CHICAGO -- It wasn't a postseason game -- officially -- but it sure looked like one. And on a shockingly bipartisan day at Wrigley Field, it was the Milwaukee Brewers who looked more like a team that belongs in October than the Chicago Cubs.
The last out of Monday's tiebreaker might have encapsulated this. Josh Hader, the hard-slinging lefty, was trying to finish it after Javier Baez had singled with two outs to keep the game going. That brought Anthony Rizzo to the dish. Rizzo is a lefty slugger, of course, belonging to the species of hitter that Hader usually gobbles up like popcorn.
It was lefty versus lefty, but this matchup was different: Rizzo had a 1.089 OPS off Hader and just under a month ago he became the first lefty to go deep off Hader in the big leagues. He's still the only one. And earlier in the game, Rizzo had put Chicago's lone run on the board by crushing a Jhoulys Chacin pitch into the right-field bleachers.
By now, you know the result. Rizzo got under an inside fastball and lofted a fly to right that Keon Broxton circled under near the warning track, looking like someone who wanted to start dancing before the music had even begun. Yelich made the catch, started hopping around, and the large Brewers contingent went bananas. The final was Milwaukee 3, Chicago 1, and for the first time since 2011, the Brewers are NL Central champions.
"So much (adrenaline)," Hader said. "I don't think I could even put a radar on it. Especially the eighth, coming out there and hearing all the Brewers fans. There is something to it."
If you haven't been following Milwaukee closely, there are two names you need to know: Hader and outfielder Christian Yelich. They are the biggest reasons why the Brewers, not the Cubs, have emerged as the NL Central's best postseason entrant.
Hader was the fourth and last of the Milwaukee relievers to take the hill in relief of Chacin, who sparkled through 5 ⅔ innings but was pulled with just 75 pitches on his tally. That's the way it is in baseball, circa the 2018 postseason, and the Brewers are at the forefront of that trend, and most others -- something they are about to share with the baseball world on a national stage.
"I give our guys credit," Brewers general manager David Stearns said. "They haven't really talked too much about that. I think quietly they know what's going on here, what we're trying to accomplish. For a couple of our guys in particular who are performing at a very high level right now, it'll be cool for them to have the ability to gain some national exposure. And I imagine they will perform quite well on it."
A couple of midseason pickups finished off the sixth for Chacin. Lefty Xavier Cedeno, added from the White Sox, came on and couldn't locate, giving up a single and a walk to the two batters he faced. Joakim Soria, the veteran righty and former closer, cleaned it up by striking out Baez.
At that point, though Cubs fans may not have realized it because the game was still even at one, their club was up against it. In an even game of bullpen versus bullpen, there aren't many teams that match up well with the Brewers. Milwaukee gave the seventh to Corey Knebel, their closer last season and for much of this season, before he went into a slump so severe he was actually shipped to the minors in August.
Since Knebel returned, he has been unhittable. Since the beginning of September he's thrown 16 ⅓ scoreless innings while striking out 18.2 batters per nine innings and, no, that's not a typo. Against the Cubs, he retired the side in order but with only one strikeout, which felt like a moral victory for Chicago.
"He was brilliant in September, there's no question," manager Craig Counsell said. "He had a dominant month of September. A brilliant month."
Then it was Hader, who emerged early this season as one of the most dominant multi-inning relievers in years. Hader took the ball in the eighth, knowing it was his game to finish, and allowed just that single to Baez in the ninth. According to Statcast, he threw four pitches in the eighth that clocked at 98.5 mph. They were the four fastest pitches he threw all season.
With the scoreless outing, he finishes with a 2.43 ERA and 143 strikeouts in 81 ⅓ innings -- all in relief. It's the most Ks for a reliever since Brad Lidge struck out 157 in 2014. It's the most for a lefty reliever ever.
"All the guys, they wanted this as bad as anybody could," Hader said. "They attack the zone and it doesn't matter what time of the day it is, where the game is at. They are getting the ball and helping us win games."
Lurking in the Brewers bullpen was Jeremy Jeffress, who enjoyed a day off, perhaps a hedge against the wild-card game that Milwaukee would be facing had they lost on Monday. As good as Hader has been all season, and as good as Knebel has been over the last month, Jeffress may have had the best campaign of all of them. He had a 1.29 ERA and, according to FanGraphs.com, finished second in all of baseball in win probability added (WPA).
In other words, this is the kind of three-headed-monster bullpen that managers dream about this time of the year. And that bullpen has plenty of help.
"Our bullpen has paced this team all year," Stearns said. "It has stabilized this team. They are a big reason we get to celebrate right now. But we've got a pretty good team. We've got a balanced team. You don't win 96 games by just relying on one unit."
Then there was Yelich. You've probably heard the absurd numbers the guy who has become the leading candidate to be NL MVP has posted. He had three hits on Monday, driving in the game's first run with a third-inning single. That put the finishing touches on a .326 average that gives him the first batting title in franchise history. His 36 homers and 110 RBIs were both just off the NL lead. He paced the circuit in slugging percentage, OPS and total bases. He stole a career-high 22 bases, including one on Monday, and played outstanding defense at both outfield corners.
