The Milwaukee Brewers have every reason to celebrate these days.
They clinched another National League Central title Wednesday. That’s two in a row for the Brew Crew, three in the past four years and four in the past six full 162-game seasons.
They are headed to the postseason for the sixth time in seven years. In short, they are what the Cardinals used to be. They rule this division despite operating with limited resources.
Of course, the Brewers weren’t supposed to win this year. This budget-conscious franchise traded away pitcher Corbin Burnes and lost fellow ace Brandon Woodruff to season-ending surgery.
Manager Craig Counsell took the money and ran south to the Chicago Cubs. A litany of injuries beset the team, claiming cornerstone outfielder Christian Yelich and closer Devin Williams among many, many others.
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But led by Willy Adames, William Contreras and rookie Jackson Chourio, the Brewers rolled over the division.
“We don’t have any superstars,†first-year manager Pat Murphy said. “You can say Adames is having a superstar year, and Contreras. You can say Chourio is going to be a superstar someday.
“But when we started out this year, it was, 'This team is decimated by injuries. This team just made a huge trade [of Burnes]. Devin is out most of the year. They cut the budget.' It was like, ‘Hey, guys, this is who we are. What are we going to do? Are we going to throw in the towel right now? Or are we going to fight?’
“They’ve been fighting ever since.â€
This division title had been inevitable for Milwaukee for some time. It became official when the second-place Chicago Cubs fell to the Oakland A’s 5-3 Wednesday afternoon.
The Brewers put off celebrating until they earned a walk-off 2-1 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies Wednesday night.
“We've been going at it together since the middle of February, so getting to cherish that moment with the guys and only the guys was something we talked about,†first baseman Rhys Hoskins said. “Those are the types of things we're going to remember beyond this year.â€
After the Brewers shake off their celebration, they can focus on extending their special season in postseason play. They haven’t advanced past the first round since 2018.
“We're going to get told we have zero chance to win the World Series,†Yelich said. “But it doesn't really matter.â€
TALKIN’ BASEBALL
Here is what folks have been writing about Our National Pastime:
Jeff Passan, : “Nobody since Ohtani has arrived in the major leagues with more hype than Paul Skenes upon his May 11 debut. All he has done since is pitch better than almost anyone in the major leagues. The only pitcher with a case is Chris Sale, and Skenes stacks up evenly against him. Because of Sale's excellence in six starts before Skenes' call-up, he's going to run away with the NL Cy Young this season. A full season of Skenes likely would have put him in contention. It would've also solidified his Rookie of the Year case, nullifying the full-season arguments his opponents carry. Because Skenes wasn't with the team Opening Day, though, the Pirates won't reap an additional first-round draft pick through the MLB prospect promotion incentive, for winning Rookie of the Year or finishing top three in Cy Young voting. Instead, they'll simply appreciate that not a single one of the 21 starts Skenes has made qualifies as bad. His worst outing came Aug. 10, when the Dodgers scored four runs against him in six innings. Skenes has allowed three earned runs twice, two earned runs six times and one run seven times. He has shut his opponent out five times. Skenes could have been intimidated by the pressure, overwhelmed by the media, humbled by the hitters. Nope, nope, nope. When he's on the mound, Skenes is the one who's in charge. He's everything he's supposed to be -- and more.”
Anthony DiComo, : “So, I get the knee-jerk reaction that (Corbin) Burnes will be a free agent, and the Steve Cohen-owned Mets have a lot of money, ergo, the Mets will sign Burnes. I just don't consider it an inevitability for two reasons. One, Soto is out there, and I think the Mets are going to be more motivated to try to sign him. Generational position players don't grow on trees, and while the Mets are certain to face super-stiff competition there, I think Soto makes a lot of sense for them. (As for signing two players to huge nine-figure contracts, that's a lot even for the Mets. They're already over the CBT every year.) Two, David Stearns has never invested major free-agent dollars in a pitcher, ever. Like, literally ever. Now, most of that track record was earned in Milwaukee, where Stearns operated with a small payroll. But he did seem to prefer the route of trading for starting pitchers or signing them to short-term deals, and he did the exact same thing his first year in New York (most notably with Luis Severino and Sean Manaea). I think Stearns understands that even great starting pitchers can be tenuous assets, and Burnes is no exception -- plenty of folks out there are concerned about his rapidly diminishing strikeout rate, for example.”
