What’s on the Brewers’ minds during pennant chase? Fantasy football.

The news sent shockwaves throughout the Milwaukee Brewers clubhouse, where one simple notification shifted the entire dynamic of the room just as relievers readied to take the field for pregame stretch and infielders were set to start taking ground balls ahead of another divisional tilt against the Chicago Cubs. 

Brock Bowers, tight end for the Las Vegas Raiders, had a minor knee procedure and would be out for a week. 

Nearly 2,000 miles away in the locker room for an entirely different sport, it sparked at least three separate conversations, none more pressing than JoJo Romero wandering five or six lockers over to Kyle Harrison to process the news. 

The impact on the two left-handers was nothing short of massive; they, of course, co-own a fantasy football team and took Bowers in the second round of their draft. 

It wasn’t long until David Hamilton meandered over, floating Travis Kelce in a trade. Sal Frelick, whose draft strategy involved taking three tight ends, suddenly found himself having diamond hands.  

The season had not even kicked off. Yet the Brewers fantasy football league was already in midseason form. 

Year 24 of Brewers fantasy league brings about smack talk

The Brewers fantasy league is now in its 24th season. Run by equipment manager Jason Shawger since its inception in 2003, it features 12 teams, an engraved trophy and prize pot that raises the stakes slightly higher than your $10 work league does. 

The league is one of the throughlines of the Miller Park/American Family Field era. Geoff Jenkins holds the claim to most championships with three, followed by Shawger with two. 

The owners change every year with the roster churn to ensure the league, each year, is only Brewers. Christian Yelich, Brice Turang, Sal Frelick and Shawger each own their own squad, but most are co-owned. This year, that includes Romero and Harrison, Aaron Ashby and Jake Bauers, Shane Drohan and Logan Henderson, Jacob Misiorowski and David Hamilton, Chad Patrick and Quinn Priester, Brandon Woodruff and clubhouse manager Ben Wilkes and, lastly, Andrew Vaughn and Daniel Vogelbach. 

The buy-in is not cheap, hovering well into four figures. Bryse Wilson, whose brother Payton plays linebacker for the Steelers, said he doesn’t play because he doesn’t “want to just make a donation.” Some teams split the buy-in down the middle, while others, such as the Bauers/Ashby group, couple the brains of the operation with a financier. 

“Ash is the money man,” Bauers said. “He says he knows nothing.” 

As you would expect out of a contingent of big-leaguers with cash to spend, the league is serious. 

And with a serious league comes real trash talk hurled at other owners – especially Shawger. 

Before the Bowers news hit, Shawger’s roster management may have been the top non-baseball conversation topic in the entire clubhouse. 

“You guys talking fantasy football?” an eavesdropping Yelich said upon overhearing Turang discuss his draft. “Ask Shawger about his team.” 

“Shawger as a fantasy manager?” deadpanned Woodruff. “I think he’s kind of [expletive]. Is that what everyone else is saying?” 

At his locker, Yelich pulled out his phone and opened the CBS Sports app to Shawger’s team. The starters: Patrick Mahomes, Ashton Jeanty, Jeremiyah Love, Terry McLaurin, Rashee Rice, Tyler Warren, Chris Godwin. Marshawn Lloyd and a couple of backup running backs lined the bench. 

“You want to go over who he started with?” Yelich asked. 

It was less of a question and more of a demand. 

“Well, we started with Josh Allen and we started with James Cook and we started with DJ Moore and we started with Christian Watson and we started with Blake Corum,” Yelich said. “We thought none of those guys were gonna cut it, so we traded them.” 

In the aftermath of the draft, Shawger traded Allen and Moore to Turang for Rice, Lloyd and Mahomes. He also dealt Cook and Watson for Ashton Jeanty and Terry McLaurin. 

“Hey, each manager has his own strategy,” Yelich said. “That was Shawger’s: Trade my five best players and see what happens.”

Trades aplenty before the games begin

Preseason trades are rampant in this league. In addition to Shawger’s two deals, Turang also sent KC Concepcion and Brian Thomas Jr. to Bauers and Ashby for Colston Loveland.

“The further away I get from it, the worse I feel about it,” Bauers said. “But also I’m not going to lose sleep over trading a tight end.” 

Frelick has turned down multiple offers for Tucker Kraft – one of his three tight-ends – left and right.

