Brewers new foods and drinks at American Family Field for 2026 season
From fried kringle, cream puffs, funnel cake fries, brisket loaded waffles, s’mores cheesecake and more, here are the new food items at Brewers games for the 2026 season.
PHOENIX – The Milwaukee Brewers are at the cutting edge of many things in baseball, but cross one off the list of possibilities for the time being.
While some teams across the league experiment with calling pitches from the dugout, including the Miami Marlins expecting to do so full-time, the Brewers are fine with the status quo of letting their backstops do 99% of the work.
“I mean, always open to exploring what makes us better,” Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold said. “But I don’t know how pragmatic that is when it comes to all the ingredients that are involved with each situation and each pitch. There’s so much nuance. This gets back to the human [element]. I’m not sure there’s a perfect formula for that.
“You can have all the information and the hitter just put two great swings on that, and you want to call it a third time when he’s sitting on it because the numbers say so? I don’t know if the information can totally account for those things.”
On one hand, this isn’t a surprise from the team where the line “You have to credit William” is the free space on the managerial postgame press conference bingo card.
On the other hand…this the Brewers, who seek every edge they can find regardless of what other teams are doing.
So maybe it is a bit surprising?
The Brewers certainly understand the argument for having a person with a keen ability to combine what their eyes are seeing with what the data says signaling pitches in. They will even offer suggestions to catcher William Contreras from the dugout from time to time, and have for years.
“There’s wisdom everywhere,” manager and Contreras appreciator Pat Murphy said. “Why would you be totally against a suggestion?”
How the Brewers do call pitches in
But as far as regular button-pushing from the top step goes? The Brewers aren’t close to being there yet.
This is music to catching prospect Jeferson Quero’s ears. Quero was in Class AAA last year when he played the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, affiliate of the Miami Marlins’ affiliate, who were calling every pitch from the dugout.
“It’s somebody outside that can’t see everything and call the game the same way the catcher [can], who can see the hitter, see the ball, see the pitches,” Quero said.
While Quero is firmly against someone else relaying the calls to the pitcher, Contreras – who famously is so stubborn he wants to play 162 games – wouldn’t have an issue.
“If they want to do it,” he said, “fine with me. One less thing I have to do.”
There are times where pitch-calling is a collaborative effort. Nobody, Contreras said, is ever telling him what to call, but there’s the occasional big spot or pinch hitter where he will look over to the dugout for an idea.
“We’ve done it for years in some ways,” Arnold said. “There’s a lot of that going on. I don’t know if it’s a totally rigid formula to it. But when you need it, it’s certainly something that’s there. The combination of guys on our bench and then the feel of what the catcher thinks the situation dictates and then what pitch is the pitcher comfortable throwing.
“There’s a lot of ingredients that go on. And it’s like, is this the right situation for that pitch?”
Typically, the brain trust in the corner of the dugout by Murphy when the Brewers are on defense includes pitching coaches Chris Hook, Jim Henderson and game preparation specialist Daniel de Mondesert.
“There’s a few of us,” Murphy said.
The Brewers lean on Contreras’s feel for hitters’ swings and his knowledge of most opposing hitters. When there’s someone Contreras maybe isn’t as familiar with, the scouting report from the dugout can help. In other moments where the Brewers send in help, it’s based largely off feel.
“‘Look, I know this guy’s hammering breaking ball but I think we can go below the zone because he is hammering breaking ball and he’s in swing mode,” Murphy said. “This is not very often, but we will suggest a pitch here or there.”
Trusting years of experience
The key, Murphy believes, isn’t even necessarily what pitch is called or who is calling it, but the buy-in of the pitcher to what he’s throwing. Given the praise that Contreras’ game-calling gets from pitchers, it’s not hard to see, then, why the Brewers want the PitchCom in his hands.
“Here’s the thing,” Murphy said. “The execution of the pitch is most important. The conviction of the pitcher and the ability of the pitcher to execute pitches is more important than what button you push. The suggestions that are made by that button are oftentimes [just] general baseball sequencing. You don’t speed him up to keep speeding him up.
“So it isn’t as complex as you might think. And there is no right answer necessarily. It’s the conviction and the execution of the pitch.”
Pitch selection is a subject Murphy can get going on if you catch him on the right day. A former pitcher who’s worked extensively with catchers during his coaching career, he has plenty of experience in it.
At Arizona State, Murphy deviated from the norm of most college coaches and most of the time didn’t call pitches from the dugout. He, instead, would provide backstops such as Tuffy Gosewich with a binder of basic pitch sequencing concepts, go over opposing hitters briefly and then largely sit back on the bottom step and yell vociferously at umpires.
“I’d say, ‘Hey, Tuff, you can double up. Fastball in,’” Murphy recalled. He then scratched the back of his hand to signal the hitter will chase. “‘Young guy, you can get him to chase.’ That’s what I did, concepts. It was a lot less than most coaches. Most years, I’d let the catchers call it.
“It would be classic, they’d look over at me like, ‘I got it Murph. You did that last time. Same guy.’”
And, now, Murphy has a catcher he trusts more than perhaps any other he’s had in 40 years of coaching. So when push comes to shove, he wants the game decided by Contreras’ feel.
“A guy gets in the batter’s box and you smell it, and he gets up there and you’re like, ‘Wham, he’s sitting on soft,’” Murphy said. “I’m going to give him what we’re not supposed to give him because I can sense what he’s looking for.”
Contreras isn’t just praised publicly by Murphy and the Brewers; he said he hears it all the time from the team how much they appreciate and value his game-calling.
“I think it’s an art to read swings,” Arnold said. “It really is, and we’ve got one of the best.”
Calling games is an art, too, the way Arnold sees it. The Brewers in their fancy, proprietary model can account for just about anything that happens on the baseball field and assign a value to it, yet they don’t do it for pitch calling.
“There are ways to do it, sure,” Arnold said. “But again it’s more just giving you a direction than anything. It’s hard to say this was the right call or wrong call. You can account for it, but not in a strict black and white sense. You can try to, but it’s really tricky.”
Consider this just another area where the Brewers combine their fascination with and appreciation for analytics with a feel for the human element of the game.
“The scouting report is the first thing, but that is before the game,” Quero said. “Everybody can be different every day. At the end of the day, you have to trust your catchers.”
