The Brewers will lose again.
Sometime.
Probably.
You will, however, be pardoned for thinking otherwise.
The world’s best baseball team did it again over the weekend, sweeping the New York Mets and running their latest winning streak to nine fun-filled games. Sunday’s coup de grace featured Milwaukee’s largest comeback of the season, a rally from 5-0 down in the fourth inning capped with a walk-off ninth-inning homer from Rookie of the Year candidate Isaac Collins.
“It’s just like magic in the air, almost. That’s how baseball is,” Collins said before noting just how much fun the Brewers are having.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
He’s right about the magic part. But the Mets and Cubs and Yankees, a trio of big-market contenders paying full fare on the struggle bus, will disagree on the “how baseball is” part. Baseball, as its practitioners are fond of emphasizing, is actually legendarily hard, a sport that sees the best players fail in 70% of their at bats and the best teams lose 40% of their games.
It’s also a sport dominated by the richest teams in the biggest markets. All of which makes what the small-market, salary-conscious Brewers are doing all the more special.
As Scott Grodsky notes, Milwaukee is beating the National League’s biggest spenders – the Dodgers, Phillies and Mets – to the tune of 13-2. In fact, they’ve now swept series against the Dodgers (twice), the Phillies, the Mets, the Red Sox, the Braves, the Twins and the Nationals (twice). According to Spotrac, among that group, only the Twins and Nationals have a lower payroll than the 20th-ranked Brewers, and the Twins had been ranked higher until their midseason fire sale.
And those Dodgers, Phillies and Mets have a payroll some 2 1/2 to three times as large as Milwaukee’s. Closer to home, the Cubs woke up on Monday with a payroll about twice as large as Milwaukee’s, but now six games behind the Brewers in the N.L. Central.
Yes, underdog Milwaukee has developed quite the bite. The Brewers now own a record of 73-44, five wins better than anyone else in the league. They also haven’t lost a game in August and are 42-19 since the start of June, a ridiculous winning clip of 72%.
It’s enough to drive some of baseball’s most devout statheads mad, as they scream into their spreadsheets and wonder how the Brewers keep getting away with it. Someone in Chicago has even created the MLB-Deserve-To-Win-O-Meter, and the luck merchant Brewers have practically melted its algorithm.
So what’s the Brewers’ Special Sauce? Is it luck or magic or, to borrow closer Trevor Megill’s turn of phrase, The Power of Friendship? It really doesn’t matter. Heck, it could even be the Power of Pat Murphy’s Pocket Pancakes, and it still wouldn’t matter.
What matters is the Brewers are winning, and it’s a stretch and a season that’s so worth savoring. Because somewhere along the line, there will be a few losses to deal with, too.
Probably.
