The Milwaukee Brewers are headed to the MLB postseason for the seventh time in eight years, but this will be a season remembered for much more than that. For nearly two decades I’ve been maintaining a “Today in Wisconsin Baseball History” calendar, a collection of notable transactions, games, and moments, which I occasionally share on BlueSky. While most seasons provide dozens of those moments, the 2025 season has been one of the busiest in that project’s history. In lieu of a season recap, what follows is a brief look at the first 25 items—the good, the bad, and the weird—added to that calendar during the 2025 season. Part 2 of this feature, containing the notable events from late July through October, will run following the conclusion of the Brewers’ postseason appearance.
January 16 – A Legendary Loss
Nothing lasts forever, but it certainly seemed like Bob Uecker might. One of the last surviving members of the Milwaukee Braves, Uecker followed a relatively forgettable baseball career with one of the greatest second acts of all time and was a Hollywood star, late night TV regular and the radio voice of the Brewers for more than half a century before passing away in January at the age of 90 following a multi-year battle with cancer.
While the 2025 season would be the first played without Uecker since the franchise’s earliest days, his memory was never far from the surface as he was honored with countless memorials, callbacks, and stories.
March 27 – Stumbling on a National Stage
Perhaps in deference to their status as two-time reigning NL Central Champions (or perhaps because they were playing the Yankees) the Brewers’ first game of the season briefly had the entire baseball world’s attention as Opening Day’s first contest. Jackson Chourio fouled the first pitch of the MLB season off, one of the few times he made contact with the ball as he opened the season 0-for-5 with five swinging strikeouts.
Meanwhile, the first batter to face Freddy Peralta in the bottom of the first inning was Yankees catcher Austin Wells, who homered on a 2-0 pitch to give New York the lead and they never looked back. Devin Williams recorded the save in his first appearance as a Yankee and the Brewers were off to an 0-1 start.
March 29 – Cortes Gets Torpedoed
The Brewers’ first game of the season was rapidly overshadowed by the second. Top offseason acquisition Nestor Cortes allowed three home runs on consecutive pitches to the first batters he faced on the new season. Cortes pitched just two innings in his debut outing and became the first pitcher since 1949 to allow five home runs and five walks in a single outing.
All told the Yankees hit nine home runs in the game and 15 in the three-game series, outscoring the Brewers 36-14 in a sweep that spawned a national conversation about the Yankees’ adoption of “torpedo bats,” a new bat design that appeared to have turned their already-potent offense into a collection of superhumans. New Brewers closer Trevor Megill, who faced one batter in the series, threw fuel on the conspiracy fire by telling a reporter the bats “might be bush [league]. It might not be. But it’s the Yankees, so they’ll let it slide.”
March 31 – Elvin? ELLLLVIN!
With injuries and attrition the Brewers nearly had a longer list of pitchers who were not available for the season’s first week than those ready to perform. That was perhaps never more apparent than on the day of their home opener, when a team that ranked fourth in the majors in run prevention in 2024 sent minor league journeyman Elvin Rodriguez to the mound to throw the first pitch of the 2025 season at American Family Field. Rodriguez allowed four runs over four innings in what would turn out to be one of just two starts for him as a Brewer. The Brewers lost 11-1 to fall to 0-4 on the season.
April 2 – Getting Up Off Their Bunt
The Brewers went on to take two of three from the Royals in that home opening series and clinched a series victory in dramatic fashion. Freddy Peralta allowed just one run over eight innings in one of his best outings of the season, but the Brewers also managed just one run, sending the game to extra innings. Both teams scored in the tenth before Jared Koenig worked around the automatic runner to pitch a scoreless eleventh, setting the stage for Brice Turang’s walkoff squeeze bunt.
