Rent to Own: Brewers Become Full-Fledged NL Central Dynasty with Fourth Straight Division Title

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

Let's be honest: "Win the division" is a level the Brewers have beaten so many times that they no longer feel the same surge or thrill in doing it. In fact, there's a little bit of that tight-jawed impatience that creeps into a video-game player forced to repeatedly thwart some minor boss en route to the one they can never beat. This team and its fan base do enjoy the regular season, but until they finish the game and conquer the final boss that is winning a World Series, the six-month grind will continue to feel like something to be gotten through, in preparation for the real test.

Besides, there's little catharsis in winning the way they win it these days. Milwaukee has not only won four straight division titles, but has had each wrapped up well before Game 162. Often, September contains little drama for them. This was true when they won in 2021, too. The only team to beat out Milwaukee in the Central since the lost COVID season, the 2022 Cardinals, was old and forgettable and soon disassembled. It feels like it's been the Crew's division to run as they please for almost a decade, and they've rarely felt the pressure or stress that makes the moment of clinching a division crown so thrilling. Nothing is going to top 2018, when they ran down the Cubs and kicked them out at the finish line.

Still, it's important to exult in moments like Tuesday night. The Brewers took care of business against the Pirates, then watched as the Cubs laid an egg late and cinched the title for them, from several hundred miles away. It was a workmanlike Brewers win, but it did demonstrate why this team is great. Jacob Misiorowski steamrolled Pittsburgh over five scoreless innings, then made an early exit to conserve bullets ahead of the postseason. Aaron Ashby delivered two scoreless, stellar innings, because that's what Aaron Ashby does almost every day. The offense didn't hit any balls over the fence, but they had four doubles and got on base 15 times, and five relatively easy runs trickled across the plate. They can beat you in more ways than anyone else can, and they can beat you more comfortably than anyone else can.

Always a young team, the Brewers run on the high standards of Pat Murphy and the always-fresh energy of their new guys. The plus side of turning over the roster more than any other similarly good team would do is that there are always players in the mix who haven't yet experienced all of this—guys for whom the stakes of these moments don't feel dimmed by the existence of so many previous, similar ones. They're not bored of winning. They're thrilled about it. They just feel a fierce desire to keep it going, so that their detractors and doubters are forced to stop talking about whether teams like this one can win in the postseason.

It's a laughable question; it really is. Only teams like this one can win in the postseason, because this team is great. They have the best pitcher in baseball. They have a remarkably deep bullpen. They have three players (Jackson Chourio, William Contreras and Brice Turang) who are all in their prime, or are just entering it, and who are the best players at their respective positions in baseball when they're going well. They have an All-Star-caliber slugger (Jake Bauers) who has come practically from nowhere, but whose success is not at all a fluke and is likely to continue. They play smart, athletic baseball. They are, to quote their manager and the coded message on the inside of his bicep, "f---ing relentless." There's no important sense in which any other team has a leg up on them.

Maybe that will finally yield a pennant and/or a parade this fall. Maybe it won't. It obviously matters, but it would be silly to suggest that that's all that matters. Winning your division is a real and important achievement in Major League Baseball. Doing it for four years in a row—and making the competition look so overmatched along the way—is a remarkable one. The Brewers have been building equity in the Central since that magical September of 2018. Now, they own it outright. The future is bright, but don't overlook what this team has accomplished already.

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[SF70]

Yes the future is bright.

What Attanasio & the Brewers FO have built over the last decade in baseball’s smallest-market is nothing short of historic.

They have an organizational juggernaut of epic proportions that will give them another decade plus of consistent WS contention and thanks to that extended contention — a likely WS title, and possibly more.

Nothing is guaranteed, especially in baseball, but, another decade plus of 10%-15% yearly WS odds should come pretty close to that WS title-winning certainty. 

Just an incredible time to be a Brewers fan.

[Brian]

I also heard on TMJ that the Bucks, Packers and UW Badgers all said basically the same thing:  "Congratulations to the Brewers, the fans have no idea how hard that is to do." 

[biedergb]

If you go back a decade - since 2017 (since the Cubs ended their curse) this team has been in the playoff race all 10 years. I grew up watching molitor and yount and that was the last time (1978 before I knew of them through 1992) where every year they could be a contender, but this is more impressive as every year in that decade they have been in the playoff race, 6 division titles, 8 playoff appearances in those 10 years.

We are spoiled right now.  This is an insane level of dominance - particularly for a team without a huge payroll, and with two other legit franchises (cardinals and cubs).

But in the playoffs it’s been anything but. Referencing those awesome 1980s team, they made the playoffs twice (different era with fewer divisions with more teams in each division and no wild cards), but they did make the WS in one of those playoff appearances.

i am hoping that the division dominance doesn’t leave any time soon, and that we can find a way to get some playoff magic going as well.

[igor67]

I don't think any team this century has won often enough to be described as playoff dominant. Last time was the Jeter era Yankees and they had fewer rounds...

[Matthew Trueblood]

3 hours ago, igor67 said:

I don't think any team this century has won often enough to be described as playoff dominant. Last time was the Jeter era Yankees and they had fewer rounds...

"Playoff-dominant" is a weird phrase in the first place, and I certainly wouldn't put this team forward as a legitimate dynasty; they never even made consecutive postseasons. But the Giants winning the Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014 stands out to me. The way they seized and maintained momentum during each of those runs felt (sometimes strangely) dominant. Lincecum in 2010, MadBum in 2014, there were some legendary performances in there, too.