Brewers can clinch NL Central tonight, with 1st-round bye in sight

This story was excerpted from Adam McCalvy’s Brewers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

MILWAUKEE -- The Brewers will clinch the National League Central any day now -- including as soon as Tuesday night with a win over Philly combined with a Cubs loss to Oakland -- but that doesn’t mean they can coast through the rest of the regular season.

There’s a race afoot for something beyond winning the division crown for the second straight season, the third time in four seasons and the fourth time in seven seasons. It’s the race for one of the NL’s top two seeds, which comes with a bye through the best-of-three Wild Card Series and into the slightly less volatile best-of-five NL Division Series.

This week’s series against the Phillies offers the Brewers a chance to impact those overall standings. With a dozen games to go, the Phillies lead the league at 90-60, followed by the Dodgers at 89-61 and the Brewers at 87-63.

In the event of a tie, you’ll need to brush up on MLB’s tiebreaker rules, which start with head-to-head records. The Brewers already lost their season series against the Dodgers, dropping four of seven, but they still have a chance to split with the Phillies if they can sweep the current three-game set. In that case, the next tiebreaker would be the teams’ records within their division; the Brewers are currently 30-19 against the NL Central, the Phillies are 27-18 against the NL East.

Yes, the Wild Card has produced some recent pennant winners, including last year’s D-backs. But any team would love to avoid the uncertainty of a best-of-three series, not to mention get the four days of rest between the end of the regular season and the start of the NLDS.

“You just have to play it out,” said Brewers manager Pat Murphy on Monday afternoon, still replaying in his mind the tough bullpen decisions he faced in Sunday’s series-ending loss at Arizona. “It’s part of why I didn’t get as much rest as I should have. You struggle with wanting to keep your group as crisp as you can. At the same time, you want to position yourself to achieve as much as you can.”

He knew what question was coming next. What positions a team better: having to play straight through, like a Wild Card entrant is forced to do, or take the bye and some well-timed rest?

“Is it better to have four days off? I can’t think about that,” Murphy said. “Whatever is dealt to us, you deal with it.”

He’s trying to remind his team of that. For many Brewers players, including superstar rookie Jackson Chourio, this will be their first Major League clincher.

“With a young club, it’s very dangerous [to think ahead],” Murphy said. “We’ve got great opportunities this week.”

While the players try to avoid looking ahead, the front office has to, since American Family Field could be hosting postseason baseball as soon as Oct. 1.

Tickets for the first series -- whatever round that turns out to be -- will go on sale this Friday at 10 a.m. CT at Brewers.com/Postseason. If you don’t want to wait until 10 a.m., the club is staging a Drive-Thru Postseason Prep Rally from 6-9 a.m. CT that day at American Family Field, where fans will get a free Brewers car flag along with early access to purchase postseason tickets and a chance to meet Murphy, along with Hall of Famer Robin Yount, Packers Hall of Famer Donald Driver, Bucks All-Star Sidney Moncrief and other Wisconsin sports greats.

Car flags and free bratwursts (yes, brats for breakfast) will be available to the first 5,000 fans in line.