This story was excerpted from Adam McCalvy’s Brewers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

CHICAGO -- Christian Yelich or William Contreras are in the running for team MVP honors for the 2023 Brewers and Corbin Burnes, Freddy Peralta and Devin Williams are vying for top pitcher.

But after a homestand in which relievers Bryse Wilson and Hoby Milner each had big moments, another of the Brewers’ end-of-season honors was up for debate: Who will win the annual Unsung Hero Award?

There is no set criteria for the award, but you know it when you see it. A player who does the dirty work without getting the accolades of an All-Star, or who fills an important role in a moment of need. Think Milner, who won the honor last year after leading the team with 67 appearances.

To get a feel for who the voters -- members of the local chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America -- will consider, we canvassed the clubhouse prior to Monday’s series opener against the Cubs at Wrigley Field. Twenty players, coaches, team executives and staffers who watch the team every day weighed in, and Wilson led the way with five votes.

He was followed by Milner’s four, leading to a secondary debate about whether a player who wins the Unsung Hero Award one year should be eligible the next, since he’s been “sung,” as it were.

Joel Payamps and Andruw Monasterio each drew three votes for earning roles no one saw coming in Spring Training -- Payamps as the set-up man to Williams and Monasterio as the everyday third baseman. Backup catcher Victor Caratini, Burnes’ catcher, got two votes. Colin Rea got a vote for making 19 starts after the Brewers’ suffered a series of injuries to starting pitchers, and Rea and Julio Teheran shared another tally from a voter who just couldn’t choose one or the other. 

The final vote went to Brandon Woodruff, who spent most of this year on the injured list. 

“He’s been here with us all year,” said that voter. “Even when he wasn’t playing, he’s always been that [unsung] guy.”

But no one got more love than Wilson, the former Braves and Pirates starting pitcher who has carved out a role with the Brewers as a reliever. He’s pitched everywhere from save situations to mop-up work, but it is situations like Sunday when he delivered four innings of emergency relief after starter Adrian Houser left with an injury, that have earned Wilson praise. 

Not only did the Brewers rally to win that game, but by delivering innings, Wilson kept Elvis Peguero, Payamps and Williams rested and ready for a big series against the Cubs.

The key to Wilson’s understated success with the Brewers is this: Learning to love the bullpen. 

“My career as a starter has not gone well, so I was perfectly fine with that,” he said. “I was perfectly fine accepting a different role and really embracing it and doing what I can to pitch when I need to pitch.”  

The Brewers acquired Wilson from the Pirates and, as Spring Training began, kept the door open to using him as a reliever or a starter. But by the middle of camp, Wilson looked around at the rest of the team’s deep rotation and figured that a relief role was his likely path. 

It’s mostly worked. So has his new pitch, a cut fastball.  

“Multiple innings, he’s very resilient. He’s able to come back,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “I think he’s leading our bullpen in innings. Just his ability to pitch a lot and kind of be the glue for guys, cover innings, there’s a lot of value in what Bryse has done that we don’t have numbers for. We don’t have an analytic for it, we can’t measure it, necessarily. But he’s saving other guys pitches. He’s keeping us in games.” 

We’ll learn in October or November whether Wilson is the unsung hero. 

“It’s a thing where if I had to make some starts, I would go out there and do my best,” he said. “But maybe that hurts the confidence if it doesn’t go so well. I’ve been really happy with staying in the bullpen all season. I’m just really happy with how the year has gone so far.”