NL DIVISION SERIES: CUBS VS BREWERS

October 6, 2025

Pat Murphy

American Family Field

Milwaukee Brewers

Pregame 2 Press Conference

Q. Being the entertainer you are, how much of the old Casey Stengel, Jack McKeon, Ozzie Guillen, taking the pressure off your own players by being out there, giving a lot of copy to the media, how much does that come into your thinking about taking pressure off your guys?

PAT MURPHY: It ain't about me; let's make it clear. Anything like that is just me being light and I think authentic. It's just I like to keep it light. I don't have a strategy behind it, to be honest with you. I'm nervous just like everyone else is nervous before games. There's no strategy; there really isn't.

Q. Can you share if Jackson is in the lineup tonight --

PAT MURPHY: How do you not have the lineup? You're the only guy in the room that doesn't have the lineup.

Q. No, we don't get it early. Nobody has the lineup.

PAT MURPHY: Okay. This can be off the record. You guys got to get better. The lineup has been out since last night, so get some contacts.

He's leading off. Same lineup as last game.

Q. He's obviously good enough to play; I'm curious if you've talked to him about how he feels, just testing the leg. I know he was in his head when he was coming back from it originally.

PAT MURPHY: Yeah, I think that's it. It's the mental hurdle. I'm sure it's not 100 percent. But I'm more worried about behavior than feelings. However he feels isn't as important as how he behaves.

Q. In 2021 you guys were in the same position and the series didn't go your way. Are there any lessons you can learn from that experience and help provide this team --

PAT MURPHY: That was Braves? Yeah. I mean, this is postseason baseball. You play one pitch at a time, and what happened in 2021, I hardly remember. I remember Freddie Freeman was on that team and he had a huge hit in that series at a huge time.

It's just a different world. To learn from it -- you learn from every game you coach. You learn from every year you're in. The postseason is hard. It's the best teams in baseball. That means you got in the deal, and wherever we are, there's eight teams left; is that right? There's eight teams left. That's great company.

So anything can happen. There's no lead that's safe. There's no 2-0 deficit or there's no game deficit that prohibits anybody from being capable of doing it again.

But learning experience in terms of how we did it back then, I don't think there's -- there's things you do differently if you knew the outcome, right? If that ball is going to get down instead of get caught, which is a matter of -- it's not a matter of strategy. Well, that changes a lot of things.

It's our game. It's the way we play it. That's why we play 162, because you find out who the best are over time.

But in a postseason thing, anything can happen, and you've just got to be ready and keep swinging, keep punching.

Q. Are there any limitations with Chourio on running, especially on defense?

PAT MURPHY: I mean, I'm sure we're not going to -- if he gets in a situation where he feels it, we're going to take him out. If he gets in a situation where he doesn't feel like he can do the job, we're going to take him out.

Q. Is he in there in left field?

PAT MURPHY: Yes.

Q. Ashby, what's been the pitching -- putting him right back out there today; he's had a really good, productive season for you. What's been the key to the way he's been able to perform for you all year long?

PAT MURPHY: Yeah, he's been really consistent. He's kind of finding himself as a pitcher in that role of six outs or whatever it might be. He's a guy that likes to throw. After his injury, his serious shoulder injury, he's come back last year and this year, and he's just been a worker. He just wants the ball every time out.

He's a good matchup for righties and lefties. He's been one of our best. He's been a key to this team being successful.

Q. I hate to ask you to repeat yourself; I'm sure you've remarked on this before. What does it make you feel, if anything --

PAT MURPHY: I do whether I want to or not. I repeat myself.

Q. What does it make you feel, if anything, to hear Counsell get booed?

PAT MURPHY: I hate it. It's none of my business, but I know this: They never boo a bum. You're getting booed, you're good at something. I hate it because I know how much he loves Milwaukee. I know how much he loves this city. He loves this state. There's no one that's more fond of the high school athletic performances than Craig. He follows the guys in basketball, football, baseball, women's basketball. He follows all of it. This is his residence, and he's -- in my mind -- but fans will be fans. They're fanatics, so they do what they do, and people pile on and that type of thing.

I think he's above that, and he knows they never boo a bum. Manny Machado comes here, they boo him every time, and he hits a homer or two. Like it doesn't affect the great ones.

