Milwaukee Brewers: Ranking the Scheduled 2020 Opponents

MLB team schedules will look quite different in the shortened 2020 season. Who will the Brewers be playing and how do they rank compared to each other in difficulty?

Before baseball fans finally get to start watching Brewers games for the first time this year, two things need to happen. Players need to get back to camp to start ramping back up and schedules need to be determined.

The former takes place next week, while the latter is still being worked out. Though schedules haven’t officially been released yet, their basic structure was announced earlier this week.

That means the Brewers will be playing their familiar NL Central foes (Cardinals, Cubs, Pirates, and Reds) as well as the members of the AL Central (Indians, Royals, Tigers, Twins, and White Sox).

Structuring schedules this way makes sense. By playing only against teams in your geographical region, it highly reduces the amount of travel for each team, which at least slightly lowers the risk of COVID-19 exposure. It also makes scheduling much easier in a season with only 60 games.

Playing a schedule against just the Central divisions will come with its challenges. Both divisions have a mix of perennial favorites and teams that have improved greatly over the offseason to put themselves in a much better position to contend this year.

The Brewers will have their work cut out for them this year if they are looking to reach the postseason for the third straight season. Asterisk or not, it would be the first time in franchise history that feat was achieved.

So, let’s see how this gauntlet shapes up for the Brewers. Here are Milwaukee’s opponents for 2020, ranked from least to most difficult.

9. Detroit Tigers

Key Additions: P Ivan Nova, 1B C.J. Cron, 2B Jonathan Schoop

The good news for the Tigers is that they got one heck of a future star when they drafted Spencer Torkelson with the first overall pick in the 2020 draft. The bad news is that this year will be yet another rebuilding year for fans.

The Tigers were 26th in the majors in batting average in 2019, 29th in home runs, and 28th in team ERA. None of their offseason moves push the needle that much closer to respectability, so they should be good for easy wins again this year, at least until their young talent they’ve been collecting is MLB-ready.

8. Pittsburgh Pirates

Key Additions: P Derek Holland

The Pirates still have talented youngsters such as Josh Bell and Bryan Reynolds who will only continue to get better over time. The problem is that they didn’t really do anything in the offseason to improve the team and even traded away arguably their best player in Starling Marte last winter as well.

Transition is the name of the game for the Pittsburgh franchise as they replaced both manager Clint Hurdle and GM Neal Huntington last fall. Like the Tigers, they find themselves in rebuilding mode and will likely occupy the bottom of the NL Central in 2020.

7. Kansas City Royals

Key Additions: 3B Maikel Franco, P Trevor Rosenthal, P Greg Holland

Though the Royals have put up more of a fight than teams like the Tigers and Pirates lately, they find themselves in a similar situation to Pittsburgh. They have some good, young talent like Whit Merrifield, Hunter Dozier, and Salvador Perez and are just waiting for some of the other prospects to catch up.

Rosenthal looked good in the spring and could be a sneaky good add if he looks more like the 2014-2015 version of himself, as could Franco if he ever figures out how to be a more well-rounded player. If some of the younger players take some steps forward as well, Kansas City could be more challenging of a matchup than expected. But it’s more likely they need at least another year, probably more, before truly being able to compete.

3. Chicago Cubs

Key Additions: 2B Jason Kipnis, IF/OF Hernan Perez, OF Steven Souza Jr., P Jeremy Jeffress

The Cubs are a tough one to peg. On one hand, they made few moves of any significant impact over the offseason and largely return the same team that finished third in the NL Central in 2019 and missed the playoffs. On the other hand, it can’t be denied how much talent Chicago has on its roster as well as the fact that they were in contention all year last year before their September swoon.

The Cubs started to get banged up toward the end of 2019, which partly explains their late-season slump. If everyone stays healthy, will they look more like the team from the first five months of the season? Odds point to yes and there should be little doubt that they will be back in the mix of teams at the top of the NL Central. New manager David Ross could play a big part in the Cubs turnaround as well.

2. St. Louis Cardinals

Key Additions: P Kwang-Hyun Kim, IF Brad Miller, OF Austin Dean

The Cardinals are another team who didn’t make many high-profile moves in the offseason. But when you’re coming off a 90-win season and a division championship, there usually isn’t a ton that needs to be improved from the previous season.

St. Louis returns all the most effective pitchers from a staff that was fifth in the majors in ERA in 2019. Add Brewers killers like Paul Goldschmidt and Yadier Molina to the other solid bats on the team’s offense and there’s no reason to think that the NL Central shouldn’t be the Cardinals’ to lose.

1. Minnesota Twins

Key Additions: 3B Josh Donaldson, P Kenta Maeda, P Homer Bailey, P Rich Hill, P Tyler Clippard

The “Bomba Squad” was the only team on this list to crack the 100-win mark in 2019 and if 2020 were a full season, they’d probably do it again this year too. They return almost all of their big bats from a team that set a new MLB single-season team record in home runs, so of course they added the bat of Donaldson this offseason just for good measure.

While Minnesota’s pitching wasn’t terrible in 2019 (9th in MLB with a 4.18 ERA), it wasn’t on the same impressive level as their offense, which explains why most of their offseason adds were in the rotation and bullpen. With those pieces now in place, the Twins should be challenging for one of the best records in the league by season’s end.

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The 2020 Brewers schedule should be released sometime this week. That’s just one more step closer to finally seeing regular season Brewers baseball again, even if it’s only against these nine teams.