THE BEST KIND OF CROWN
Yelich misses Triple, but Brewers grab Central title
BREWERS 3 CUBS 1
CHICAGO — Christian Yelich’s easy smile and champagne-soaked T-shirt said it all.
A division title is much more fun than a Triple Crown.
Yelich collected three more hits as the Brewers won their first NL Central title since 2011, beating the Cubs, 3-1, on Monday in a tiebreaker game. The silky-smooth slugger stalled in his bid for the NL’s first Triple Crown in decades, but he starred once again as the Brew Crew captured the biggest prize of the day.
“I know how hard it is to get to this point and I’m proud to be a part of this group,” Yelich said as Milwaukee’s boozy party swirled around him, filling every inch of the cramped visitors’ club- house at Wrigley Field.
Lorenzo Cain hit a go-ahead single in the eighth inning to help Milwaukee to its eighth straight victory and homefield advantage throughout the NL playoffs. The Brewers will host the wild-card winner starting Thursday in the best-of-five Division Series.
Chicago stays at Wrigley for tonight’s wild-card game against the Rockies.
Yelich singled home Milwaukee’s first run and won the NL batting title with a .326 average. He had 110 RBI, one behind the Cubs’ Javier Baez, and finished with 36 home runs. The tiebreakers were game 163 of the regular season and counted in the totals.
Joe Medwick in 1937 was the last NL player to win the Triple Crown. Miguel Cabrera did it for Detroit in 2012.
Milwaukee trailed Chicago by as many as five games in September, but manager Craig Counsell’s club pushed the season to an extra day with a furious finish and then used its deep lineup and bullpen to outlast the playofftested Cubs.
Orlando Arcia, batting in the eighth slot, had a career-high four hits, and Josh Hader closed out another dominant relief performance for the Brewers.
Jose Quintana pitched six-hit ball into the sixth inning and Anthony Rizzo homered, but Chicago’s bullpen faltered at a key moment. Daniel Murphy and Javier Baez had the only other hits for the Cubs. The game was tied at 1 before Milwaukee opened the eighth with three straight hits. Arcia singled on a 0-2 pitch from Justin Wilson (4-5), Domingo Santana had a pinch-hit double and Cain greeted Steve Cishek with a single back up the middle.
After Yelich struck out swinging — a rare occurrence during an extraordinary stretch for the NL MVP favorite — Ryan Braun got the Brewers an insurance run with a run-scoring single to center.
It was more than enough for Milwaukee’s vaunted bullpen. Corey Knebel (4-3) extended his scoreless streak to 16 1/3 innings with a perfect seventh, and Hader worked two innings for his 12th save.
A sizable portion of Milwaukee fans in the crowd of 38,450 chanted “Let’s go Brewers! Let’s go Brewers!” — a rarity at Wrigley Field over the past few years.
“We could hear ‘em, we could really hear them and we fed off of that,” Yelich said. “We wanted to bring this home for them.”