I’ve got good and bad baseball context for the Cardinals at the All-Star break.
Let’s start on the plus side.
Five times in the past six 162-game seasons — you know, the ones not affected by the COVID-19 pandemic — the National League Central’s first-place team at the All-Star break failed to become the division winner.
The pattern played out last season, when the Brewers caught and passed the Reds, who were up one game in the standings at the break before the Brewers clinched the Central by a margin of nine games.
It happened in 2022, when the Cardinals caught and passed the Brewers, who went from leading by a half-game to seeing the Cardinals claim the Central by seven.
It didn’t happen in 2021, when the Brewers went wire to wire, but it happened in 2019, before the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, when the Cardinals caught and passed the Cubs, who had a half-game advantage at the break. And it happened in 2018, when the Brewers also caught and passed the Cubs.
People are also reading…
Do people realize how many times those past few sentences said Brewers?
More on that in a minute.
First, some more Cardinals encouragement.
For seven consecutive seasons, the Cardinals have produced a better winning percentage after the All-Star break than they did before it. Yes, even during last season’s dreadful last-place finish, they were less bad after the break than they were before it. That part is not much to celebrate, I get it. But the larger trend is indeed noteworthy.
Since 2016, the Cardinals rank second in the National League and first in their division in second-half winning percentage: .576. Only the Dodgers (.641) and Astros (.593) top the Cardinals on this list in this span. While certain characteristics of Cardinals baseball have fluctuated rapidly as postseason success has become more spotty for the Cardinals, the muscle memory that helps them finish strong has remained.
They will need to flex it again, and a lot more effectively than last season, to have a chance of catching Milwaukee.
The Brewers are 4½ games up on the second-place Cardinals in the Central and have shown little interest in the kinds of detours that give others a chance to gain meaningful ground.
The last time the Brewers had this padded of an All-Star break lead, they turned a four-game advantage into a five-game cushion before they clinched. You have to go back to 2017 to find an example of Milwaukee blowing a first-half lead of four or more games to a division foe. When the Cardinals swarmed the Brewers in 2022, it was just a half-game first-half advantage they had to erase.
The challenge is bigger now, and the Brewers have made a clear statement to the Central. No Craig Counsell? No problem.
The Cubs threw a mountain of money at manager Counsell to fix their problems; they’re in last place and 8½ games back. The Brewers promoted bench coach Pat Murphy from within and continued to make the case that this is their division until proven otherwise. Cardinals fans don’t like to hear that, but the results are in, and they are real.
The Brewers have beaten the Cardinals six times in seven tries this season, outscoring them 42-16. Three of those times, they have clobbered the Cardinals by six or more runs.
While the entire NL Central has become a postseason pretender since the Cubs won the 2016 World Series, the Brewers have climbed into rare territory when it comes to regular-season reliability. They have joined the Dodgers (809) and Braves (708) as one of three NL teams to win 700-plus regular season games since the start of 2016.
This season they have some signs of real staying power.
They have, according to FanGraphs’ version of defensive runs saved, the best defense in the National League — 38 runs above average.
They have a refreshed Christian Yelich, who is averaging .325 with a .412 on-base percentage and a .521 slugging percentage, along with 21 steals. He’s one of four Milwaukee position players, including All-Star catcher William Contreras, who accumulated between 2.2 (shortstop Willy Adames) and 4.4 (Brice Turang) wins above replacement before the break. They also have a bullpen that ranks second in the NL in ERA (3.35) and saves (32).
They have not gone under .500 once this season. They have not suffered a losing month or a losing streak that lasted longer than three games. They have 26 comeback wins compared with 17 blown leads.
Point is, they’re tough. Again. More than some seem to realize. Again.
The Cardinals are a second-half team, but they are going to have to be an especially strong one to shake up what has steadily become Milwaukee’s division to lose.