Pat Murphy, who guided the Milwaukee Brewers to the first World Series title in franchise history, was again named the winner of the National League Manager of the Year award on Tuesday, becoming the first to capture it in three consecutive seasons.
Will Venable of the Chicago White Sox, in his second year as skipper after losing 102 games in 2025, won the American League award.
Murphy beat out finalists Walt Weiss of the Atlanta Braves and Don Mattingly of the Philadelphia Phillies, becoming the first to win three straight since the award began in 1983. Murphy had 20 first-place votes and earned 124 total points in voting done by the Baseball Writers' Association of America, well ahead of Weiss (seven first-place votes, 86 points) and Mattingly (one first-place vote, 25 points). Padres manager Craig Stammen finished fourth (two first-place votes, 24 points).
Venable won the AL award with 15 first-place votes and 111 points, edging Kevin Cash of the Tampa Bay Rays, who had 12 first-place votes and 98 points. Chad Tracy of the Boston Red Sox finished third (three first-place votes, 47 points).
Voting is conducted before the postseason, but Murphy led the Brewers to a franchise-record 103 wins as they topped the majors in that category for the second consecutive season.
Murphy, who accepted his honor from his hospital bed after having hip replacement surgery, told MLB Network he knew early in the playoffs that the Brewers were going to do something special.
"I think it was when the playoffs started, you just saw the way they won games, how resilient they were, how they responded to every adversity, you just got this feeling that we could be destined to do this," Murphy said. "Things just happened in a way that it felt like everything was going our way."
Three years ago, the Brewers had a big decision to make. Longtime manager Craig Counsell had departed for a big contract with the division rival Chicago Cubs. Rather than hire a younger, inexperienced manager -- as was the general trend -- the Brewers promoted Murphy, who was about to turn 65 and had been Counsell's bench coach the previous eight seasons.
It has proved to be the right move.
The Cubs were the consensus NL Central favorites heading into the season after the Brewers traded ace Freddy Peralta in the offseason and lost Jose Quintana in free agency. Quinn Priester then missed the entire season with an injury.
That meant the top returning pitcher in wins from the 2025 staff was veteran Brandon Woodruff with seven -- and he'd end up making just nine starts. Relying on a breakout season from likely NL Cy Young Award winner Jacob Misiorowski and deploying a major-league-high 80 starts from rookie pitchers, the Brewers instead coasted to their fourth straight division title, ascending to the top spot for good on May 19.
When their lead dropped to three games in mid-August, the Brewers responded with back-to-back wins over the Los Angeles Dodgers behind Misiorowski and Logan Henderson (who beat Tarik Skubal), and a 22-0 thrashing of the Seattle Mariners.
From Aug. 15 through the end of playoffs, the Brewers went 39-13.
"They went after it," Murphy said after winning the World Series. "They were on common mindset. They cared about each other. They set standards. They were undaunted when things weren't going well."
At age 67, Murphy is a combination of tough love and quips. During the season, he pulled Cooper Pratt from a game in August after the rookie failed to hustle to second base on a bloop single down the right-field line. Late in the season, he pinch hit for team leader Willson Contreras after the catcher had earlier failed to run hard on a grounder to shortstop.
It works.
"I love the guy. I love that he's honest," Contreras said after winning World Series MVP honors.
Murphy spent years as the head coach at Notre Dame and then Arizona State before entering the professional ranks, including a stint as interim manager for the San Diego Padres in 2015 before joining Counsell's staff.
"I'm just really, really grateful. Really thankful that we did it," Murphy said after the World Series win. "Like, who believed it? There's so many things that led up to it now that I look back and see the years of getting eliminated or being beaten last year by the Dodgers. That was a blessing because we learned from it and we grew, and we came in with a different attitude. We came in with a spirit about us, and we weren't going to be denied."
Mattingly replaced Rob Thomson as Phillies manager after the team got off to a 9-19 start, and the Phillies went 79-55 the rest of the way to finish second in the NL East behind Weiss' Braves, who went 94-68 in his first year at the helm after Brian Snitker retired.
Venable, a former big league outfielder, got his first managerial job when the White Sox were coming off 121 losses in 2024, a record for the most since 1900, after 101 losses the previous season. They went 60-102 in Venable's debut and followed that this season by making the playoffs for the first time since 2021.
After sweeping Houston in two games on the road in the AL Wild Card Series, they had a 2-0 series lead before losing a five-game AL Division Series to Cleveland.
Venable called the White Sox's one-year turnaround "a collaborative effort" and credited the entire franchise for his award.
"It just starts with our players. It's a really special group that created a belief early on in the year and went out and executed the things that they needed to do. And as we got through the summer, we were challenged by different opportunities to get better," Venable told MLB Network.
"I think we learned a lot last year, certainly myself in the role, it being my first year, but I learned a lot about our group and what they needed. And that means what we did on a daily basis to prepare, what our messaging was, and really the details that we wanted to prioritize. ... A great player group, a great staff, just really good stuff all the way around."
Before he was hired by the White Sox, Venable was on manager Bruce Bochy's staff in Texas and was part of the Rangers' only World Series title in 2023.
Venable is first White Sox manager to win the award since Ozzie Guillen in 2005.
Cash, the longest-tenured manager in the majors with 12 seasons in Tampa, led the Rays to an AL-best 98-64 record after the club went just 77-85 in 2025. It was the Rays' second AL pennant under Cash's watch.
Tracy, like Mattingly, took over early in the season after the Red Sox fired Alex Cora following a 10-17 start. The Red Sox went 77-58 under Tracy, including a historic midseason turnaround that featured a 32-5 stretch.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.