Brewers magic number: Down to single digits after west coast win

The Milwaukee Brewers haven't often had success when travelling out to the west coast. That trend changed for at least one night and got the team even closer to a playoff spot.

The Brewers kicked off a six-game west coast road trip on Tuesday with the opener of a three-game set against the San Francisco Giants. So far, so good to start things off on the road as Milwaukee opened the series with a 3-2 victory.

The Brewers started the scoring off early on RBI singles by catcher William Contreras and Willy Adames that gave the Crew a 2-0 lead in the first. The lead would be cut in half just as quickly, however, on an RBI double by Giants third baseman Matt Chapman.

Outfielder Garrett Mitchell would provide the Brewers with a very important insurance run in the sixth on his fifth homer of the season. Brewers starter Aaron Civale would put up a strong outing over 5.1 innings, but would give up his second run of the game on a Mike Yastrzemski homer that made it 3-2.

Luckily, that would be as close as San Francisco would get as relievers DL Hall, Trevor Megill, and Devin Williams would combine for 3.2 scoreless innings the rest of the way. The win would drop the Brewers' magic number for a division title into the single digits, but just how far into the single digits?

What is the Milwaukee Brewers' magic number to win the NL Central?

While the results of the Brewers game came in late for fans in the central time zone, news of whether an additional game would get shaved off the team's magic number would come even later with the Cubs playing a road game in LA against the Dodgers. Alas, that extra game wouldn't come and the Brewers' magic number to win the NL Central is at nine going into Wednesday.

For a while, it looked like the magic number would drop to eight as Los Angeles held a 3-1 lead going into the eighth. But then chaos ensued as three Dodgers errors led to five runs for the Cubs, just one of them earned, and a 6-3 lead for Chicago that held for the final score.

Though not good for the magic number, the result is actually good news for the Brewers. Not that fans ever want to see a Cubs win, but the Dodgers loss brings Milwaukee to 2.5 games out of the No. 2 seed in the National League playoffs.

It'll be another late game for the Brewers on Wednesday as they resume their quest to win the NL Central and earn a playoff bye. Colin Rea starts for the Crew with first pitch scheduled for 8:45 CDT.