Photo credit: Cole Vandermause
A lot can happen over the course of a 162-game Major League Baseball season, but it’s possible crazier things will happen in an abbreviated campaign.
With the possibility of a 50-game 2020 season looming, the likelihood of an unexpected outcome increases dramatically. While luck tends to even out over the course of a long baseball season, a short schedule raises the possibility that a hot team could outplay their true talent for a couple of months and make a surprise run at a World Series.
Brewers fans have seen plenty of hot streaks over the years, of course: The 2018 team played themselves into the postseason with a couple of hot months, a 19-8 May and a 19-7 September. Even some less memorable Brewers teams, however, have had some hot stretches. Here are some of the most unlikely 50-game runs in franchise history:
1983
The Brewers’ follow-up to their 1982 pennant-winning season is largely remembered as a disappointment, as they struggled to stay above .500 for most of the season’s first few months and languished in the middle of the pack in the American League East.
When they beat the Tigers on June 21 they improved to 30-34, but were still in sixth place in the division. It started a span where they won 35 out of 50 games, however, and on August 11 they retook sole possession of first place. The 1983 team was 15 games over .500 during that stretch and three games under .500 for the remainder of the season.
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1976
The 1976 Brewers were not a good team overall, going 66-95 and finishing dead last in the AL East. They are a good example of just how crazy things can get in a short timeframe, however. They were 25-41 on July 1 of that season, but won 28 of their next 50 games to improve to 53-63 on August 20.
It didn’t make a difference in the standings, of course: The Brewers were in sixth place and 15.5 games back in the division at the start of the streak and they were still sixth and 18 games back at the end. During the streak, however, a team that posted a .410 winning percentage overall won 56% of their games, briefly defying their true talent level.
1991
The 1991 Brewers didn’t do much to keep fans from tuning out early and turning their attention to fall sports: On August 3 they lost to Texas to fall to 43-60 on the season, and they were 15 games outside of the postseason picture.
The fans that stuck around, however, were rewarded with an encouraging finish. The Brewers won 33 of their next 50 games to get back to .500 on September 29, then won six of their seven contests in October to finish 83-79. Their 39-19 run was five games better than any other American League team over that span.
2014
The Brewers didn’t have an exceptionally hot 50-game stretch in 2014, but they did have a different kind of luck. From April 4 through May 27 they went 30-20 and benefitted tremendously from NL Central competition that was struggling to get its act together: On April 29 the Brewers were 20-7 and were the only team in the division with a winning record, leading the 14-14 Cardinals by six and a half games.
Similarly, on July 1 they were coming off a 50-game run where they had gone 29-21 but gained two and a half games on the field as the Cardinals, Pirates and Reds all treaded water around .500. In a short stretch a bad team can get hot, but a mediocre team can also get lucky if its rivals play poorly.
Back in March Dan Szymborski of FanGraphs noted that the postseason odds changed pretty dramatically if the MLB schedule was shortened from 162 to 110 games. With even 110 games now looking like a long shot scenario, the odds of an unlikely outcome have become even greater.
