MLB Schedule Favors the Brewers

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Photo via Brewers.com

The Milwaukee Brewers are on quite the roll, winning 17 of their last 21 games. At the end of the day on May 21 they were 21-23 and in third place in the NL Central, and just slightly more than three weeks later they find themselves atop the division at 38-27. A variety of factors have played a part in this turnaround, of course, but it’s worth noting that the schedule has certainly been one of them.

Early May, when the Brewers had what now appears to be a bottoming-out, also saw the Brewers play several likely 2021 playoff teams: Their six-game losing streak started with a drubbing by the Dodgers, and a 2-4 homestand the next week featured series losses to the Cardinals and Braves. Lumping games against likely contenders together, however, had a benefit that has paid off later.

Here are the teams the Brewers have played since May 18:

• Two games against a Royals team that is 15-25 since May 1.
• Six games in Cincinnati against a Reds team that went 12-15 in May (but has gotten hot since).
• Four against the Padres, the lone exception to the trend in this group.
• Three against the Nationals, the last place team in the NL East.
• Two against the Tigers, who enter play Monday at 26-39.
• Four against a Diamondbacks team that lost on Sunday to fall to 6-34 since May 1.
• Three against the last place Pirates, winners of just six of their last 24 games.

That group features the 21st, 22nd, 26th, 28th and 29th teams in MLB.com’s most recent power rankings. That doesn’t change the fact that the Brewers still had to play very good baseball to win their way through this stretch, but it does add some perspective to their recent emergence.

Recent franchise history shows that beating up on a handful of bad teams is a key part of a successful season. The 2008 Wild Card team is a perfect example: That season the Brewers went 14-1 against the Pirates and 6-0 against the Giants, outscoring two eventual 90-loss teams 143-59 across their 21 meetings. They were 19 games above .500 against those two opponents and 70-71 against everyone else, but still earned their first postseason appearance in 26 years.

The Brewers used another lowly Pirates team as a steppingstone on their way to an NL Central championship in 2011, winning 12 of 15 meetings. That campaign’s postseason push was also fueled by a 12-3 record against the Astros (who went 56-106 overall) and a 7-0 season series sweep of the 72-90 Marlins. The Cardinals, who spent much of that season chasing the Brewers, went a combined 25-14 against that same group. The Brewers were eight wins better in games against those three opponents and won the division by six games.

Christian Yelich is Back

As noted above, the schedule isn’t the only thing that’s changed for the Brewers recently. Their hot streak coincides nicely with Christian Yelich’s resurgence, for example, as he has a .405 on-base percentage and .482 slugging since May 23. They’ve also gotten a nice spark from Willy Adames, who joined the team around the start of this stretch, a turnaround from Avisail Garcia and a power surge from Daniel Vogelbach.

With that said, the calendar continues to lend fair winds to the Brewers’ sails for the weeks ahead. Between now and the All Star break they have a ten-game stretch where they only face the floundering Rockies and the aforementioned Diamondbacks, plus four more against the Pirates and seven against the Reds. Just six of the Brewers’ next 27 games are against teams currently in position to make the playoffs: A three-game series with the Cubs at the end of June and another three-game set in New York against the Mets on July 5-7.

All of this comes at a cost later, of course: The Brewers’ stretch run schedule features a series against the Cubs, two against the Cardinals and one each against the Mets and Dodgers in the season’s final weeks. If they can continue to make hay against the lesser opponents they face between now and then, however, it’ll make that final gauntlet significantly less important.