April 7 – When All Else Fails, Call A Priest(er)
After experiencing yet more trouble with their pitching staff (Nestor Cortes had joined the injured list after just two appearances) the Brewers made what looked like a rare desperation trade in April, dealing outfield prospect Yophery Rodriguez, a player to be named later (2024 fifth round pick John Holobetz) and one of their top picks in the 2025 draft to Boston for pitcher Quinn Priester. Priester had been one of the game’s top pitching prospects for an extended stretch (MLB Pipeline had him in their top 100 in 2021, 2022 and 2023) but his stuff had not translated to the majors, where he had a 6.23 ERA across 21 appearances between the Pirates and Red Sox. Despite that inauspicious beginning, however, Priester would go on to blossom in Milwaukee. He allowed just one run in 10 innings across his first two starts as a Brewer and from the end of May into September the Brewers won every game he pitched in.
April 12 – Fading in the Desert
Sending 26-year-old rookie Chad Patrick to the mound to face former Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes didn’t seem like a likely recipe for success, but for eight innings the Brewers made it work against the Diamondbacks. The Brewers got to Burnes in the second and sixth innings and got eight scoreless innings from Patrick and four relievers before sending Joel Payamps out to close the door with a 4-0 lead. Payamps and Trevor Megill combined to face nine batters in that inning and retired just two of them, however, and the second out came on a walkoff sac fly as the Diamondbacks stole a 5-4 victory.
April 20 – So Many Steals
Seven different Brewers stole at least 14 bases in 2025, something they’ve only done twice in franchise history, and a few of them padded their numbers a bit during a blowout win over the nomadic Athletics. Brice Turang stole two bases and Christian Yelich, William Contreras and Sal Frelick all took one during the four-run first inning of a 14-1 victory. All told the Brewers accumulated nine steals in the game, a new franchise record.
May 7 – Score One for the Haders
The Brewers traded Josh Hader, one of the most successful relievers in franchise history, all the way back in 2022 but somehow it took almost three full years for what went around to come back around. Hader didn’t get into a game during the Padres’ visit to American Family Field in 2023 and the Astros didn’t come to Milwaukee in 2024 so Hader’s first appearance as a visitor on the AmFam mound didn’t come until this game. The Astros gave him a nice soft opportunity against his former team, putting him in to finish a 9-1 victory.
May 9 – Counting on Quintana
If it seems like Jose Quintana has spent most of his career pitching against the Brewers, it’s because he has. Across stints with the White Sox, Cubs, Angels, Giants, Pirates, Cardinals and Mets he’s faced the Brewers 23 times, 15th most of any pitcher this century. On this day, however, one of his biggest milestones came as a Brewer.
When he got Danny Jansen to fly out to center field in the second inning of this game against the Rays it gave him 2000 innings for his career, making him one of just six active pitchers to reach that mark (Chris Sale got there just a few days earlier). He’s also the only Colombian born player ever to reach that mark, and he’s over 1800 innings ahead of the next active pitcher.
May 12 – A K of K’s
He’s probably still not there yet for a variety of reasons, but one of the stories of 2025 was Freddy Peralta’s continued climb up the list of best pitchers in Brewers history. He surpassed another rare round number on this day, striking out Guardians second baseman Daniel Schneemann to record the 1,000th K of his career.
Peralta went on to record over 200 strikeouts in 2025 for the third consecutive season. He’s on pace to surpass Ben Sheets and Yovani Gallardo and become the Brewers’ all time leader in that category early next season.
May 17 – Bottoming Out
While the month of May had been good for a few individual accomplishments, as a group it wasn’t a great time for the Brewers. They went just 9-13 in their first 22 games that month and dipped down into fourth place in the NL Central, as many as 6 ⅕ games back of first place. On this day a Brewers loss to the Twins coincided with wins for the Cubs, Cardinals and Reds and the Crew’s FanGraphs playoff odds reached 9.3%, the lowest they had been at any point in the last three seasons.
May 18 – No Streak for You, Minnesota
It’s not what history will remember about them, but for a brief stretch of time the 2025 Twins might have been the best team in baseball. They were 18-5 in their last 23 games and had won 13 games in a row when they came to AmFam on a Sunday afternoon looking to complete a three-game sweep of the Brewers, but it was not meant to be. Freddy Peralta and four relievers combined to hold them to two runs and the Brewers got a big inning in the third on their way to a 5-2 victory. In hindsight this game is a pretty clear demarcation point for both teams: The Twins went 54-72 the rest of the way and had one of the biggest trade deadline teardowns in history, while the Brewers went 76-40 on their way to baseball’s best record.
