It was a quiet truth underlying much of the near-panic we felt about what was happening between the Cubs and Brewers over the past week: the Cubs have a battle of a final series and the Brewers have a joke of a final series.
While the Cubs will be hosting the Cardinals – fresh off of an off-day – for a three-game set in which they will be fighting for their playoff lives, the Brewers will be taking a three-day Sandals Jamaica vacation against the eliminated-in-April Detroit Tigers.
There was always a very good chance that the Brewers were going to end their season with a three-game sweep. So if the Cubs were going to hold them off to win the NL Central – if they even wanted a chance at that – they were going to have to come into the final series with some kind of lead.
And now they have it! With their 3-0 win over the Pirates last night, the Cubs took that half-game lead they’d had and turned it into a full game. A 1.0-game lead with three games to go. I’m happy about that, all things considered.
It’s not a huge lead, of course, but it gives the Cubs a chance to control their own destiny. Sweeping the Cardinals is not an easy ask, and it’s certainly not something I would predict with this banged up roster. But it’s possible. And there’s absolutely nothing the Brewers could do to stop the Cubs from taking the division at that point.
The Cubs are now guaranteed to finish the season with more wins than any other National League team … except, perhaps, the team that’s chasing them in the division. It’s been an incredibly productive year in the win column when you consider what the Cubs have dealt with, and now they have just the tiniest buffer against those charging Brewers. Maybe they hold them off, maybe they don’t. But the Cubs have at least set themselves up with a chance to take care of business this weekend.
— Michael Cerami (@Michael_Cerami) September 28, 2018