I think the fans will come around someday. I do. I do.

Q. What did you like about just the pressure offensively you guys were able to show in Game 1 and just how you can see the guys continue to do that today?

PAT MURPHY: Yeah, that has to be us. We're not going to out-homer teams. That has to be the way we play. We have to take the walk when the walk is there. We have to take advantage of the infield hit or the error if we can. Just keep grinding at-bats out. We have to play that way.

That was great to see, especially right out of the box. Hopefully we can do that.

I didn't like the last six innings approach at all, but you're going to go through those times.

Q. Back to Ashby, is there an inning threshold for him tonight before you go to a guy like Priester, or if he's grooving, he's going?

PAT MURPHY: Yeah. Yeah. We've got to be reasonable. But I think he can give us three maybe at the far side, maybe four. But we'll see.

Q. How are you thinking of José Quintana tonight?

PAT MURPHY: I love that kid.

Q. Is he in play if you need him or do you want to have him start a game in this series?

PAT MURPHY: That's a definite possibility. We're going to see how this one goes. All hands on deck. See how this one goes. But yeah, he's definitely in the forefront of our mind.

Q. I'm sure there's another one you get a lot. You had Quinn Priester coming from the beginning of the year when you guys were kind of desperate for pitching --

PAT MURPHY: Not kinda desperate.

Q. To have him turn in the performance that he did, how much did that mean to your season?

PAT MURPHY: I mean, this kid, another -- you talk about Collins, what he did for us day in, day out; Quinn Priester, an amazing story. We go pluck a kid from Triple-A -- we kind of knew about him. He pitched for Pittsburgh so we saw him a few times here and there, but you would not peg him as the guy that was going to be one of the flagship guys that's going to help us have the regular-season success we've had.

To know the kid and the competitor, it's amazing. It's really amazing. I'm really, really happy for the kid.

Obviously we've enjoyed having him, but he's just -- yeah, he's been great.

Q. You said after Game 1 and just a couple minutes ago that you weren't as happy with the at-bats after that second inning. What do you think the difference was in those at-bats, and what do you take from them moving forward into this game with your approach and how you go at it?

PAT MURPHY: Yeah, for us, you've got to get to first; know what I mean? The likelihood of just winning with homers or extra-base hits comes from swinging at the right pitches.

I just felt like we got a little bit -- I don't know if the word is complacent, but I think we didn't have that same mindset. It's tough when you score nine runs. It's tough to have it.

And credit the Cubs' pitching. They knew us and they pitched to us very well. Civale threw the ball great. The Ben Brown kid's breaking ball was special.

That leads to that poor approach sort of thing. It's not easy. But I think the urgency to score more runs goes down a little bit when you have a big lead, and we're based on that urgency to get to first, somehow create first base.

Q. In Game 1 we saw a handful of adjustments. Freddy going with a lot of the secondaries after Busch got him on the home. The offense, Durbin talked about it, they wanted to be more aggressive against Boyd when he was attacking the zone early. How much of that do you feel like is that these two teams know each other so well that you have to make adjustments to catch them by surprise, and how much of it is that's just the playoffs?

PAT MURPHY: Yeah, I mean, there's a little bit of that in there. We know the team very well. We know the player, what they're capable of. But baseball, a good executed pitch is a good executed pitch. Matt Boyd didn't execute the pitches he wanted to. I've seen the guy dominate us. He didn't execute pitches the way he could have, and we were ready for when he didn't execute pitches.

That happens for everyone. Then Freddy goes out and realizes, boom, that they're looking this way, so we're going to go -- and Contreras is a big part of that. So he jockeyed him through that thing in a great way and Freddy executed the pitches.

But it comes down to executing pitches both offensively and defensively. You execute the pitch, you hit a ball hard and they catch it. Nothing else you can do. If that happens two or three times, then you look like, wow, they don't have a good offensive approach.

Even off Civale, we hit some balls really hard, but they got caught, or they maybe were a little different trajectory than they could have been. Well, that changes the inning. So little things matter. One little play leads to something else, one pitch leads to something else. That's why we play so many, to find out who the best is.

If you played a 30-game season, there would be different teams in the playoffs. But here we are, and now we've got to do what we can to piece together whatever we can piece together to try to win tonight and keep doing that if we can.