Milwaukee Brewers: Why 2018 Was Still A Major Success

The Milwaukee Brewers 2018 season came to an end on Saturday night after a 5-1 loss to the Dodgers in Game 7 of the NLCS.

Have you ever watched a movie where you were totally caught up in the plot and the action but it came to the end of the film and the conclusion was…disappointing, but you still enjoyed the film? That’s what this 2018 Milwaukee Brewers season feels like.

The journey of this season was a wild one that Brewers fans won’t soon forget, despite the conclusion not being what we wanted.

How We Got Here

The excitement for this season all began on January 25th. The Brewers acquired Christian Yelich and then Lorenzo Cain about an hour later. Those two players are the main reason the Brewers got this far.

Wade Miley was a late signing in Spring Training as well and he did a great job down the stretch.

As the season got going, the Brewers jumped out to a division lead, but lost it close to the All Star Break once again. They went on a tough losing streak and it cost them. But that wasn’t it for this Crew, because there was no quit in them.

They battled back, from being down five games with a month to go, to all of a sudden four games back, then three games back. They rattled off eight straight victories to end the year, which took over the top spot of the division.

NL Central Champions

The Milwaukee Brewers are division champions for the first time since 2011. The hated rival Chicago Cubs lost their hold on the division to Milwaukee and ended up losing in the Wild Card game.

Milwaukee is the defending champion of this division and no one can take that away from this team. No one gave this team a chance to win the division because they “didn’t have enough pitching”. While the lack of starters could have hurt them in the NLCS, they proved that a team can have success with a different, unconventional pitching strategy.

If anyone had told you before the season that the Brewers would win the division and take the NLCS to seven games without Jimmy Nelson, Stephen Vogt, or Brent Suter, and the rotation was led by Jhoulys Chacin and Wade Miley, you likely wouldn’t have believed them.

This team had a payroll around $100 million and just went toe-to-toe with a Dodgers team with a $200 million payroll. The Brewers spent half the money and had just as good of a team as the Dodgers.

Back In The Postseason

It’s been a long seven years since the Brewers last postseason appearance. But we’re back, and this is only just the beginning.

We had raised expectations for this year, but very few expected to get this far. It’s been a fun journey, with a team us fans will never forget. They played together and they played the right way.

Brewers fans have plenty of reasons to be proud of this team and what they accomplished. It hurts to come this close to the World Series and not reach it, but when you look back on the 2018 season, don’t look back on how it ended, look back on how it began, look back on how this team made you feel during the regular season, look back on what made you fall in love with this team.

Remember the journey. It’s what makes reaching the ultimate goal so sweet.

The Milwaukee Brewers will now head into the offseason with a couple big decisions to make. Watching how this rotation fills out for next year will be interesting.