As Pat Murphy enters his second season, let’s take a look at other managers in their second seasons
Pat Murphy will enter his second season as manager of the Milwaukee Brewers in 2025. He had one of the best first seasons by a Brewers’ manager, tied for the second-highest win total with George Bamberger. That sets a high bar for him to reach in his second season. That brings up the question: How did other managers fare in their second seasons?
A few ground rules will need to be set for this look into managers. First of all, we’re going to look at differences overall in win percentage. Since not all managers got the same number of games, win percentage will be a more fair comparison tool. Also, for a few managers, they did not manage enough games to consider their first season.
* – Manager started/ended their season midway through the season.
^ – Harvey Kuenn did manage one game before 1982.
Typically, a second season is not as successful as the first season for a manager. For the managers that showed an improvement, it was generally only a few points of win percentage. The biggest improvement was only 2.73% by Dave Bristol. However, a few managers had major drops in their second season. Harvey Kuenn, Phil Garner, and Ron Roenicke all saw major drops.
What does that say for 2025? We can take a few things from the list. First of all, keeping expectations tempered will be important. Most managers have only small changes, so the difference between seasons one and two likely will not be dramatic. Second, the three biggest changes were from factors outside of the manager. In the three biggest drops, there were bigger roster changes that affected the season more than the manager did. The 2025 roster will have a few major changes, most notably the departure of Willy Adames. That could affect the win total a bit.
If the roster is mostly stable, it means we likely won’t see much of a change in season two for Pat Murphy. He’ll likely win or lose a few more games, but that will be it. The roster construction is the more important factor, but the manager does contribute to the team’s success. If Murphy gets proper support, he can be just as successful in 2025.