Game 163 Is On: Cubs to Host Brewers Tomorrow at Noon for the NL Central Crown

For the first time in a couple decades, the Chicago Cubs will have to play one more game to settle up their season slate.

After wins today over the Cardinals and Tigers, respectively, the Cubs and Brewers finished the 162-game regular season with identical 95-67 records. That means, in order to determine the NL Central winner, the teams will have to play Game 163 tomorrow afternoon at Wrigley Field. The winner heads to the NLDS on Thursday. The loser hosts the Wild Card Game (against the loser of the Dodgers and Rockies in their OWN Game 163) on Tuesday.

Then, if tomorrow’s loser wins the Wild Card Game, they’ll face this team once again in the NLDS.

Game 163 for the Cubs and Brewers will be at noon CT. Tickets go on sale at 7:30 pm CT tonight, and you’ll want to gobble them up quickly to ensure this ridiculousness doesn’t matter:

This game is considered a regular season game, so that means the full 40-man roster will be available, and stats count.

The Cubs are very likely to go with Jose Quintana in the game, given that his schedule lines up and he’s owned the Brewers this year. The Brewers have not announced what they’re going to do, and it almost doesn’t matter who starts, because they’ve been going bullpen crazy for a couple weeks now. Thanks to today’s blowout of the Tigers, every reliever who matters will be fully available for the Brewers tomorrow.

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Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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