Brewers clinch back to back division titles for 1st time since '82 World Series season

Get ready to pop champagne, Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Brewers are your 2024 NL Central division champions. After holding at least a share of first place every day since April 30th, the Brewers clinched the division title with 11 games left to play.

The Chicago Cubs lost to the Oakland A's at home on Wednesday afternoon pushing the Brewers magic number down to zero. It's an ending to the division race that few envisioned when the season began.

"It just shows, on September 18th, no one in spring training the Brewers were going to win the NL Central, except maybe a few guys in that room" manager Pat Murphy said.

Following the departures of Craig Counsell to Chicago and Corbin Burnes to Baltimore, plus losing Brandon Woodruff, Devin Williams, and Garrett Mitchell to injury before the season even began, expectations were low. It was a young group that looked like a rebuilding team, but the Brewers winning culture and development of these young players, plus the core veteran pillars helped buoy this team to a massive division lead and now a division title.

"I think the success we've had this year, whether it's from and older guy like Yeli or myself or somebody who's 20 years old trying to figure how to be a big leaguer, it's special stuff" Rhys Hoskins said pregame.

The Milwaukee Brewers head into Wednesday night's game with an 87-64 record and they currently sit two games back of the Dodgers for the 2nd seed in the NL playoffs. They're four games back of the Phillies for the top seed, but the top two seeds get to avoid the best of three Wild Card round, which is what the Brewers are seeking.

There's still more work to do as Murphy acknowledged.

"I feel an awesome sense of responsibility about tonight's game and about the next 10 games after that. You know, an awesome sense of responsibility about moving forward in the postseason, but it seems like the road teams have had the advantage lately in the postseason, But I'm not going to worry about any of what seems like what has been normal. This team hasn't been normal all year, why would we be normal now?" said Murphy.

"Once you're there, you still want to make a run. Whether we're playing in the wild card or whether we get the bye, who knows. But you're going to be playing a good team. For us, in games that we execute, we do the little things right, we play a clean game, we're really tough to beat" Christian Yelich said.

As the Cubs-A's game was in the bottom of the ninth inning, the Brewers players all moved from the clubhouse into the weight room, away from the assembled media. As the final out was made, a roar of celebration could be heard even from behind the closed doors. After a few minutes, the players re-emerged from the weight room to get ready for bunting practice.

The Brewers will take the field as NL Central champions the rest of the way. They're the first team to clinch their division this season and clinch their postseason spot.

This is the 7th division title in Brewers franchise history. This is the first time the Brewers have gone back-to-back as division champs since 1981 and 1982. Obviously in the second year of that stretch, the Brewers made it all the way to the World Series. Forty-two years later, these Brewers have their eyes on the same destination with a different outcome.