Jake Bauers’ season has become Milwaukee’s feel-good story: after a brutal stretch late last year, the Brewers watched him find his swing again—game after game—and now they’re openly campaigning for him to make the All-Star team.
LAS VEGAS — The night before it finally started to change. Jake Bauers would wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. He’d grab a baseball bat and walk over to the mirror, swinging over and over until exhaustion set in. Then he’d pore over videotape of his swing. hunting for any small flaw that could explain why everything kept falling apart.
“It was a 24/7 thing,” Bauers told the outlet. “I couldn’t turn it off. I was killing myself.”
He was 29 years old. with a wife and two young children. stuck in the kind of uncertainty that follows a professional who’s already changed organizations multiple times. Before Milwaukee. he was in his seventh different organization. and he worried—quietly. relentlessly—that his career might be over before it really started.
“It wasn’t necessarily killing me like in life,” Bauers said. “It sucked as a baseball player. You call yourself a baseball player, you’re getting paid to play baseball, and you don’t feel like you’re very good at it.”
The turning point didn’t come in a grand announcement. It came on the field in Pittsburgh during a three-game series the first weekend of September, in a season that was already near the end for him. With the Brewers in that stretch, Bauers knew he was on life support.
He was hitting .188 with a .315 on-base percentage and .333 slugging percentage when, in the starting lineup batting seventh as the Brewers’ DH on Sept. 5, he popped up to the shortstop on a 78-mph curveball by Johan Oviedo in his first at-bat. He then struck out on an 86.3-mph slider.
That’s when it completely unraveled.
“I remember going down in the tunnel by myself,” Bauers said, “and screaming: ‘What is this?’ ‘Are we going to keep doing this?’ ‘Can I even play?’ ‘Do I have what it takes?’ ‘Is this it?’”
He looked up at the scoreboard and saw it: .180.
“Then, just saying, [expletive] it. I’m just going to go up there, not thing about anything, and just swing. Whatever happens, happens. I really don’t care anymore.”
Two innings later, he got his answer.
In the sixth inning. with two outs and runners on second and third. Bauers slapped a two-run single to right field off reliever Carmen Miodzinski’s 97.3-mph fastball for a 3-2 Brewers lead. He came up again in the eighth inning and smoked a single to center field with an exit velocity of 104.4 mph—and even stole second base.
When confidence returned, it came fast.
The next day, Bauers went 2-for-3 with two RBI, hitting his first homer in three months. The following day, he went 2-for-4 with a double and two more RBI.
“That’s when I realized,” Bauers said, “I just needed to get out of the way.”
From there, the season didn’t just improve—it flipped. Bauers hit .378 with a .472 on-base percentage, .600 slugging percentage, and a 1.072 OPS for the remainder of the regular season. In six postseason games, he posted a .973 OPS.
Milwaukee’s decision to bet on him earlier in the winter is part of why the story matters now. The Brewers had signed Bauers to a minor-league contract the previous winter, then brought him back with a one-year, $2.7 million deal. This time, he became a fixture in the everyday lineup.
By the time the calendar reached the early stages of this season. Bauers had already hit 13 home runs—his most in a season—with the Brewers’ pace carrying him into contention. He was two RBI (46s) shy of his career high, leading the Brewers in both categories. His batting line stood at .269 with a .373 on-base percentage and .502 slugging percentage, and his .875 OPS was 41% above the league average.
The Brewers are now campaigning for him to make the All-Star team.
“I don’t know, man,” Bauers said quietly. “I haven’t really even thought about the All-Star Game. It wasn’t really something that I ever pictured for myself.”
He described a long period where he felt beaten up by the sport—where dreaming about the game became harder, not easier.
“I mean, you have dreams like the All-Star Game when you come up,” he said, “and you have things that you want to do in this game, but I’ve been beaten up in this game so hard that I think for a while, those kind of dreams went out the window.”
All that remained, he said, was survival.
“It’s just trying to survive and keep my head above water.”
In Milwaukee, he’s found more than a streak. For a player who spent years bouncing around searching for stability, Bauers has become the Brewers’ most consistent hitter and a vital cog in their success, sitting in first place in the NL Central.
“This guy has meant so much to us,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “He came to us last year as a minor-league free agent. we don’t give him a big-league job. and he earned it by working hard every day. It wasn’t easy. He had days when I could tell he was down. a guy that was scuffling. a guy that was saying. ‘What am I doing?’ Now. look at him. He’s having an All-Star season. Man, I’d love to see him make that All-Star team. What a great story it would be for not only us, but for all of baseball.”.
Murphy also framed Bauers’ journey as a lesson in how players can get pushed off what makes them work.
Bauers grew up in Huntington Beach. California. and was considered one of the nation’s top high-school prospects with a scholarship to Hawaii. The San Diego Padres drafted him as a 17-year-old in the seventh round. expecting stardom. and Murphy—when he was Triple-A manager for the El Paso Chihuahuas—called him a talked-about hitter whose potential drew constant attention.
“He was a talked-about guy,” Murphy said. “Everybody kept talking about how this kid can really hit. But then he was traded pretty quickly after that. And never stopped getting traded.”
Bauers was traded one year after the draft to the Tampa Bay Rays in a three-team swap involving Trea Turner and Will Myers. Four years later. the Rays traded him again in another three-way deal that included Carlos Santana. Edwin Encarnacion and Yandy Diaz. In 11 years. he’s moved from San Diego to Tampa Bay to Cleveland to Seattle to Cincinnati to New York to Milwaukee—plus minor-league contracts and an out-right assignment mixed in.
Murphy said that, once Bauers reached the big leagues, people wanted him to pull and to hit homers.
