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Philly already won, but I'm ok with that. Better to have two teams keeping the pressure on the leaders. As was mentioned in the optimism thread, if the Brewers do what it takes to make the playoffs, it's highly unlikely that the Phillies will be able to match that. Everyone is chasing the Cards and Dodgers.

I don't even know what to say about this anymore.

Wow Rickie!!!!

2 more hits for Aoki tonight. He's been incredible lately.

Cards lose!!!! 3 1/2 back!!!!

Gomez out of the game...hope he's ok.

The Phillies won (again) today. The Cardinals are losing 1-0 in the 4th.

The mathematical answers are often unsatisfying. Correlation does not equal causation. You are right. We can't predict much about what the Brewers will do in the next week based on what they have done this season. The most logical explanation relates to the performance of the pitching staff, in particular the bullpen. To me, that's boring. It's fun to speculate on what might be responsible for this surge. I've proposed a number of ideas in various posts...is it Roenicke, the team attitude, lack of pressure, infusion of young talent, all of the above, none of the above, or something else? Who knows? But baseball players are human beings, they have emotions and there is no doubt that they do respond to stimuli that can't always be explained numerically. It's complicated. So I think you are right that I should be more careful when speculating about such things. At least I should imply that it is speculation. But I still strongly feel like the infusion of media this weekend will affect the players--there's no way I could prove that it affects whether they win or lose, but I still think it is worth mentioning.

For the Cardinals to finish with 87 wins, they would have to go 4 games over .500 the rest of the way, 12-8. That doesn't seem too difficult, but if they keep up their recent play, they probably have an equal chance of going 8-12 which would almost certainly result in elimination. It's unfortunate but if either the Cardinals or Dodgers decide to wake up, the race is over. If everyone goes .500, the Cardinals finish with 85 wins and the Dodgers with 84, and the Pirates with 82 or 83. The Brewers still need to go 14-6 to get to 85 which would allow them to lose 1 game in each of their 6 remaining series (not including tonight's game). With all these teams bunched together, it seems reasonable that somebody will get to 86, most likely the winner of the Cardinals/Dodgers series. If there is a split, it seems likely that one of the Philles, Pirates, or Brewers will pick up a game or even two. So by the end of next weekend there could easily be 4 or even 5 teams within 2 games of each other. I think if anyone that gets to 87 or higher they will get in without a tiebreaker. The odds of the Brewers being that team are quite slim. At 86 wins, you probably have a two-team tie. At 85 or 84, there could be as many as four teams tied for the second wildcard. The Brewers would still have to play well to get into that mess, but could get away with a few extra losses. It's very difficult to be the team out in front in these situations, it's almost better to be a little behind but playing good ball. The Brewers have been virtually ignored until this week, but the Packers aren't playing this weekend and with another win today there will be a lot of attention on them at Miller Park this weekend. They couldn't respond to pressure earlier in the season, so will they be able to this time?

The home-home 4-game set with the Twins should be fun. I like that format. Overall it seems to be a favorable schedule. Having no interleague after September 1st is nice. One challenge is an extra west coast road trip to San Francisco, Seattle, and Texas in August. The schedule makers did a great job keeping everything reasonable despite the alignment changes. For those who buy single-game tickets, it should be noted that similar to 2012, there are three price levels: blue games, gold games, and marquee games. Gold games are all Saturday and Sunday home games from May 1 to Sept. 1, excluding a pair of Pirates games in late may. Marquee games are Cubs home games and Opening Day.

Pythagorean record is a big factor in the Coolstandings formula, and the Cardinals are +84 compared with +17 for the Dodgers. The odds are a useful tool but have to be considered within their limitations: they do not care about injuries, whether or not the Brewers are on a 10 game winning or losing streak, etc. It does know future schedule which is important to an extent, but remember, the Reds and Nationals might be on cruise control by the time they play the Brewers. No Strasburg to worry about already. The odds can also fluctuate wildly from game to game--which is why September baseball is so exciting. The 2008 Brewers were down to 13% odds with 10 days to go, jumped up 30% for a win, back down 30% for a loss, and then from 45% to 100% when they won on the last day of the season and the Mets lost. The 2011 Red Sox were at 88% with 3 days to go! Right now, the situation is that a team other than the Cardinals or Dodgers will get the final playoff spot 1 in 5 times. Those are decent odds--and that doesn't even factor in that those two teams are heading in the wrong direction. It still looks ugly from a pure objective analysis perspective, but recent history suggests that teams are capable of finishing off these comebacks.

Gotta bump this thread to the top tonight. 71-71!!!! Go D'backs and Padres!!!

Five bleeping hundred. Now we can seriously talk playoffs.

What if Philly gets the second wild card and the Brewers finish in third?

I don't know the answer, but there were some interesting participants in that game: Deion Sanders and Billy Beane!

Lean, mean Taylor Green! And Aoki strikes again!!! This is just unbelievable.

I love when my team is on a hot streak. Everything hit by the Braves finds a glove.

I can't give enough credit to this team for not giving up this year. And a big chunk of that credit goes to the manager. Every team says that they don't give up until they are eliminated, but few go out and actually show it.

Yes, in a normal situation we would just be happy that they forced extras. But there's no margin for error at this point.

Ouch. What a heartbreaker. That's probably the end of the 2012 Brewers.

If Loe can keep the Cards off the board, we truly know this is a month of destiny.

Nice work by Ishikawa today, we're going to need more of that if Hart is out for a week.

I guess most people chose to watch the Packers get beat today?

Simply unbelievable. Down to possibly their last strike of the season. Still lots of work to do but there's hope.

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!