Yelich also offered him Jaxon Dart, Davante Adams and Devonta Smith for Justin Jefferson and Juwan Johnson, but Frelick refused to get swept up in pre-Week 1 dealings.

“No. I won’t trade anyone pre-season,” Frelick said. “Everyone’s trading people. I would feel awful if I traded somebody that I drafted that ended up being awesome. I don’t know why they’re doing it. It’s everyone. Literally everyone’s doing it.” 

Frelick has also taken last or second-last each of his first three years in the league, which is surprising given that he’s among the bigger sports nuts in the clubhouse. On college football Saturdays, he will sit at his locker with a quad box of games up, and if NFL RedZone is on before a Sunday day game, you can probably find him perched in front of it before going to hit. 

“But I’m not a big fantasy guy,” is Frelick’s excuse. “Also, I’m definitely more college than pro, too.” 

If Frelick wants to reverse course and etch his name on the trophy that sits near player mail in a back hallway of the clubhouse, he’s going to have to dethrone Vaughn … well, kind of. 

The Brewers first baseman and reigning champ admits to knowing nothing about the NFL and has no shame in acknowledging why his team won a year ago: Fantasy football savant Danny Jansen.

“My name was on the championship winning team,” he said. “My participation was not.”

Even this year, Vaughn knows his team’s quarterback is Dak Prescott and nothing else. The key, he says, is recruiting, and in the age of NIL, money talks. 

“I’ve taken my experience this year to the next Daniel,” Vaughn said, referencing his hitting coach. “A good GM knows how to pick them.”

‘We’re gonna go win the whole thing’

The draft was held on Aug. 30 at the team hotel in Chicago after the team drove down following the series finale against the Rangers. Participants ordered food and did the draft online, a far cry from the paper-and-pen days in 2003 when Jenkins and Ben Sheets were running laps around the rest of the league.

The draft order was determined using a wooden horse-racing game the team has become enamored of since playing it in Los Angeles last month.

All parties were present save for Patrick so Priester handled in-person drafting duties for their team – named the Indiana Bears, a reference to their favorite team now playing a stone’s throw from Patrick’s home in Hammond, Indiana – but isn’t confident in his showing. 

“I one day wake up absolutely hating the team,” Priester said. “Then today I’m looking at it like it’s not bad, it’s getting better.” 

Priester took Puka Nacua when he fell in the first round and later nabbed Matthew Stafford for a Rams offense stack that he feels good about, but the impetus of his concern was panic-selecting George Kittle in the fifth round. 

“I was afraid I wasn’t going to get a tight end, and then after that I was in a blender,” Priester said. “I just ruined this entire thing. I decided I’m just taking the best available the rest of the draft.” 

Yelich’s squad received the highest grade of the draft according to the platform’s automated rankings. He went Chase Brown, Derrick Henry and Drake London in the first three picks and paired it with a late quarterback platoon of Dart and Caleb Williams. 

“Balanced team,” said Yelich, who has made the championship once but never won the league. “Got an A-plus from that team.” 

The first pick belonged to Turang, who selected Jahmyr Gibbs and didn’t think twice about it.

“Not tough at all,” he said. “I think he’s going to get more touches now than [David] Montgomery’s gone.”

Turang would have made the playoffs in each of his first three years in the league, but missed out last year because of the unique league format in which the top five records qualify and the final playoff spot goes to the team remaining with the highest total of points scored. 

Turang’s team, which now features high-end talent like Allen, Moore and Loveland thanks to trades, got the most votes in the unofficial preseason poll of best team. (Yelich and Vaughnelbach also received votes). 

The poll of who has the worst team was a bit more decisive. 

“Shawger,” Frelick said, “We’re hoping he goes 0-12.” 

Vaughn aside, there isn’t a player on the Brewers who has ever won the title. 

This year, Woodruff considers himself the dark horse to change that. After getting a hard time from other corners of the clubhouse for having no rings in eight seasons, likens his 2026 fantasy season to the one the Brewers are having. 

“It’s like spring training,” Woodruff said.” Everyone thinks we’re gonna be [expletive]. Everyone thinks we’re gonna finish in the middle of the division. 

“We’re gonna go win it.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What’s on the Brewers’ minds during pennant chase? Fantasy football.