NL Central Discussion 2026

[owbc]

20 minutes ago, Underachiever said:

I don't think it's an insult to imagine them going 56-54 the rest of the way, which would be 88 wins. It's not like they'd have to collapse for that to happen. Baseball can be a cruel game. They are on pace for 99.7 wins right now, so is it more likely they will go 66-44 or 56-54? It's hard to play .600 ball for a season.

Injuries are usually the thing that does it, but we've gone .600 with Chourio/Vaughn/Yelich all missing significant time. The Miz and Harrison starts have been near-guaranteed wins, so then they only have to win 1/3 of the time with the other starters to go .600. 

Can Miz and Harrison continue to dominate like this? Time will tell. 

[kestrel79]

We have 2-3 grueling stretches of baseball later in the season this year, for the first time in a few seasons I believe. This year most of our off days were front loaded. 

I have a feeling those 2 x 18 games in a row stretches coming up later in the season might make our younger players tire out a bit, or some September they might fade with increased workload compared to in years past. But the Brewers have been smart with dealing with these issues in the past or calling up other players to help and they do a good job so I have faith and trust the front office.

[owbc]

56 minutes ago, kestrel79 said:

We have 2-3 grueling stretches of baseball later in the season this year, for the first time in a few seasons I believe. This year most of our off days were front loaded. 

I have a feeling those 2 x 18 games in a row stretches coming up later in the season might make our younger players tire out a bit, or some September they might fade with increased workload compared to in years past. But the Brewers have been smart with dealing with these issues in the past or calling up other players to help and they do a good job so I have faith and trust the front office.

It's been interesting to watch their load management practices so far this season. Uribe/Megill finally got in last night after a week off, I have a feeling they will happily keep their workload low for as long as they can. 

They are also winning a large number of games that are throw aways for most teams because of their bullpen depth and in particular guys like Ashby who can hold a small deficit while the offense gets to work. 

[igor67]

Cincy loss pushes it to a 4.5 game lead. Also a little intense that the other Central teams are all within 1 game of each other

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

On 5/27/2026 at 10:49 AM, sveumrules said:

FanGraphs flipped from favoring the Cubs for the Division to favoring the Brewers for the Division during our three game sweep of them last week.

Looks like PECOTA over at BPro has almost gotten there too at a current projection of 88.7 W | 45.3 Div% for Chicago and 88.6 W | 43.8 Div% for Milwaukee

I know folks like the rag on the projection systems, and they do seem to consistently undervalue Milwaukee, but that might be a signal that the Brewers are just very good at the things that are hard to quantify. It might be a testament to the FO's internal, proprietary analytics as much as its a knock on PECOTA or ZiPS.

The more years I look at these systems, the more fascinated I am by what they do AND DON'T tell us. It's a great lab for comparing theory to practice, even though most people don't tend to take it that way.

[igor67]

My take away from the Fangraphs article was that contrary to what we often see on the board the team is good at moving on from under performing players and giving more playing time to those who are succeeding. And that is always a hard balance to figure out because slumps happen and you don't want to jettison talent early.

[Thurston Fluff]

53 minutes ago, Cool Hand Lucroy said:

I know folks like the rag on the projection systems, and they do seem to consistently undervalue Milwaukee, but that might be a signal that the Brewers are just very good at the things that are hard to quantify. It might be a testament to the FO's internal, proprietary analytics as much as its a knock on PECOTA or ZiPS.

The more years I look at these systems, the more fascinated I am by what they do AND DON'T tell us. It's a great lab for comparing theory to practice, even though most people don't tend to take it that way.

 

The fascinating part to be is how complex the calculations are and how much more complex they need to be to be close to accurate.

Something I've always been curious about is how often they update their metrics to compensate for how the game changes. Even something as simple as replacement level changes. If a replacement level player has more value relative to average that they did two years again it changes a lot of calculations about how productive a team is with more replacement level players on it.

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

11 minutes ago, Thurston Fluff said:

 

The fascinating part to be is how complex the calculations are and how much more complex they need to be to be close to accurate.

Something I've always been curious about is how often they update their metrics to compensate for how the game changes. Even something as simple as replacement level changes. If a replacement level player has more value relative to average that they did two years again it changes a lot of calculations about how productive a team is with more replacement level players on it.

Yeah, for sure. I think it's also hard when Dan S is the closest thing the projectors have at a public voice, and he's not quite as prolific on that front as Ken Pomeroy in college basketball. The other big projector, Nate Silver, is doing all kinds of non-baseball stuff, and I'm not even sure how much day-to-day he has with PECOTA. 

And it is worth pointing out how well ZiPS has done in the aggregate. This is a point made in the article. The playing time thing is important, too. Maybe it's just the Brewers are really, really good at getting 0 WAR guys to become 1 WAR guys. Maybe it's just a fluke. Variance is real and, like baseball, theoretically infinite.

