts hasn’t won a Manager of the Year award since 2016, his first season in charge of the Dodgers. It is hard to win Manager of the Year when your team is the perpetual favorite, and I’d say that continues this year, especially if the Dodgers don’t finish with the best record in the league. That’d be almost disappointing.
- Walt Weiss of the Braves could conceivably be an option, but they’re sitting five games back of the Brewers for the best record in the NL this year, and while the Braves were bad in 2025, it’s not like it’s a shock that they’re winning that division.
- Craig Counsell and the Cubs currently hold the top Wild Card spot. They’re a good team, and Counsell has done fine. But can you imagine giving this award to Counsell over Murphy if the Cubs don’t catch the Brewers before the end of the season?
- Mike Shildt of the Padres and Torey Lovullo of the Diamondbacks have their teams in or around Wild Card position, but I don’t think either has a particularly good case.
- A wild card in this equation is the Marlins’ Clayton McCullough. (Could you have named the Marlins manager if I didn’t tell you? I could not have.) Miami is a team that had almost no expectations this season but who are currently a couple games over .500 and not totally out of the Wild Card race. Heck, they would be right in the mix if they were in the AL. I don’t think McCullough will win, but the Marlins have definitely overperformed, and that sometimes leads to a surprise victory in this award.
There’s one name missing here, and it’s the one that could be the biggest threat to Murphy: Philadelphia’s Don Mattingly. When Dave Dombrowski fired manager Rob Thomson on April 27, the Phillies were 9-19. Since taking over as interim manager, Mattingly is 64-40 and has the Phillies in the number two Wild Card spot, nipping at the heels of the Braves at the top of the NL East.
Now, an argument here: if you told someone before the season that the Phillies would be 73-59 on August 25, I don’t think it would shock anyone. The reason Mattingly is in consideration for this award is because the Phillies played so badly early in the season that to get where they are now, they had to dig out of a pretty large hole. Mattingly is also a beloved figure in baseball, and this could be his last opportunity; Mattingly is 65, hadn’t managed a team in five years, and it’s not clear that he’ll be back with the Phillies next year (though he told reporters he is open to it).
Mattingly definitely has the nice story on his side, and that story will look even better if the Phillies come from way behind to catch the Braves for the NL East crown.
But let’s be real here: in a vacuum, Murphy wins this award easily, right?
As stated at the top, the Brewers yet again traded a franchise icon. They were yet again disparaged by projection systems and dismissed by national writers for not trying hard enough and not spending enough money. Yet again, they’ve not only defied those expectations, but done so with aplomb. The Brewers could do the remarkable feat of improving on their record five seasons in a row, despite winning the division in four of those seasons. Think about that for a minute, and you will realize how difficult that is to do. Milwaukee has a real chance at setting a franchise record in wins (they need to go 17-14 the rest of the way to do so) and, for the second consecutive year, finishing the regular season with the most wins in the league.
There are certainly some fans of the Brewers (and users of this site!) who are sick of hearing about the Brewers’ regular-season accomplishments. I get it. But these are regular season awards. Arnold probably is going to be a victim of voter fatigue, and sure, whatever, that’s fine. Murphy, though, should win Manager of the Year in the National League (with an obvious caveat about seeing how the remaining month of the season plays out), which would make him the first person to ever win three in a row. He might not; the Mattingly case might just be a bit too alluring for some voters to ignore. But as I write in late August, Murphy absolutely deserves it, whether he wins it or not.
