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

ST. LOUIS -- As if the Cardinals’ difficulty in trying to get to the playoffs hadn’t already been ramped up to dizzying levels following their miserable start to the season, those chances could also be severely hampered by MLB’s more-balanced schedule.

If the Cardinals are going to track down the Brewers and repeat as National League Central champions, they are going to have to do it the hard way and without the virtue of having so many head-to-head showdowns.

Incredibly, when the Brewers limped out of Busch Stadium on Wednesday night after losing two of three games to St. Louis, they did so while knowing they won’t have to see Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt and the Cardinals again until late September.

When the Cardinals heated up in August last season and shot past the Brewers for the division crown, they did it, in part, by winning a big series against Milwaukee at Busch Stadium. To make up the 6 ½ games that currently separate them, the Cardinals will have to do it a half-game at a time by playing their best baseball against others.

Under MLB’s new scheduling format, all 30 teams will face one another every year, meaning superstars such as Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto, Mookie Betts and Arenado will visit every ballpark every other year. To accommodate those opportunities, games against division foes have been slashed from 19 to 13. That presents the Cards with six fewer chances to pick up a full game on their division's top competition.

In terms of the Cardinals and Brewers, the two rivals have already played six games, and the season series stands at 3-3. The remaining seven games won’t be played until late September when they square off seven times over an 11-day period -- Sept. 18-21 in St. Louis and Sept. 26-28 in Milwaukee. To make those September series truly matter, the Cardinals will have to make up ground predominantly against others.

“We want to win as many games as we can regardless [of] if it’s the Brewers or anybody else,” said Arenado, who saw his home run streak end at five games in Wednesday’s win. “They’ve got a good team, but we’ve got a lot of games [remaining] this year. We know it, they know it and it’s going to be tough. I would assume that it’s going to come down to the wire again, just like it has the last few years.”

Arenado labeled the feel of the new schedule as “weird,” but then he countered with this: “But I understand why they’re doing it,” referring to the league wanting to take its star players to every ballpark.

Still, the 32-year-old Arenado is an old soul, in terms of baseball pennant races, and he’s already pining for the opportunity to face the Brewers in those high-stakes series late in the season.

“I think September baseball should be all division games … I really believe that’s how it should be,” he said. “But that’s not how it is. The schedule’s different, and we know it, but there’s nothing we can do about it. So, we’ve just got to go out there and try to win as many games as we can.”

Since MLB went to the current division format in 1994, the Cardinals have been NL Central champions 12 times. The largest division deficit they have overcome while becoming NL Central champs was in 2014 when they were 6 1/2 games back. This season, their deficit incredibly swelled to 10 games on April 29. Even as the Cardinals losing streak climbed to eight games, their deficit remained at 10 games for eight consecutive days while the Brewers and Pirates also slumped.

Now, after winning eight of 10, they have at least made the deficit a bit more manageable at 6 1/2 games. To overcome the number of games' back and win the NL Central -- likely the only path to the playoffs -- the Cards will have to do it with significantly fewer opportunities against the primary foe they are chasing. That’s something the Brewers are fully aware of, as well.

“History tells you that at the end of the season, they're going to be there,” Brewers’ outfielder Christian Yelich said of the Cards. “In a small sample size, it gets blown up into a big deal when they're not playing good. But they've got a lot of players who have been there. It's going to even out -- it's starting to. When you run up against them when they're playing hot, you need to play well or you're not going to win.”