The Whole Season Comes Down to One Road Trip

is going to be doing a lot of jogging this week. Photo: Benny Sieu-US PRESSWIRE

I don’t mean to sound all doom and gloom, but sometimes reality can sound that way.

The next 10 days will decide how we remember this season.  Was it the season of “Oh man, we were so close” or the season of “Can you believe we made the playoffs?!?!?!”  I personally, would prefer the latter, but it is not up to me.  In fact it is not up to any of the Brewers/Pirates fans who will be watching these next 10 games with clinched teeth and bleeding gums (scurvy…get it, it’s a pirate joke…never mind).

This road trip can really only go one of two ways; disaster or triumph.  The reason I feel that way is because a 5-5 record on this road trip will not cut it.  That being the case, I would prefer that they either tank it all together, or blast everyone out of the water.  These are good match-ups for the Brewers though.

We own the Pirates.  Have for years.  Plus, they are playing horrific baseball right now.  Imagine a team in which Mark Kotsay is the only player and Jeff Suppan is the only pitcher, it’s that bad for the Bucs right now.  By that logic, there is no reason that we cannot sweep them, or at the very least take 2 out of 3. 

The Washington Nationals have been the surprise of the season, no doubt about it.  However, they are 5-5 in their last 10 games, including a 3-game sweep at the hands of the Braves.  For those of you following along at home, those are the same Braves that we swept just last week.  This is the perfect time to catch this team napping in their hammocks and I believe that we could easily take 3 out of 4 from them in their own building.

Then poop (you’re welcome FCC) gets real.  The Cincinnati Reds are the blistering heat to our 6 pack of Miller Lite sitting in the trunk.  They ruin us on a fairly regular basis.  Granted, we swept them In Milwaukee back in early August.  They in turn swept us in Cincy right after the All-Star break.  On the season, we are 5-7 against the Reds.  However, they have an insurmountable 11 game lead on the division and have very little to play for.  It is entirely possible that they will have clinched their playoff spot before we even play them.  And in all honesty, we should be rooting for that to happen.   If we can get out of Great-American Ballpark with 2 wins, I will count that as a success.

If there was ever a time for the 2012 Brewers to prove that they are as good as we hoped they could be back in April, this is the time.  Nothing leading up to this road trip really matters anymore.  It is time to show that we can win games when they matter the most.

The Cardinals will not be doing us any favors, since they get to play the Astros and Cubs exclusively over the same stretch of time.  I am looking at a 7-3 trip as the bare minimum for the Crew to stay in this race.   Because there is just no way that the Cards will not win at least 6 or 7 of those 9 games.

So, in the end, the entire season comes down to this road trip.  Don’t panic, but it is true.  There is not a baseball analyst who would disagree with me on this.  If the team falls apart on this road trip, at least they gave us something to cheer about.  Because up until the last few weeks, this team had been boring to watch and very rarely raised my pulse to higher than…I don’t know medical terms, so whatever is average, they did not do much better than that.

No matter what occurs on these fateful days, it still ended up being a really awesome ride.  Who would have thought that the team would be better after they dealt Greinke?  Certainly not me.

So, as Woody Harrelson says in one of my favorite movies, “It’s time to nut up, or shut up.”  Go get ‘em boys.