Something that I think really helps the Brewers and is very simple is: they don't have a single organizational philosophy. They don't care about winning the press conference, and it's not like they only care about SLG or OBP or DRS or whatever. They design rosters for flexibility, and you can see that on both the pitching and position player side. They employ that flexibility in ways you wouldn't expect. Bauers/Vaughn is a good example of this. Vaughn is probably our best pure power hitter. Despite struggles with the White Sox, he has a serious prospect pedigree. But Bauers has hit it well and has gotten the majority of the playing time this past week. A lot of teams would have hesitated to sit Vaughn, but the Brewers haven't, and that's because they don't care about the same things at the same level as the rest of the league. They seem to know where the projection systems miss, and that's a great spot to be.

I hope the systems keep missing. Makes it easier to fly under the radar. 

[igor67]

Nice post, the connection between having that flexibility and being able to get more playing time for better performing players I'm sure is not an accident.

[willie key]

If skenes can’t beat the cubs he’s officially off the cy young list.   

[torts]

On 5/27/2026 at 1:01 PM, owbc said:

Injuries are usually the thing that does it, but we've gone .600 with Chourio/Vaughn/Yelich all missing significant time. The Miz and Harrison starts have been near-guaranteed wins, so then they only have to win 1/3 of the time with the other starters to go .600. 

Can Miz and Harrison continue to dominate like this? Time will tell. 

More importantly, can Ashby keep up and go 40-0

[HarryDoyle]

1 hour ago, willie key said:

If skenes can’t beat the cubs he’s officially off the cy young list.   

Miz has surpassed him as the best pitcher in the NL.

[willie key]

14 minutes ago, HarryDoyle said:

Miz has surpassed him as the best pitcher in the NL.

Skenes is below Ashby in cy young power rankings 

[nate82]

 

[Brian]

10 hours ago, willie key said:

Skenes is below Ashby in cy young power rankings 

Yes but in yesterday's game Skenes fell apart after 2 errors in the same inning by the Pittsburg D.  Looks like errors really deflate a pitcher. 

[TwinsBrewersWorldSeries]

10 hours ago, HarryDoyle said:

Miz has surpassed him as the best pitcher in the NL.

I agree that Miz has passed Skenes this year, but so has Sanchez.  If Sanchez breaks the scoreless innings record, he’s pretty much a lock for CY imo

[Mr Southpaw]

Here is an interesting fact so far this season. There are three teams in all of MLB with more than 20 wins against teams with a better than a better than 500 record . The Cubs have the most wins with a 25-20 record.  The Brewers have the second mosts wins with a 23-12 record and the Pirates are third with a 20-19 record.  The Dodgers only have a 15-9 record.

It looks like the Cubs have played a lot of quality teams so far, but the Brewers are not far behind while it looks like the Dodgers have had it relatively easy so far.

[AdvantageSchneider]

Big hit to the Reds today, Graham Ashcraft their best reliever goes on the 60 day DL with a UCL sprain.  The Reds bullpen has been a weak spot for that team.  They are close to the league leaders in blown saves.  So a weakness gets even worse.  In a tough division hard to see them surviving this with the other issues they have.

[Thurston Fluff]

9 hours ago, AdvantageSchneider said:

Big hit to the Reds today, Graham Ashcraft their best reliever goes on the 60 day DL with a UCL sprain.  The Reds bullpen has been a weak spot for that team.  They are close to the league leaders in blown saves.  So a weakness gets even worse.  In a tough division hard to see them surviving this with the other issues they have.

I guess the glass half full view is relief pitching is the least costly area to upgrade in season.

[Frisbee Slider]

If the season ended today, St Louis at Milwaukee for wild card round. Cubs out of the playoffs. source

[AdvantageSchneider]

57 minutes ago, Thurston Fluff said:

I guess the glass half full view is relief pitching is the least costly area to upgrade in season.

They bullpen was subpar/bad before they lost him so are they going to be able to acquire multiple bullpen arms to get it to adequate?  Will they even be buyers by the time other teams are selling?  They've got other issues they would probably need to address too.

[Thurston Fluff]

3 hours ago, AdvantageSchneider said:

They bullpen was subpar/bad before they lost him so are they going to be able to acquire multiple bullpen arms to get it to adequate?  Will they even be buyers by the time other teams are selling?  They've got other issues they would probably need to address too.

Good question. I don't know what they have in the minors as trade chips but even crappy farms have enough for one or two rental relievers. We'll see what happens I guess. They're still in it so I assume they won't be sellers. All I'm saying is if I was looking to shore up my team for a playoff run I'd rather my problem be in relief pitching than starters or offense.