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Before we know it, a postseason frenzy the NL Central has largely faded from will end, and baseball’s page will turn, officially, toward 2025.

Meetings, lots of meetings, will occur. Meetings between owners. Meetings between front offices. Meetings between players and their agents. So many meetings.

So, one more meeting shouldn’t hurt.

Call it ... The Committee Seeking Restoration of NL Central Relevance.

First order of business?

Admitting this division’s got a problem.

If that’s not obvious now, an intervention will be needed before what has become a consistent pattern continues.

Teams in this division continue to assume being the best in this division is a reliable recipe to have postseason success. Yet teams in this division keep getting proven wrong. Blaming the randomness of the postseason can only cover up so much.

“Like many of our fans, we were disappointed with our results the past two seasons, but our goals remain unchanged, to consistently contend for NL Central titles and playoff appearances and ultimately win the World Series,� Cardinals chairman Bill Dewitt told fans at his season-ending press conference.

What was proven once more since then is that consistently contending for NL Central titles and ultimately winning the World Series no longer look like easily connectible dots.

It’s the Brewers who own this division now. No doubt about that. This season was their second consecutive NL Central first-place finish, their third in the past four years and their fourth in the past seven. They have missed just one postseason since 2018. Their ability to get more out of a dollar than higher spending teams, including the Cardinals, is truly impressive and admirable.

But there’s an understandable reason so many Cardinals fans continue to shrug off the Brewers’ sustained success. The Brewers are allergic to the postseason. It happened again this year. Their wild-card series loss to the Mets was their fourth wild-card round exit in their past five tries. They haven’t reached a National League Championship Series since 2018.

The Cardinals have played in an NLCS more recently than the Brewers — though getting there was about all they did before being wiped out by the eventual World Series champion Nationals in 2019. The Cardinals’ dismissal of the Braves in that 2019 NLDS — remember Yadier Molina’s epic bat hurl? — remains the best postseason showing by an NL Central team in the half-decade that has transpired since. I rolled out some of these numbers last season, but it’s worth revisiting them now that just one NL Central team made it into this season’s bracket — then immediately exited.

Four different divisions have had teams secure a parade since the Cubs last won the NL Central a World Series championship in 2016. That number could reach five this season if Cleveland or Detroit continue their runs out of the AL Central. So much for Central division malaise being shared between American and National Leagues.

Since 2020, you can’t find an NL Central participant in baseball’s top-10 of postseason games played. Milwaukee’s repeated flameouts across 11 games are tied for 11th most. And if you go by postseason wins, the data gets even more discouraging. You won’t find an NL Central team in the top 15. The Brewers’ two victories in 11 tries check in at 17th. The Cardinals are the only other team in the division with one. And it’s just one, a 2020 wild-card win against the Padres before San Diego took the next two games.

I appreciate the Cardinals admitting publicly, finally, that they need to dig in and fix some of the player development issues they ignored for too long. The honesty shouldn’t stop there. Part of the reason the Cardinals hope they can remain competitive-ish during their upcoming retool/rebuild is that their division could allow it. It’s the same reason the Reds should feel confident about their chances after hiring Terry Francona. A managerial boost really could make that big of a difference; though it didn’t exactly work out for the Cubs this season, did it?

Even the Pirates have some reason for optimism, and not just because the Cardinals are foreshadowing a potential step back. But when it does come time for the Cardinals to get serious about being legitimate contenders again, the same honesty used in addressing their foundational cracks should apply to the division they once owned. Until proven otherwise, being the best in the NL Central just doesn’t seem to mean very much when bracket play begins against bigger-spending and/or better-ran organizations.

This postseason proved it once again, and a half-decade is a legitimate sample size.

Admitting there’s a problem has to be the first item on the agenda of The Committee Seeking Restoration of NL Central Relevance.