The Milwaukee Brewers Are The Obvious, Implausible Champions

It is difficult to encapsulate the Milwaukee Brewers’ first World Series victory, because for all the limiters and qualifiers that suggest they had done the implausible—the payroll, and the market size, and facing the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the “first World Series victory” of it all—they had, in all reality, done the very probable.

The Brewers had the best regular-season record in Major League Baseball, with 103 wins. By many metrics, they had the best starting pitcher in baseball, with Jacob Misiorowski. They were rested coming into the World Series, and though no one could know this until the first game in Tampa, they were playing with a seven-game home-field advantage. They swept the Dodgers and then won the World Series in five; for good measure, they also nearly won the one game they lost. It is insulting to the broader picture that the Brewers failed to sweep. No team down 0-3 in the World Series has ever forced a Game 6. If the Tampa Bay Rays ever got close, it was in the manner of one of Zeno’s paradoxes: closing in by halves to the possibility of making it an interesting series, and never getting there.

However, it would be incorrect to state that the Brewers had only done the very probable, because in an MLB postseason, achieving the very probable is very, very difficult. Even the best bullpen in baseball, never mind the third-best, will experience bad days. Hits dry up. Everyone makes an untimely error one time or another. Winning in baseball is one thing, but making it look totally controlled is hard work. Just ask the Los Angeles Dodgers, world-beaters for a decade or so, who failed to beat the world more times than not. On the most recent occasion they did, it required the intervention of several magicians, or at least Miguel Rojas and Andy Pages.