‘It’s us against the world’: Milwaukee Brewers start postseason run

The Milwaukee Brewers are back in the playoffs as the National League Central champions. The Brewers play their first postseason game against he New York Mets on Tuesday at American Family Field this afternoon.

Before the game, WPR’s “Morning Edition” host Alex Crowe spoke with Jeff Levering, a play-by-play announcer for the Brewers on Bally Sports Wisconsin and a member of the radio broadcast team.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Alex Crowe: Alrighty, let’s start with the pitching. That was a big question mark coming into this season, especially with a couple of key losses with Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff. So tell me how has the pitching worked out so far this season?

Jeff Levering: It’s it’s been a real work in progress. Not a lot of teams go through 17 different starting pitchers and 12 different guys that have picked up saves over the course of the season and and been a successful team. But the Brewers have certainly turned into a very successful team. It really took a trade to get Frankie Montas into this organization in August to solidify things.

So for the last two months, it’s been a pretty normal pitching rotation. The guys in the bullpen have been relatively interchangeable, with the exception of a few guys, a few mainstays at the back end of that bullpen. Now, Devin Williams is back. It’s really rock solid back there.

AC: The Brewers have had a lot of offensive success as well. You have guys like Willie Adames and Jackson Chourio, now members of the 20-20 club. How is the offense been able to help the team so far this year?

JL: I think it’s been a really dynamic style of offense. They just go out there and they have long at bats, and they draw their walks, and they push guys forward, and they’re running a lot and they’re successful hitting with runners in scoring position. They lead the league, and two out runs scored.

It’s just a different brand of offense. For me, it’s a throwback kind of to the 80s where you would run and hit behind runners and drive a guy in. It was the old adage of, get a guy on, get him over, get him in. And that’s what the Brewers have been doing over the course of the year.

They’ll hit their homers. It’s been really a more dynamic style of offense, and one that is almost slump proof. You could tell that by the Brewers not losing more than three games in a row all season long.

AC: It’s kind of hard for the Brewers to imagine continuity, or at least their fans, because it seemed in the offseason like that might not be a thing. We already talked about the changes to the pitching staff that was going to be happening, not to mention the coaching staff with Craig Counsell leaving and Pat Murphy jumping in. Talk a little bit about that continuity for the Brewers and how Pat Murphy’s been able to really rise to the occasion this season managing this club.

JL: My biggest takeaway is that the only piece that left was Craig. Everybody else stayed from last year — the coaching staff that had been here during the stretch where the Brewers have made the postseason six of the last seven years. It’s those guys that had the consistent message.

And Murph’s been here the entire time. He didn’t have the main voice that Craig did as the manager, because he was the bench coach, but he’s been here. You go from being the vice principal or the substitute teacher to being the principal. It’s a different voice. But for Murph, he’s always been the same.

I think Murph and the rest of this coaching staff has done a brilliant job of keeping everybody connected.

AC: Our very own WPR’s Evan Casey here is a huge Brewers fan, and he told me to ask about the team’s motto this year, which is apparently “undaunted.” What does that mean? Tell me about it.

JL: The “undaunted,” and you hear “relentless” a lot — those are the two big key phrases with this organization. It goes back to what we were just talking about, with all these different negative things that happen over the course of the season. You can really get caught in some of that.

Just to be undaunted for Pat Murphy, it goes back to his dad in his playing days in a football game where he was making a play going around the right end, and the newspaper writer said that Pat Murphy’s dad was “undaunted” in his way to get to the outside. That’s where the whole thing stems from.

But it’s just this “who cares?” mentality. It’s us against the world. Don’t worry about the little stuff. Because as a team, we’re going to get it done once you come through those clubhouse doors. It’s all about winning that night. It’s all about winning for your teammates. It’s all about being there for each other. It’s not about the other stuff that’s happening.

And believe me, everybody deals with a lot of stuff outside of baseball. But as soon as you go through those clubhouse doors, or for me, the broadcast booth doors, it’s all about winning that day.