Milwaukee Brewers aren’t done yet

The Milwaukee Brewers have just clinched a playoff spot for the second season in a row, but with four games left, they aren’t done just yet.

Unbelievable. Improbable. Unreal. All of these words could be used to describe the September run that the Milwaukee Brewers have been on. Even without their MVP in Christian Yelich for a majority of the month, the Crew is 19-4 in September and they’ve just clinched a playoff spot.

With the return of Brandon Woodruff and Brent Suter from the IL, Craig Counsell working his magic with the pitching staff, and some hot bats, at a minimum the Brewers will be the second wildcard team, however, with four games left in their season, they are far from done.

As it currently stands, the Milwaukee Brewers miraculously sit just 1.5 games behind the St. Louis Cardinals for the NL Central lead. With a victory in their series finale against the Cincinnati Reds, the Brewers can move within a game heading into the final weekend of the season.

From there, Milwaukee will head to the hitter-friendly confines of Coors Field where they will take on the 68-90 Colorado Rockies. Unlike the Brewers, the Rockies pitching staff has had a rough go here in the month of September with a team ERA of 5.31 and their opponents have a .261 batting average against them.

But playing in Colorado where the ball jumps off the bat certainly doesn’t help and it is something that the Milwaukee pitching staff will have to worry about as well. This month the Rockies are fifth in the NL in OPS at .770 and fifth in home runs with 37, one ahead of the Brewers.

Up to this point, the two teams have split their four-game season series that was held at Miller Park, but clearly, this is a much different Brewers team than what we saw in late April of this year.

Meanwhile, the team that they are chasing the St. Louis Cardinals, have an off-day on Thursday before beginning their final series at home against the struggling Chicago Cubs. The Cubs are just 2-8 in their last 10 games, including an eight-game losing streak that they are still trying to snap. It appears that Chicago has absolutely no fight left in them whatsoever and they’re just going through the motions.

Just this past weekend the two teams met at Wrigley Field for a four-game series and the Cardinals swept the Cubs, which essentially eliminated them from playoff contention and broke their spirit as well. Can the Cubs muster up enough energy to try to play spoiler this weekend, or will they just continue to roll over as they have in the past week? Honestly, who knows?

In the event that the Milwaukee Brewers are unable to chase down the Cardinals, the other series to keep your eyes on is the Washington Nationals at home against the Cleveland Indians. The Nats hold the top wildcard spot by a game over the Brewers, and the winner gets to host the wildcard game.

The significance of hosting the wildcard game versus having to travel is huge and with a tough Cleveland team coming to town, the Nationals will have their work cut out for them which could allow Milwaukee to pass them by.

While of course, we will all be scoreboard watching this weekend, it all starts with the Brewers taking care of business and beating the Reds and Rockies. Although the odds of them catching St. Louis may be against them, very few thought that they’d be in this position, to begin with.

This is a special group of players led by a fantastic manager and while making the playoffs is quite the accomplishment given everything that has happened this season, this team isn’t done yet.