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Friday night’s win was the Brewers’ eleventh straight against an NL Central opponent, but there was also another interesting statistic hidden in their record against divisional rivals.
The aforementioned win was the Brewers’ 50th of the season, the first time in franchise history they’ve reached that mark in 79 games or less. It was also, however, just their 15th game against an NL Central team in those 79 games. The weekend series against the Cubs was only the Brewers’ second meeting with their rivals to the south, and they’ve played one series each against the Pirates and Reds. They’ve also faced the Cardinals twice, but one of those games was rained out and moved to a future series.
The question of how many games teams should play against divisional opponents is as old as divisional play itself. The issue of an “unbalanced” schedule, where teams played members of their own division more often than other opponents, became an increasingly relevant question of fairness when the Wild Card was introduced in the 1990’s and teams across divisions were competing with each other for the final playoff spots. As recently as 2022 the Brewers were still playing their NL Central rivals 19 times each, comprising 47% of their schedule. MLB reduced the number of divisional games in 2023 to make room for more interleague play.
Even with that change, however, the Brewers still see the other NL Central teams 13 times per season for a total of 52 games, and as they start the season’s mathematical second half on Monday, they’ll still have 35 of those games remaining. That disparity is relevant for a trio of reasons:
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- First, while not all of them were expected to be, NL Central teams have largely been somewhere between “highly competitive” and “very good” this season. Entering the month of June all five Central division teams had more wins than losses on the season. While the Reds and Pirates have faded slightly, the surprising Cardinals are still a candidate to join the Brewers and Cubs in the postseason.
- In a related note, it’s entirely possible and perhaps even advisable that all five Central teams could be buyers at or before the trade deadline. Last season we noted that teams buying or selling midseason can have an impact on other teams’ strength of schedule for the stretch run.
- Most importantly, however, the fact that the Brewers have a lot of games remaining against divisional opponents leaves a larger window open for one of those teams to get hot and make a comeback in the standings.
Many Matchups Left
Despite the best 79-game start in franchise history the Brewers are still only 5½ games ahead of the Cubs in the NL Central, and those two teams still have seven meetings left in the season’s final months. They’re also only seven games up on the Cardinals, who they play eight more times. That big collection of head-to-head matchups make it much easier for those would-be contenders to maintain control of their own destiny in the standings: Instead of winning their own games and needing help to catch the Brewers, they have an opportunity to slow the Brewers down themselves.
One of the most glaring examples of this is also a relatively recent one: On July 8 of last season the Tigers led the Guardians by 14 games in the standings with 69 games to play but Cleveland came all the way back to win the AL Central, fueled in part by five wins in six games against Detroit in late September.
Longtime Brewers fans will also remember that a large early season lead is not a guarantee: The Brewers were 8 ½ games up in the NL Central in June of 2007 before going 40-46 the rest of the way, including 2-4 against the eventual division-winning Cubs. They were also 6 ½ games up on July 1, 2014 before a 31-46 finish, fueled in part by just four wins in 13 games against the Cardinals during that span.
The Brewers have certainly done a lot to ensure they’ll defy expectations once again in 2026: Even after back-to-back losses to the Cubs over the weekend FanGraphs’ playoff odds have them with an 80% chance to win the NL Central and a 97% chance to make the playoffs, up from 10% and 30% in late April, respectively. They still have work to do to close out their rivals, however, and the schedule makers have made their task a little more difficult than it otherwise might have been.
