Big Bear Nolan's Blog

I might be a little bias on this one, being born in Minnesota while having family from Wisconsin and attending college at the state. However, from experience attending Minnesota Twins / Milwaukee Brewers games at both stadiums. I can say that in my opinion I think this rivalry is very underrated.

It is not a rivalry where both teams hate each other like the Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings do. Both teams and fanbases have a mutual respect for each other, I’ve seen both fans say that they like the other team and have heard each others announcers credit the other team and how they do things all so often. In fact their is an announcing connection between the two as the Twins PXP announcer for TV in Cory Provus used to work with Brewers radio and alongside legendary radio announcer Bob Uecker; before moving to the Twins radio and ultimately now Twins TV. You also have the connection with players like J.J. Hardy and hall of famer Paul Molitor who both played for both teams. Both fanbases also take over the other stadium, when the Brewers come to Minnesota. It is like they take the fans with because that is most of Wisconsin natives that live in Minnesota like my Dad or western Wisconsin’s opportunity to see Milwaukee. Same thing with the Twins, it’s the opportunity to see the Twins for Minnesota natives that live in eastern Wisconsin or maybe northern Illinois. Now with all this love, where is the rivalry you might ask? Oh it is there and by rivalry, it is a competitive rivalry.

Brewers/Twins is a rivalry where you throw out the records cause anything can happen (literally). I can think of a lot of big moments like Prince Fielder’s inside the park home run or Michael Cuddyer hitting the cycle against the Brewers. Or you have moments like Minnesota winning a game vs the Brewers in 2017 because of a balk. Along with the matchup on 5/28/19 where Devin Smeltzer in his debut shut down the Brewers and defending MVP Christian Yelich to give the Twins a 5-3 win. The season series dating back to 2021 also signify this. In 2021, Milwaukee was a team that made the NLDS that season and the Twins had a disappointing season where they finished 73-89. Yet Minnesota won the season series vs the Brewers that season. Then in 2022 and 2023, both teams walked each other off. In the Twins lone win in ’22, Jose Miranda hit a walk-off home run off Josh Hader to win 4-1. Then in 2023, Carlos Correa did the same off of Devin Williams in the Twins 7-5 win on June 12. Milwaukee also had their share, Luis Urias hit a walk-off sacrifice fly in ’22 and Brice Turang hit a walk-off single in the finale of the series in 2023.

Especially in the series that just took place over the week of May 15-17 this season. The Brewers won that series 2-1 but had to crawl their way to a 3-2 win and a 2-1 win in both while falling 5-4 in the finale. This year similar to 2021, the Brewers are a World Series contender while the Twins have talent but also have question marks. The winner every time the Brewers and Twins play always comes down to who makes the most plays which makes losing so frustrating. Both teams split the series in 2023, but both have arguments why each should’ve won the series’ that they lost as Milwaukee did hold a lead in both of their losses at Target field and same with Minnesota in the series at American Family Field. In 2024, Milwaukee behind a split at home and a sweep at Target field won the series 3-1, yet Minnesota pushed them to the limit but didn’t capitalize. Same thing happened in this most recent series, in game one, Minnesota held a 2-1 lead in the 8th but a Royce Lewis interference allowed the tying and go ahead runs to score. Game 2, Twins had a 1-0 lead but a Lewis error on a ball destined to be an inning ending double play allowed the Brewers to tie it. Game 3, Milwaukee had the defensive errors and a 1-14 day with RISP that led to a 4-5 loss.

No matter how good or bad these teams are, always expect it to be a fight. Its not a hateful rivalry, its a fun competitive rivalry.