Four Weeks Left and a 50/50 Chance

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Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Brewers

Eric Sogard's first home run of the 2020 season came Saturday evening right when the team needed it. The two-run walk-off home run ended the game in the bottom of the ninth inning after closer Josh Hader blew the team's one run lead in the top of the ninth by walking five of six batters.

In the middle of an MLB season full of things we’ve never seen before, finally we’ve found something we can relate to: As the calendar turns to September, the Brewers have four weeks left in their regular season and roughly a 50/50 chance of reaching the postseason.

The path they’ve taken to get there is, of course, unique in franchise history. They lost on Sunday to fall to 15-18 on the season, they’re four and a half games back of the NL Central-leading Cubs but just a game back of the second place Cardinals, who have 35 more games to play while the Brewers have just 27. As of Monday morning FanGraphs gives them a 51.7% chance to reach this season’s expanded playoffs. A quick breakdown of their possible paths to that destination:

• As always, the Brewers could clinch a postseason berth by winning their division outright for the fourth time in franchise history. The FanGraphs projections linked above have them doing that just 7.6% of the time.
• Additionally, this season second place finishers are guaranteed a spot in the playoffs. FanGraphs has the Cardinals as a slight favorite to do that but still lists the Brewers with a 26.2% chance.
• Finally, even if the Brewers finish behind the Cardinals and Cubs (or the Reds), they could still reach the postseason with one of the best two records among the National League’s third and fourth place finishers. Fangraphs has them doing that 17.9% of the time, even though they’ll enter play Monday behind both the Phillies and Giants in that race.

While their available routes to the playoffs may be unusual, the situation the Brewers find themselves in is not. They’ll enter the season’s final month with work to do to earn an opportunity to compete in October, just as they have in each of the last two seasons. Largely due to the expanded playoff field, they’re presented with a much better chance than they had at this time a year ago: The 2019 Brewers were given just a 12.8% chance to reach the postseason with a month left to play but worked their way into contention with a 20-7 final month, shoving their way past four teams into the NL’s second Wild Card spot.

The last time the Brewers faced comparable odds to what they’re seeing now was in 2014, however, and things went alarmingly in the other direction: That Brewers team led the NL Central for 159 regular season days, including a 6 ½ game lead on July 1. They were a sub-.500 team in July and August, however, and found themselves entering the season’s final month tied for the division lead and with just a 50.7% chance of reaching the postseason.

What followed, of course, was the continuation of one of the most storied collapses in franchise history. Having already lost their last five games in August, the Brewers also dropped eight of their first nine in September to fall to 74-71, going from six and a half games up in the division to six games back in a span of about 70 days. That precipitous dropoff, combined with a disastrous start to the 2015 season, doomed Ron Roenicke’s managerial tenure and cast the Brewers into a rebuild that saw them go just 141-183 over a span of two years before finally resurfacing above .500 in 2017.

Both individually and as a team the Brewers have work to do over the next month to demonstrate that this season’s flurry of slow starts and struggles was an aberration and not the start of another organizational downturn. In these final weeks the Brewers could re-establish themselves as a contender or further cement the question marks that will follow them into 2021.

To read more Brewers On Deck Circle columns by Kyle Lobner, click here.