Yelich stepped up Monday, which is no surprise for a guy who carried the Brewers during their season-finishing eight-game winning streak. Over his last five games, he's reached base in 16 of 21 plate appearances. Over his last 13 games, he's hit .488 and driven in 21 runs. And perhaps just as importantly, he's emerged as the spiritual leader of these Brewers.
"It was crazy," Yelich said. "Brewers fans really came out and supported us. There were a lot of them. We could hear them. Thanks for coming out and I'm glad we're able to take this thing back home."
Last week, Yelich penned a missive for The Players Tribune, imploring Brewers fans to turn out to Miller Park and be vocal when they are there. They listened. Then, on Sunday, when it became clear that a trip to Wrigley would be in order, the Brewers' media relations staff put out a release, urging their fans to jump at the chance to make the short trip from Milwaukee and grab tickets for the game that did not go on sale until Monday morning.
The fans listened to that, too. It's hard to say how many Brewers fans were making themselves at home at the Friendly Confines. But there were a lot of them.
"Our fans did an incredible job of turning out with short notice, getting down here," Stearns said. "There were a lot of Brewers fans all over this ballpark. They were loud. It was great to see."
At several points in the game, there were dueling MVP chants going in the ballpark, with Milwaukee fans screaming for Yelich and Cubs fans yelling for Baez. The Yelich chants seemed louder, and Yelich played more like an MVP in the game, legging out an infield hit in the first, and going with a pitch to opposite field in the sixth. It was an efficient performance, dictated by situation and not by the desire to become the NL's first Triple Crown winner since 1937.
Baez, as usual, swung from the heels. It's an approach that has worked so often this season, but hasn't so much lately. As Baez has slipped, so has Yelich taken off and that's why the debate about NL MVP, at least the one that doesn't include Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom, is no longer much of a debate. The MVP chants continued for Yelich well after the game -- two hours after the final pitch, a chorus erupted beyond the right-field bleachers from out on Sheffield Avenue, where the Milwaukee team buses were parked. Yelich will never claim the credit, and obviously he could not have done it alone, but he is the biggest reason why Milwaukee was able to overcome a five-game deficit to the Cubs as of Labor Day.
"It was one at a time," Yelich said. "That was our mindset. Just win one game at a time. Stick with that mindset, not look at the big picture and focus on the moment, that night, right there, and get the job done."
Now, for the Brewers, it all lines up perfectly. Their high-powered bullpen is firing on all cylinders and now has a couple of days to rest before the NLDS begins on Thursday. Yelich is as hot as a player can be. Elsewhere, the defense has remained stout even after mixing up their infield group during the season by adding Mike Moustakas and Jonathan Schoop during the season. Lorenzo Cain continues to spark the club from the top of the order and in center field. It was his single in the eighth that gave Milwaukee the lead on Monday they never relinquished, his seventh game-winning RBI of the season.
The Brewers have won nine of 10, 15 of 20 and 23 of 30. They are peaking at just the right time. The Brewers finished on a 19-6 run that began with a ninth-inning rally against the Cubs on Sept. 3. After that one, Cubs starter Cole Hamels said, "When you have the majority of Cubs fans in the stands, I don't know if that's a rivalry."
Oh, it's a rivalry.
"It was extra challenging," said longtime Brewer Ryan Braun, who has been booed at Wrigley Field perhaps more often than any player of his generation. "This is probably the toughest place to play and the toughest team to beat. We've seen the success they've had and they've earned everything they've accomplished. We knew we had our hands full. This was a cool win."
And after beating the Cubs, the Brewers not only avoid the wild-card game, but wrap up home-field advantage all through the NL playoffs. The swing in probabilities from the tiebreaker win was significant.
"It's huge," Stearns said. "Look, the first goal is to punch the ticket to the dance, because once you get in, anything can happen. But now to know we're going to play the majority of our games going forward at Miller Park is a big deal for us. We play really well there. Our fans support us like crazy."
Perhaps, best of all, Milwaukee did it against the Cubs, division champs each of the last three seasons. It's more than that though. These are teams that have had plenty of tiffs over the last couple of seasons because of things that have happened on the field and even things off of it, such as a game Chicago postponed last season because of a rainstorm that never materialized. Worse, for Brewers fans, was the inevitable crush of Cubs fans who descend upon Miller Park from the north Chicago suburbs, turning Milwaukee's home park into Wrigley North.
In claiming the division, have the Brewers finally reclaimed their own ballpark from their bitter foes? If so, we may find out soon. If the Cubs can regroup in time to win Tuesday's NL wild-card game, they will find a ready and rested Brewers club waiting for them at Miller Park.
"It's certainly a possibility," Stearns said, before alluding to the number of close games the combatants have played this season. "I turned around in the seventh inning when it was 1-1 and said, 'Big shocker. Tie game, seventh inning, Brewers-Cubs.' That's the way it's been all year. If we see them again, that's the way it's going to be in the division series."