“They wanted him to hit homers,” Murphy said. “He had some bouts of hitting homers, but he got away from what made him cook.”
In Murphy’s view, the Brewers gave Bauers permission to be a pure hitter instead of being forced into a damage-first identity.
“So when he came to us, I said, ‘Jake, I don’t care if you’re hitting homers. I want you to be the hitter you can be.’” Murphy said. “Jake has done that, and you look at him now, and he’s a guy people respect because of the journey he’s been on.”
Still, the turnaround wasn’t only about mechanics. It was about how he thought in the box.
Arizona Diamondbacks closer Paul Sewald, Bauers’ former teammate in Seattle, pointed to the way progress doesn’t arrive in a straight line.
“People’s progression happens at different moments,” Sewald said. “Jake was a big-time prospect. Started well, and then got lost in the shuffle, DFA’d here, traded there. Expectations get so high, but development is not this perfect linear. It’s different for everybody.”
He added that the strain of expectations can weigh on young players who are still learning who they are.
“It’s a lot to put on young guys who are just trying to figure out who they are in life, and you don’t know who you are as a player.”
Jason Lane, the Brewers’ offense and strategy coordinator, described how he saw the mental torture when Bauers arrived in Milwaukee.
“When we got him, he was fighting his mechanics and was just sort of frustrated the whole year,” Lane said. “The next year, we started talking to him about vision and intent. Forget the mechanics, have your intent able to attack the ball right away. If you attack it the right way, it takes care of the mechanics. He was just overthinking everything.”.
Bauers put it plainly: he was trying to be perfect.
“I was trying to be perfect,” he said. “I mean, this game’s hard enough if you’re standing in the box trying to hit, and you’re thinking about where your hands are, what your lower half is, and everything else. I was handcuffing myself.”
Now, the numbers reflect a change in how he approaches hitting. His chase rate has diminished and ranks in the 98th percentile. His bat speed has accelerated, ranking in the 97th percentile. His hard-hit rate is the 97th percentile, and his exit velocity is the 92nd percentile.
He’s hitting everyone, Lane said—sharing a split that suggests his calm has broadened his range: he’s batting .270 with an .863 OPS against right-handed starters, and he’s actually better against left-handed starters with .289 batting and a .999 OPS.
When Lane talks about it, he ties the improvement to sleep and stress.
“He’s been playing the game with more peace and freedom,” Lane said. “When you’re chasing results and mechanics, you get sleepless nights. You’re always like, ‘What’s tomorrow going to be like?’”
He also described why that confidence can be hard to regain—especially when baseball is so often judged on results.
“It’s really hard at the big-league level to convince guys that you can have a good day at the plate without getting a hit because it’s a result-based business. ” Lane said. “They’re fighting for their lives a lot of times. So it’s really hard to get that confidence back. There are so many guys go to the plate defeated before the first pitch is even thrown.”.
In Milwaukee, Bauers says that defeated feeling has vanished.
“I have a completely different relationship with the game now than I did in the past,” Bauers said. “I know that whatever happens today doesn’t define who I am.”
He paused, then returned to the simplest version of his lesson.
“It just took a long time to realize that.”
When asked what made him finally believe he’d have success each game instead of spending the time trying to avoid failure, he didn’t reach for a metaphor.
“high school,” Bauers said without blinking.
And despite everything that happened after, he framed the journey as what made the peace possible.
“I’m grateful for the journey of the past,” Bauers said. “I look back to my major-league debut eight years ago, and there was a 22-year-old kid who thought he was going to be a Hall of Fame. The pursuit of the result became a negative thing. I put so much pressure on myself to live up to that.”
He said he went through hardships, but wouldn’t erase them.
“I went through all of the hardships, but I’m grateful for all the struggles. I wouldn’t be the person that I am today without everything I’ve been through in my career.”
That’s why, even now, the idea of an All-Star appearance still sounds slightly unreal. But for Milwaukee, the difference is undeniable: Bauers isn’t just swinging again—he’s playing with the kind of steadiness that makes a team believe.
Alongside the Bauers surge, the league’s trade and roster landscape continues to move. The Houston Astros have told teams they are wasting their time asking about shortstop Jeremy Pena and first baseman Christian Walker. They plan to be buyers at the deadline. searching for bullpen help and a left-handed hitting outfielder. and they’re in a division in which only the Seattle Mariners are above .500.
The Los Angeles Angels, meanwhile, plan to retain key players, with owner Arte Moreno not wanting to unload starters Reid Detmers and Jose Soriano, or outfielder Jo Adell. Detmers and Soriano remain under team control through 2028, while Adell is eligible for free agency after the 2027 season.
Other league-wide factors are shaping decisions as well. including expectations that there will be fewer trades involving prospects because of the impending CBA in which MLB is pushing for a salary cap. One GM said that with a salary cap, young players making low money would become even more valuable.
MLB executives believe the minimum salary will rise from $780,000 to $1.25 million when the next CBA is finalized. The union proposed a $1.5 million minimum in 2027, $1.65 million in 2028, $1.825 million in 2029, $2 million in 2030 and $2.2 million in 2031.
Elsewhere in the sport’s summer, the All-Star field is also drawing attention. Mike Trout has never participated in the Home Run Derby, but he said he’d consider it this year if All-Star officials invite him. The game is in Philadelphia, 40 minutes from his hometown of Millville, N.J.
And in Milwaukee, the argument for an All-Star nod is simple: the swing finally looks like it belongs to him again, and the rest of the Brewers’ season is starting to reflect it.
Jake Bauers Milwaukee Brewers All-Star Game NL Central MLB trade deadline collective bargaining agreement Jake Bauers turnaround baseball analytics