Brewers’ Confidence Lacking After Lackluster Start To 2025 Season

What a difference a year makes.

Twelve months ago, the Milwaukee Brewers were one of baseball’s feel-good stories in early May and were on their way to turning a half-game lead into a runaway NL Central Division championship.

“We were off and running and things felt good,” manager Pat Murphy said of his team a year ago at this time. “These young guys were believing and it was fun.”

Fast forward back to the present and it’s a completely different story.

The Brewers have looked little like the young, talented and hungry group of overachievers from a year ago as they’ve limped through the first month of the season hovering around the .500 mark and go into their series finale at Cleveland Wednesday having lost five of six, including back-to-back shutout losses to the Guardians.

After falling, 2-0, Tuesday night, Murphy and his players closed the clubhouse doors for the second team meeting in a three-week stretch, in the hopes of finding a way out of the doldrums and back to the form they showed during a magical 2024 season.

“We’re just figuring out how we can come together and play with some of that energy and passion we played with, especially early on, last year,” veteran first baseman Rhys Hoskins said. “It’s kind of a slippery slope. We have this great example of how this team can be successful, which is an awesome thing to have coming into any season. But we’re also trying to figure out how to do that this year.”

For many of Milwaukee’s players, the struggles of this season represent uncharted territory. The roster, made up primarily of home-grown talent, features a number of high draft picks as well as a former top prospect in all of baseball. Winning has been second nature to most of these players, even during their minor league careers, as well as last season when Milwaukee ran away with the NL Central Division.

That squad produced all sorts of impressive numbers but perhaps none moreso than the fact that it never once lost more than three games in a row, something this year’s team has done twice through its first 43 games.

“We were just confident in how we could win games and we were pretty stubborn about that on a nightly basis,” Hoskins said. “We stumbled a few times last year but always figured out how to get back to being ourselves. As for how we can apply that to this year, well, we have a great example from last year but I think these conversations we’re having tonight are how we can figure out how to come together quicker so these low points don’t last as long.”

Confidence, or more specifically a lack thereof, seems to be the Brewers’ biggest issue at the moment, at least from Murphy’s perspective.

For the moment, the confidence that defined this team a year ago seems to be in short supply.

“It’s a hard thing to go through when you’ve lost your confidence a bit,” Murphy said. But confidence comes from true preperation – a belief in your past and belief in what you’ve done – then an awakening that understands that ‘this isn’t easy; just because i was good last year, i’m now in my second or third year…’

“It doesn’t just happen. You’ve got to reach down and go through this, you have to reach down and you have to get through it.”

Hoskins agreed with his skipper’s assessment.

“After some extended failure, like we’re going through right now, that’s one of the first and easiest things to waver on,” Hoskins said. “Questioning yourself about your preparation and what you’re doing, whether that’s worked or not in the past, isn’t a great place to start any competition.

“Sometimes we just need to remind ourselves that this is the best league in the world and we are here because we belong here so hopefully our conversations tonight can get us to that point come tomorrow.”

Tuesday’s loss left Milwaukee 20-23, tied with Cincinnati for third place in the Central, five games behind the front-running Chicago Cubs. It’s not where the Brewers want to be at this point of the season but there’s still plenty of time to turn things around and get back on track, which was another thing Murphy wanted to make clear during their Tuesday-night discussion.

“I’m going to make a funny statement,” Murphy said during his postgame press conference. “You guys might laugh at me but I like this team and I don’t think we’re super far away. I think we have some young people who have lost their confidence, and I think that there is a way out. I do.”