Brewers Title Odds, Projected Record Revealed: 'Team Is For Real'

The Milwaukee Brewers are riding a seven-game win streak at the moment.

No other National League team has won more than two games in a row entering the second half, which makes Milwaukee by far the hottest club in the NL. Only the Boston Red Sox (winners of 10 in a row) are on a better run than the Brew Crew in all of Major League Baseball.

The question is, can Milwaukee keep this train humming? The Brewers were an impressive 56-40 entering Friday, just one game back of the NL Central-leading Chicago Cubs. ESPN’s Bradford Doolittle wrote about Milwaukee on Friday, suggesting that the Brewers will give the Cubs a run for their money.

“It took a while for them to find their footing, but Milwaukee is right back where it has been for most of the past decade,” Doolittle wrote.

“This time, the Brewers are doing it with a surfeit of productive young talent. They lead the majors in WAR (per a FanGraphs/Baseball Reference consensus) from rookies. With so many young players on the rise, it's not clear that the National League's hottest team entering the break needs to do any more than stay the course.”

“This might be the best version of the Brewers that we've seen during this current long run of success,” Doolittle continued. “The offense is athletic and better balanced than the homer/strikeout-heavy attacks of recent vintage. The team defense is top five in baseball. The rotation is dynamic and deep; if anyone goes down, the Brewers have Logan Henderson and Chad Patrick at Triple-A. Finding quality relievers is never a problem for Milwaukee. This team is for real and the NL Central race is going to be a doozy.”

Doolittle’s Brewers thoughts were part of a larger piece from ESPN projecting each team’s second half. ESPN projected that the Milwaukee Brewers will finish with a 91-71 record and gave them 18.8 percent odds of winning the division title, 86.8 percent odds of making the playoffs, and 5.4 percent odds of winning the championship.