Brewers beat Cubs for NL Central title, Dodgers win NL West
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 visiting Milwaukee Brewers won their first NL Central title since 2011, beating the Chicago 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 at Wrigley Field.
Lorenzo Cain hit a go-ahead single in the eighth inning to help Milwaukee to its eighth straight win and home-field 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 Tuesday’s wild card game. The Cubs play Colorado, who lost Monday’s second tiebreaker 5-2 against the Dodgers in Los Angeles for the NL West title.
Yelich singled home Milwaukee’s first run and won the NL batting title with a .326 average. He had 110 RBIs, one behind the Cubs’ Javier Baez, and finished with 36 home runs. Colorado’s Nolan Arenado hit his 38th Monday. 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 in the AL with Detroit in 2012.
Rookie Walker Buehler tossed one-hit ball into the seventh inning, Cody Bellinger and Max Muncy launched two-run homers, and the Dodgers beat the Rockies 5-2 in a tiebreaker to earn their record sixth consecutive NL West title.
The Dodgers became the first major-league team to win six straight division crowns since the Yankees captured nine AL East titles in a row from 1998-2006.
Los Angeles hosts Atlanta in the best-of-five NL Division Series beginning Thursday.
Buehler (8-5) had his no-hit bid broken up in the sixth on Charlie Blackmon’s single, one of his two hits for the Rockies.
Buehler even helped himself offensively, hitting a single in the sixth for his first professional RBI and extending the Dodgers’ lead to 5-0.
Despite posting the best road record in franchise history (44-38), the Rockies couldn’t get it going. They didn’t advance a runner past second base until the ninth when Arenado and Trevor Story homered back-to-back off closer Kenley Jansen.
Jansen then retired the next three batters.
The Dodgers’ two homers extended their franchise and NLleading total to 235 on the season.