May 27 – A Slam for the Ages
It’s the kind of scenario kids grow up dreaming about: Bases loaded, game on the line. Despite all of that imagination, however, walkoff grand slams don’t happen that often. In fact, when Christian Yelich came to the plate in the bottom of the tenth inning of this day’s game against the Red Sox there wasn’t a single player on the Brewers roster who had participated as a batter or baserunner in the last one.
With one swing of the bat, however, Christian Yelich changed all of that. His blast against Liam Hendricks was the ninth walkoff grand slam in Brewers franchise history and the first walkoff homer of his MLB career.
June 3 – A Streak Stolen
The aforementioned Yelich grand slam powered the second of eight consecutive wins, something the Brewers had done just 20 times in franchise history. They narrowly missed an opportunity to extend that streak to nine on a Tuesday night in Cincinnati.
The Brewers trailed 4-2 with two outs in the top of the ninth inning when Caleb Durbin reached on an error to extend the game for Jake Bauers, who hit the ball 400 feet to center field. Baseball Savant estimates that ball would have been a hit in about 95% of situations and a home run in six out of 30 MLB parks, but this day and this park was not one of them.
June 12 – Enter The Miz
It’s tough for a top prospect’s MLB debut to live up to the hype, but Jacob Misiorowski proved it’s not impossible. The 23-year-old pitcher had been one of the sport’s top 100 prospects as defined by Baseball America, MLB Pipeline, and others in each of the last two seasons and had a career 3.04 ERA with over 12 strikeouts per nine innings across four minor league seasons when the Brewers called him up from AAA Nashville to face the Cardinals and were quickly rewarded for doing so.
Misiorowski needed just nine batters to record his first nine MLB outs and held St. Louis hitless across five innings in his first time pitching at American Family Field, a game the Brewers went on to win 6-0. He would go on to be credited with the win in each of his first three MLB outings, allowing just two runs on three hits across 16 innings of work.
June 13 – So Long, Civale
Misiorowski’s emergence as a potential star wasn’t great news for everyone, and one of the disappointed parties wasn’t exactly quiet about it. The Brewers’ collection of rising and recovering pitchers left seven-year big league veteran Aaron Civale as the odd man out despite his 3.84 ERA across 19 outings as a Brewer in 2024 and 2025. The Brewers granted his request not to pitch out of the bullpen by dealing him to one of baseball’s worst teams, the White Sox, in exchange for one-time top prospect but struggling slugger Andrew Vaughn.
He was the #3 overall pick in the 2019 draft but at the time of the trade Vaughn was one of baseball’s least valuable hitters, batting just .189 with a .218 on-base and .314 slugging while playing first base in Chicago. The Brewers brought him back to the majors on July 7 and his season turned around immediately after his arrival in Milwaukee, where he batted .377/.444/.701 with seven home runs in his first month.
June 20 – Yelich Piles on the Twins
As noted above, the 2025 Twins’ season went south on them in a hurry after their 13-game winning streak in May. On this day a Friday night game in Milwaukee also got off to a somewhat promising start for them before becoming a disaster late. The Brewers took a 3-0 lead into the top of the seventh inning but scored five in the seventh, four in the eighth and five more in the ninth on their way to a 17-6 blowout.
Christian Yelich was a major participant in things getting ugly late as he hit an RBI single in the sixth, a three-run double in the seventh, another three run double in the eighth, and an RBI single in the ninth to tie the Brewers franchise record with eight runs driven in for the game, joining Rowdy Tellez atop that leaderboard.
