Brewers: 3 Hot Takes From Earlier This Season That Look Stupid Now

Brewers Bad Early Season Take #3: NL Central Would Be 4-Team Fight

It’s hard to believe, but earlier this season, many pundits thought the NL Central would be a four-way battle between the Cardinals, Cubs, Reds, and Brewers with none of them reaching anything close to 90 wins for the season. Many thought just 85 wins would be enough to clinch.

So many had the Cardinals as the runaway victor in the NL Central after they acquired Nolan Arenado for practically nothing this offseason. The Brewers just didn’t do enough to get better, in the opinion of those pundits.

Yet here the Brewers are, at 89-55, on the cusp of 90 wins and with a chance to get 100 wins on the season.

The Cubs completely dismantled their team, the Cardinals have done nothing all season, while the Reds have a disastrous bullpen that has sabotaged any chances they had at the division. The Brewers have the largest division lead in baseball and will lock it up with a couple weeks still to play.

Perhaps the pundits were right when they said the NL Central would be a weaker division this year, and that 85 games might win it. However, the Brewers are going to blow way past that number. Everyone else in the division has been fairly weak, and if not for the collapse of the Padres who are trying to limp their way to the finish line, no one else in this division would even be sniffing postseason contention.

What they completely missed on was how good the Brewers could be. They underestimated this pitching staff because of their lack of experience, but they won’t make that mistake again.

Early season takes are fun to look back on sometimes. A lot has changed over the last few months, and what people were thinking would happen back in April and May just look silly now.