Brewers: 2021 Season Is A Massive Disappointment After NLDS Exit

The Milwaukee Brewers, who at times seemed unstoppable this season, have been stopped. They’ve been stopped by the winner of the NL East, the Atlanta Braves.

On paper, the Brewers were the far better team. They won more games, had a much bigger division lead, and had possibly the best rotation baseball has seen in a generation.

But the offense was dead. And they couldn’t be brought back to life.

The Brewers won 95 games in the regular season and did so many great things, but collapsed in October and the 2021 season ends in a massive disappointment.

This season was wasted.

Period. Point blank.

All the good vibes, all the fun, all the great and historic things they did, goes to waste. There were World Series expectations. Not hopes, not prayers, but expectations. They had the pitching to do it. That was their Achilles heel in postseasons past. This year, it was the offense.

It had been a pitiful performance in the NLDS for the offense. They were shut out in Games 2 and 3, and didn’t get a hit with runners in scoring position until their 21st attempt, which came in Game 4.

The usual stars, Willy Adames, Kolten Wong, Avisail Garcia, and Luis Urias went cold. Christian Yelich, once one of the most clutch hitters in the game, had done nothing of consequence all series, or all season for that matter. He was up with two outs and a chance to take the lead in the 9th, and struck out on three pitches.

The Brewers may very well have the NL Cy Young winner. They have the ERA champion, they have a pitching staff that set dozens of records, and they had what felt like a team of destiny.

Earlier this summer, the Milwaukee Bucks rallied their way to an NBA title, and the Brewers were in the building to witness it. They wanted a title of their own. They were confident in their ability to accomplish it. Yet they laid an egg when the games mattered most.

Now the Brewers face a long winter filled with question marks and changes. They have a lot of arbitration eligible players that will get raises, and the CBA is up, and there could be numerous changes to the framework of baseball this offseason that would significantly impact the Brewers. They may lose their best hitter (Avisail Garcia) to free agency this year and have to replace him with their worst hitter (Jackie Bradley Jr..

What’s clear is that this offense needs some reworking. The pitching staff had historic seasons. Now, they’re going to need to ask them to do that again while they find an offense that will work.

We can look back at fun moments and think about how fun this team was, but at the end, the 2021 season will be remembered as a disappointment. A team that had a chance to win it all, and squandered it.

The Brewers still have not won a World Series in 52 seasons as a franchise. The bright side is, they’re still not even halfway to a drought as long as the Cubs had.