It’s ‘Game 163 Day’ in baseball, and here’s everything you need to know in order to enjoy everything.
While the individual factors that will decide each game are different, there are two things universal across the board:
- Whoever wins each game is the winner of that respective division.
- The loser IS NOT eliminated from the Postseason. The losers will play each other tomorrow in the NL Wild Card. The winner of that game plays whoever wins the Cubs/Brewers game.
Cubs vs. Brewers
Game is being played at 1:10 pm ET on ESPN
How did we get here
We really shouldn’t be here, but we are. For most of the season, it looked like the Chicago Cubs were going to pull away with the NL Central, but they got in their own way. Keep in mind that up until a few days ago there was a third team in the mix — the St. Louis Cardinals — which is incredible when considering they were almost five games behind the Cubs at the start of September.
Chicago won’t have to deal with the Cardinals. But because they basically forgot how to baseball for the last month the Cubs will be up against a team that was firmly in third place at the start of the month.
To be fair to Milwaukee, the Brewers have managed to stay close with Chicago all season long, leading the NL Central at various points. The stars aligned in September with the Cubs going in the tank and Christian Yelich turning on the jet boosters of a late-season MVP push. He’d been bubbling towards the surface of national conversation all year, but this last month Yelich has been hotter than the sun, which has been contagious for his entire team. Now it all comes down to two games and there might not be a team hotter than Milwaukee.
What happens if the Cubs win
They can’t feel good about it, but a win means the Cubs third straight division title. That’s impressive considering the franchise formerly known as the Lovable Losers five division titles total before 2016. It should go without saying that this is the most desirable of the options for the Cubs, as they’d seal up the top seed in the National League and get at least four games to try and figure out what they haven’t been able to over the last 20. Bullpen issues have always been a concern for the Cubs, even in the year they won the World Series, but the implosion that we’ve witnessed over the course of the last month should be grave cause for concern on the North Side.
What happens if the Brewers win
Milwaukee winning the NL Central for the first time since 2011 would be monumental. It’s not just that they came back from trailing the Cubs by half a dozen games, but this team has all the makings of being something special. Beyond Yelich and his MVP-level play, the Brewers have turned things around in a big way from two years ago when they finished the season over 30 games behind the Cubs. Craig Counsell has injected the Brewers with a winning spirit and the moves made this offseason are paying off at the right time. It’s not analytical to say the Brewers are simply getting hot at the right time, but historically that has paid off well for teams like the Royals, Yankees, and so many other teams who saw their late-season surge turn into postseason dominance.
My team isn’t in it, who should I root for?
It used to be the Cubs were the easy answer, but not anymore. Chicago had its chance to shore up the NL Central and failed miserably; this 163rd game is all their fault. Root for the Brewers, who have a Cubs-esque exciting roster led by Yelich. Milwaukee has made the postseason only four times in its entire existence and just twice in the last 35 years. Besides, even if the Cubs lose they won’t be eliminated from the playoffs so there’s no real downside to getting on the Brewers bandwagon before it takes off.