Brewers claim NL Central, beating Cubs in game No. 163
CHICAGO — The Milwaukee Brewers needed 163 games to do it, but they finally overtook the Chicago Cubs for good, winning Major League Baseball’s National League Central title with a 3-1 victory over their rival in a tiebreaking game Monday.
With the win, the Brewers advanced to a league divisional series, while the Cubs, who had held at least a share of the division lead since mid-July, will be asked to play for their postseason life as the NL’s top wild-card team.
Monday’s tiebreaker at Wrigley Field, which the Brewers forced with a 19-7 record in September, seemed like it would come down to a battle between the NL’s leading candidates for the Most Valuable Player Award, Christian Yelich of the Brewers and Javier Baez of the Cubs. Instead, it was run-scoring singles by Lorenzo Cain and Ryan Braun in the eighth inning that decided the game in the Brewers’ favour.
Given a lead with six outs to play, Milwaukee turned to its ace reliever, Josh Hader, who slammed the door shut with two shutout innings.
That Yelich did not deliver the go-ahead runs qualified as somewhat surprising after he thoroughly dominated baseball over the final month of the season. The 26-year-old outfielder, who came to the Brewers in an offseason trade with the Miami Marlins, very nearly won the NL’s first triple-crown since 1937 thanks to an outrageous second half in which he batted .367 with 25 home runs and 66 RBIs in just 65 games.
A 3-for-4 performance against Chicago — which included a run-scoring single in the third inning — left him as the NL’s leader in batting average (.326), on-base-plus-slugging percentage (1.000) and wins above replacement (7.4 entering Monday’s game). He fell one home run and one RBI short of joining Joe Medwick, Chuck Klein, Rogers Hornsby and Heinie Zimmerman as modern-era winners of the NL triple-crown.
“The guy’s been unbelievable,” Cain said. “I get a chance to see it day in and day out, and the guy’s been impressive all season long.”
He added an endorsement for his teammate’s award chances, saying, “I don’t see any other guy that’s gonna top this guy for MVP”
The Cubs, who had seemingly wrapped up the division when their lead over Milwaukee reached five games Sept. 1, simply could not muster an offence to compete Monday.