Holding an MLB-best 97-65 regular season record, the Brewers will look to hold off the Cubs and clinch their first NLCS berth since 2018 on Saturday.
Despite being a baseball fan my entire life, sometimes the unpredictable nature of the sport in the playoffs still catches me off guard. I’d have to think many fans of the Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers are feeling at least a little bit of that as well, right now.
After an opening two games that saw the Brewers look like every bit of the team that won 14 games in a row this summer, the Cubs responded with nailbiter Game 3 victory before a more decisive win in Game 4 officially pushed the series back to Milwaukee.
A conversation with a friend this week reminded me of the universal truth regarding winner-take-all games in sports – 100% of the pressure is always going to be on both teams. That certainly won’t be any different Saturday night in Milwaukee, but both teams will surely be feeling different circumstances behind their pressure.
Though the Cubs were the Wild Card team and a slight underdog in this series, they also were the unquestionable divisional favorite heading into the season, with a roster of surprise breakout players for the Brewers once again being enough to rise to their third straight NL Central championship.
With that division title, the Brewers manufactured some different expectations for the 2025 postseason in comparison to years past. In both 2023 and 2024, Milwaukee was the lowest-seeded division winner, meaning they had to play in the Wild Card Round in both seasons, failing to get past the Arizona Diamondbacks and New York Mets, respectively.
The playoff heartbreak was especially potent in 2024, with the Brewers just two outs away from moving on to the NLDS when a three-run go-ahead home run from Pete Alonso sunk Milwaukee’s season in front of a stunned American Family Field crowd.
Even going back before Milwaukee’s misfortunes in the Wild Card Round, the Brewers had come up short in October each season from 2018 to 2021, with the first two years featuring brutal losses in winner-take-all games.
The 2018 Brewers were just a game away from the World Series, hosting Game 7 of the NLCS when Walker Buehler and the Los Angeles Dodgers bullpen stymied the Brewers, leaving them just short of the Fall Classic.
While it’s been plenty of playoff heartbreak as of late, Brewers fans were previously used to no mentions of October baseball at all, having just one World Series appearance since being established as the Seattle Pilots in 1969. That pennant came when the Brewers were still part of the American League in 1982, not switching over to the senior circuit until the 1998 season.
After moving to the NL, it took the Brewers another 10 years to finally make the playoffs, clinching an NL Wild Card berth in 2008 before falling to the Philadelphia Phillies in that year’s NLDS. Three years later, the Brewers had their deepest NL playoff run yet, getting past the Diamondbacks in the NLDS before falling to the division rival St. Louis Cardinals in a six-game NLCS.
The Brewers may be looking back to that 2011 NLDS for inspiration, a series that also saw Milwaukee squander a 2-0 series lead built at home, with the Diamondbacks winning Games 3 and 4 in Phoenix decisively before Milwaukee won Game 5 on a walk-off hit from Nyjer Morgan.
Milwaukee will look to replicate that effort Saturday, brushing off the momentum their opponent has built while taking advantage of what their 97 regular season wins earned them – home field in a winner-take-all Game 5.
As for the Cubs, it’s a golden opportunity to triumph in a rivalry the North Siders have felt definitively behind in during recent years. Despite being the bigger-market team with a higher payroll, the Cubs have finished second to the Brewers in each of the past three seasons, with last year’s finish likely hurting even more as the Cubs had just poached former Brewers manager and Milwaukee native son Craig Counsell to be their own skipper.
Counsell himself can help shed light on what the Brewers are trying to replicate from the 2011 NLDS, considering he was on the team himself as a veteran bench player in the final season of his playing career. Taking over as manager of the team four years later and running the ship from 2015 to 2023, the ties between Counsell and the entire Brewers organization run incredibly deep, only adding more fuel to the most important game this rivalry has yet to see.
With a fairly wide-open field of teams remaining in October, both clubs likely feel they can go all the way, with an intense matchup against their archrival being all that stands in their way.
While the Brewers have one of the game’s strongest farm systems and an incredible core of young talent across the board that is poised to keep this team competitive for years to come, fans and players alike still must feel that this season presents a uniquely great opportunity to break through for the team’s first-ever World Series title.
It’s easy to plan ahead for a seemingly endless future when your team has a host of young talent, but winning just one title is still the toughest thing to do, regardless of how dominant a team may be in the regular season.
Fans of the late 1990’s Cleveland Indians and the Seattle Mariners of the turn of the century will tell you that much – prolonged regular season dominance is nice, but it ultimately doesn’t matter if the team is unable to close the deal when the lights are the brightest.
Hell, even when teams DO break through to win that championship, the unpredictable nature of the sport always creates some forks in the road. The Cubs of the mid-2010’s certainly felt as if they had more than one title in store, as did the Phillies of the late 2000’s and early 2010’s. Ultimately, the one World Series both teams got served as the unquestionable peak of both eras.
There’s no telling what the future holds for the Brewers and the rest of the NL Central – while the Brewers have one of the sport’s best farm systems, so do the Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates, with all four teams being among the 12 best farm systems in MLB. Each offseason brings a plethora of unforeseen trades and signings that change the trajectory of teams long before pitchers and catchers even report – the future is certainly there, but there’s no guarantee the grass will be greener on the other side.
The Cubs face perhaps even more questions in the event of a series loss, but their situation still feels quite different – the holes on the team are obvious, several multi-year contracts are coming off the books and their farm system is the weakest in the division. These are issues the Cubs are facing regardless if they win Saturday or not in regards to their future.
The waters are a bit muddier for a Brewers team that just completed its best regular season in franchise history – there’s always room for every club to improve, but where do the priorities lie? For a team that has remained at the top of the division despite trading away star relievers Josh Hader and Devin Williams in recent years, fans have every reason to be confident that the Brewers will remain competitive – but how much does that mean if the October results don’t seem to change?
The Brewers are a team that has shined with clutch hitting all season long, with a stellar pitching staff and well above-average bullpen creating a club that has few discernible weaknesses. Furthermore, it feels like the Brewers are specifically built for October – there’s a definitive emphasis on contact hitting in a month where power is routinely hard to come by, while the team remains very strong defensively.
After looking to be on their way to a sweep of their rivals, the same team has brought them to the brink of elimination. It’s hard to see too many significant changes for the Brewers in the event of a series loss, but that may only be because it isn’t all that obvious what would make this team get over the hump of winning a playoff series, something that hasn’t been done since the 2018 NLDS.
Sure, the Brewers may not be the most powerful team across the league, but after Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper were largely quiet in the NLDS for the Phillies, fans are reminded that there are simply no guarantees, no matter who is on your roster.
The Milwaukee Brewers will remain a very good baseball team next year and likely several years into the future – yet an NLDS loss to the Cubs would make this season stand out for decades to come for Brewers fans as an opportunity gone by the wayside. With a series victory, the Brewers can retire the narrative of being playoff chokers, score a definitive win in the rivalry by beating Counsell’s team in the playoffs and move on in a playoff field where they truly can beat any remaining team.
Conversely, a Cubs win could only reinforce that narrative surrounding the Brewers while rendering their three straight NL Central titles effectively meaningless, which itself would also be a pretty decisive victory in a rivalry.
Rivalries. Playoff baseball. Saturday night is what it is all about – two teams that absolutely cannot stand each other with a berth to the League Championship Series on the line. Nobody knows what will happen, but fans will likely feel the fallout of this series for years to come.
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