July 8 – Gotta Go Fast
In the middle game of a three-game set against the Brewers the Dodgers spent most of the game trying to catch up, falling behind 2-1 in the fourth and eventually losing 3-1. Their batters also spent most of the game trying to catch up in a different way. As Curt Hogg of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (and later the Brewers on Facebook) noted, the four pitchers the Brewers used in this game (Misiorowski, Jared Koenig, Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill) averaged 99.34 mph on their fastball, the fastest any team has averaged in a game since pitch tracking data became publicly available.
July 9 – Sweeping the Insurmountables
Much of the offseason narrative around Major League Baseball was a question of how anyone would compete with the high budget, high talent Dodgers. For a while, at least, the Brewers were able to figure it out. Their 3-2, 10 inning walkoff win on this day completed their first ever home sweep of Los Angeles and brought them back within a game and a half of first place in the NL Central for the first time since April.
July 13 – First Half Finale
They had seemed like an afterthought in the postseason race just two months earlier, but the Brewers turned the corner into the All Star break as one of the game’s clear contenders. Their 8-1 win over the Nationals to complete a sweep on this day improved them to 56-40 on the season and set a franchise record for wins during the season’s “first half.”
It’s worth noting that this milestone happened at least in part due to some goalpost moving: The MLB season starts earlier than it ever has before but the All Star Game is still played at the same time, so this 56-40 Brewers team had more opportunities to win 56 games than, for example, the 54-38 1979 team or the 48-35 1982 team. Nonetheless, it was a major achievement for a team that had been 21-25 at one point in May.
July 15 – Misiorowski Goes Viral
Three Brewers pitchers represented the franchise at this season’s All Star Game in Atlanta but one generated a fair amount more attention and controversy than the others. Jacob Misiorowski was a late addition to the NL All Star team (reportedly after several other pitchers turned down the offer) to become the quickest player ever to go from debut to All Star. Misiorowski had pitched just five MLB games at that point and was the second Brewers rookie ever to play in the ASG, joining Ben Sheets. He worked a scoreless eighth inning in a game the NL eventually won on a tiebreaker home run swingoff.
July 18 – Streaking Again
After the All Star break the Brewers resumed the season with an oft-dreaded west coast road trip, playing six games against future playoff teams across trips to Los Angeles and Seattle. They were up to the challenge on this night, however, with Quinn Priester outdueling Tyler Glasnow in a 2-0 Brewers win. The victory gave the Brewers eight wins in a row for the second time this season and the 21st time in franchise history.
July 20 – Sweep and Sweep Again
The aforementioned Brewers home sweep, their first-ever against the Dodgers, was arguably only their second most impressive sweep of the defending World Series Champions this season. On a Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles the Brewers scored three in the fourth, three more in the sixth, and held on for a 6-5 win to complete another series sweep and finish the season 6-0 against the Dodgers. This was the first time they’ve even finished the season above .500 against the Dodgers since 2014 and it was only the fifth time in franchise history they’ve swept a season series of at least six games against any opponent.
That wasn’t the only history made in that game, however:
• It was also the Brewers’ 21st and final time facing future Hall of Fame pitcher Clayton Kershaw during the regular season. Kershaw has since announced this will be his final MLB season.
• On a more immediate note, this game moved the Brewers into a tie for first place in the NL Central for the first time since April 11.
July 25 – Alumni Home Run Derby
The Brewers managed just four hits and committed three errors on this day in a Friday matinee loss to the Marlins, but any disappointment in that outcome was quickly overshadowed by one of the more popular postgame events in franchise history.
As part of the celebration of Miller Park / American Family Field’s 25th anniversary, the Brewers invited alumni from across the ballpark’s history to return and a few of them stole the show with a postgame home run derby, where Carlos Gomez’s team of Prince Fielder, Keon Broxton, Yovani Gallardo, and Nyjer Morgan combined for 15 home runs to beat Ryan Braun and his teammates Casey McGehee, Bill Hall, Eric Thames, and Corey Hart. Broxton led the team event in home runs and knocked off Hart in the final to claim the individual crown as well, then re-created the bowling ball home plate celebration Fielder performed after a Brewers walkoff in 2009.
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