Timothy Jackson, Baseball Prospectus: “Two weeks from now, we might find ourselves without a 100-win team in Major League Baseball for the first time since 2016. Coming into play today, the Phillies held the league’s best record, and they’re on pace for about 97 wins. With only 12 games left they still have the wiggle room to get there, but not much. What it takes to eke out an extra three wins beyond expectations at this point in the year might not get tougher every day, but it requires more grace from the heavens, at least. There are many walks of life where that is a bigger demand than resilience. Coming into play on Monday night, the club had already enjoyed a fair amount of fortune.ÌýTrea TurnerÌýmissed six weeks back at the start of the season. Bryce Harper, Alec Bohn, and Ranger Suárez have missed a couple of weeks here or there. JT Realmuto has gotten banged up the same way most any catcher over 30 does. Taijuan WalkerÌýhad a mysterious blister that kept him out for a while.ÌýAustn HaysÌýhasn’t been able to stay on the field since being acquired. But for the most part, their maladies have been of the bumps-and-bruises variety more than ones that are long term, especially for a team averaging the sort of age when weekend warriors supplement their morning vitamins with aspirin. Collectively, they have the fifth-fewest games missed to injury across the league. Their season is not indicative of how contenders have had to deal with injuries in general. If we end up without a 100-win team, it won’t necessarily be because more teams are trying to win and are succeeding, creating more parity than in recent years. It’ll be because contenders dealt with more blows to their depth than they have since 2021, the first season we had coming out of the goofy pandemic season.â€
Lauren Theisen, The Defector: “This September has only affirmed my belief in the reality-distorting effect of the expanded wild card. The playoff spot that New York and Atlanta are fighting for didn't exist three years ago, meaning, essentially, that their entire audience grew up in a world where this kind of season—on pace for about 88 wins—wasn't good enough. Whatever the standings say, it's ingrained in a fan what a playoff teamÌýfeels like, and for as well as the Mets have played after a horrendous start, ‘sixth-best in the National League’ just doesn't quite tug the heartstrings. For a race to have stakes, there has to be the underlying dread of something to lose—that a team has worked hard all year to earnÌýa spot that's currently in peril. The Mets feel like they're playing with house money, and there's no guarantee anyway that making the playoffs is a real reward. In 2022, a 101-win team that I loved saw their postseason wrap in just three games, two of them blowouts. The 2024 edition is significantly worse.â€
Jay Jaffe, FanGraphs: “As of August 17, the Twins were 70-53, a season-high 17 games above .500. At the time, they were running second in the AL Central, two games behind the Guardians, and second in the Wild Card race, a game and a half behind the Orioles but two games ahead of the Royals, from whom they’d just taken two out of three (that aforementioned last series victory against a winning team). Since then, the Twins have gone just 9-18 (.333), outdoing only the White Sox (5-21, .192) and Angels (7-19, .269) among all major league teams; even the worst NL team in that span, the Marlins, has gone 10-17 (.370). The slump has pretty much closed the door on Minnesota’s chances of claiming the AL Central, and meanwhile, the Tigers have gone 17-9, tied for the majors’ best record in that span, to poke their noses into the Wild Card picture. During this slide, the Twins have lost series to the Padres, Cardinals, Braves, Royals, and Reds, splitting one with the Rays, and beating only the Blue Jays and Angels — not exactly a performance befitting a playoff-bound team. In that span, the offense has scored just 3.81 runs per game while the pitching staff has allowed 5.22 per game. It’s not what you want.â€
Matt Snyder, : “Once the dust settles on the 2024 season, Major League Baseball will officially have a new and undisputed worst team ever: the 2024 Chicago White Sox. It's such an incredible effort in futility that it cannot possibly be the new norm for awful teams. It's too terrible. For example, both the Twins and Royals went 12-1 against the White Sox this season, dramatically helping buoy their postseason odds. The White Sox are so bad that they are affecting the playoff race in relatively extreme fashion. The worst part is that, unlike some of the atrocities we've seen in recent seasons from teams like the Orioles and Tigers, the White Sox weren't actually trying to tank. Unlike the 1962 Mets, holders of the most losses in an MLB season for another few days, the White Sox aren't an expansion team that was put in terrible position by the league.”
MEGAPHONE
“Yeah, this year necessarily isn’t my standard. But, for me, we still have 12 games left and the biggest thing I want to do is win and I want to contribute to a winning culture — and this group is fantastic. Whatever happens in free agency happens. I’m not really too concerned about that.â€
New York Mets slugger Pete Alonso.