Finishing with the best record in the National League and advancing to Game 7 of the National League Championship Series evidently doesn’t count for much.
Not in the world of wagering, anyway, where the smaller-market clubs are routinely overlooked. According to a website called Vegas Insider, the Milwaukee Brewers are not among the favorites to win the World Series next fall. They are listed in the sixth tier, behind the Cubs and Cardinals and side-by-side with the Braves and Mets as a 20-1 shot.
The low-ball projection is surprising, given that the Brewers are essentially the same team that finished with 96 wins in the regular season and one game away from the NL pennant.
To be underestimated isn’t the worst preseason fate. It might even be preferable. Either way, barring an all-around collapse, count on another Brewers pennant run this year.
Christian Yelich may not have another MVP season and Jesus Aguilar might not crank out another 35 homers, but speed never goes into a slump, and the Brewers had five players who stole 10 bags or more, led by Lorenzo Cain’s 30. Between the aforementioned three, plus Travis Shaw and Ryan Braun, there are just too many good bats up and down the lineup to allow many scoring droughts.
Plus, their bullpen is as good or better than any in either league, and ultimately, pitching is where it’s at in any World Series push. The opening day starter for the Brewers’ March 28 game against St. Louis is Jhoulys Chacin, whose 15-6 record last year made him the only pitcher on the staff with double-digit wins.
Whatever sort of year is in store for the Brewers, they will be playing in the first of two seasons in which new rules will be implemented.
Baseball continues its bid to regain fans at the park and viewers at home by speeding up the pace of play and discouraging the home run-strikeout duality that has dominated a growing number of pitcher-hitter battles.
The more impactful new rules go into effect next year. This year’s efforts to streamline the game include a slightly shorter break between innings, and one fewer manager visit to the mound per game. Next season, pitchers will have to face a minimum of three batters, this to help circumvent the tedium of multiple pitching changes.
Picking up the pace of the game is a good idea. The timeless charm of baseball was a reputation forged and rhapsodized over back in the era of the two-hour game. No clock enabled rallies that time couldn’t stop.
No clock also spawned a lot of dawdle time between pitches, with the three-hour game eventually becoming the norm. In an increasingly hasty, drive-through world that demands immediacy, a lot of baseball said no, thanks.
MLB has other, more drastic ideas that it’s running up the flagpole through its independent Atlantic League. They will use pitch-track technology to assist in calling balls and strikes (a good idea), eliminate all mound visits (another good idea) and increase the physical size of first, second and third bases by 20 percent.
In an effort to reverse the glut of strikeouts, they’re also going to move the pitcher’s mound back two feet — at the midway point of the season, no less. All the coddling of pitchers’ arms over the past few decades gets turned back in one bewildering fell swoop.
That idea could keep a lot of orthopedic surgeons busy, but it’s not the silliest new nip-and-tuck on the table. That distinction goes to the extraneous “no-shift rule,” whereby teams are required to have two infielders between first and second base, and second and third base on every pitch.
It is said that the shift turns too many would-be singles into outs, ignoring the obvious part of how a shift can be the easiest defense to get a base hit against. That sort of batter’s box legerdemain would require some Major League Baseball players to actually learn how to bunt.