Dynasty! The Milwaukee Brewers Win the 2024 NL Central Championship

[Matthew Trueblood]

A Cubs loss sealed the deal Wednesday afternoon, but the Brewers did all the heavy lifting this season. In the face of substantial adversity, this team has thrived with noteworthy ease.

Image courtesy of © Owen Ziliak/The Republic / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

There's nothing easy about losing your hometown manager to your fiercest rival, after nearly a decade in which he helped you surpass them and become the top dog in your division. There's nothing easy about piecing together a starting rotation after losing one ace to a devastating, career-altering injury last fall, trading another late in the offseason, and having both your most beloved veteran and your most promising rookie bitten by the Tommy John bug in the early part of the season. There's nothing easy about surviving two months of a 20-year-old rookie fighting for his life with a huge burden of hype and expectations on him, or a first half without your all-world closer, or a second half without your best all-around player and face of the franchise.

There has been, in short, nothing easy about this Brewers division title-winning season--except the fact of it. Here, almost two full weeks before the end of the season, they have the division in hand. They're going to win 90 or more games, yet again. They've milled that underage rookie into a superstar, and they've replaced all those fallen arms, and they've even replaced that irreplaceable manager with his own former mentor-turned-lieutenant, all to find that they're better off under the new configuration. The Brewers dealt with myriad injuries, and with their major offseason investments (Rhys Hoskins, Wade Miley, Jakob Junis) largely going for naught, and with massive roster turnover, and they're better for it, somehow.

Jackson Chourio is now a staple of their lineup; we essentially expected that. But so is Joey Ortiz, and expecting that before Opening Day would have felt a tad too optimistic. They still have a solid farm system, even though their risky draft strategy this summer backfired a bit, and they'll be able to replenish the system with a whole lot of draft capital next summer--despite a finish that figures to put them in the last handful of spots in the first round.

If they could only keep one of Corbin Burnes and Willy Adames, they could not have more clearly picked the right one, even given Adames's defensive woes this year. He's the heartbeat of the team, and his alchemy with William Contreras carried the team through the early portion of the season. If they had to trade either player, it's hard to imagine doing any better than they did in the Burnes deal, getting Ortiz and DL Hall for one year of a hurler whom Tobias Myers is outpitching down the stretch.

Pat Murphy brought a slightly new tenor and tone to a familiar coaching staff, making his group more visible and more holistic and more collaborative, without losing the elements that made Craig Counsell great at handling the same talent, on and off the field. The front office, from Matt Arnold out to biomechanists and scouts and obscure number-crunchers, continued to find edges everywhere. This team combines star power and depth, youth and veteran savvy, nimbleness and raw force as well as any organization in the league, and they're emerging as a genuine dynasty.

I won't oversell the underdog angle. In preseason projections, there was a muddle atop the NL Central, but it was perfectly plausible to predict a Brewers division crown. I did. Still, on balance, this was not the way anyone saw things unfolding. While we throw "dynasty" around casually in sports, in history, it means a line of rule that stretches beyond a single person or generation. Only now, with David Stearns and Counsell elsewhere and Arnold and Murphy firmly in command, can we truly say that that's what the Brewers are. They've established hegemony in the NL Central.

Earlier this summer, Miley told a reporter that the team thinks of this as their division. It didn't even sound all that bold, and now that they've won it in back-to-back seasons for the first time, amid so much change, it feels ludicrous to suggest that things could be any other way. Of course this is the Brewers' division. It could stay that way for a while, too. From Arizona to Milwaukee, from Mark Attanassio to Andruw Monasterio, and in all the well-valued places in between, this organization does things better than the teams it's been battling for regional supremacy. Now, the real fun starts. October looms, and the Brewers have a national reputation to burnish.

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[Jim French Stepstool]

It would've been nice to win & then celebrate, but there's something sort of full circle-ish about clinching by Craig Counsells' team failing today.

[SF70]

The golden age of Brewers fandom is in full swing and not going anywhere but up.

Their IFA department has already produced 1 top prospect in baseball and  looks like they found another in Jesus Made. I wouldn’t put it past them to find  another potential star that can play with Chourio-Made, maybe they already have and it’s Jeferson Quero.

The second-youngest team in baseball as it matures will become a force in this game and not just for a little bit either.

Add another potentially franchise-altering draft-class in ‘25 to the one they had in ‘23, and the best IFA class in baseball (‘24) and this organization’s farm system should be tops in baseball in short order and sustain the dynasty thru the rest of this decade, possibly longer.