Milwaukee Brewers get three extra home games down the stretch
By Jason Burke
With three games against the Miami Marlins scheduled for this weekend and the effects of Hurricane Irma still being felt in Florida, the decision has been made to relocate the games to Milwaukee.
According to Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, this weekend’s series against the Miami Marlins will now be held in Milwaukee, keeping the Brewers at home for another three games before heading out on the road for a quick series with Pittsburgh.
The Milwaukee Brewers are 77-69 on the season and sit just 2.5 games back of the Chicago Cubs in the NL Central and 3.5 back of the Colorado Rockies in the NL Wild Card race. While the Marlins went on a hot streak not too long ago, they are 12 back in the Wild Card and have an elimination number of just six. Their season is effectively over, so where these games happen doesn’t really matter to the club’s postseason hopes.
With these extra three games on the docket, the Brewers will now have just six games away from Miller Park, where they are 41-33 on the season, compared to an even .500 mark on the road. After the three against the Marlins at home and the three against the Pirates on the road, they’ll enjoy a seven game homestead against the Cubs for four and the Reds for three before setting out for St. Louis to close out the regular season.
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In contrast, the Cubs will wrap up their series with a beleaguered Mets squad Thursday evening and then welcome the rival Red Birds over the weekend. From there they travel to Tampa for two, Milwaukee for four and St. Louis for another four, giving them a three city road trip before returning home to face the Reds to close out the year.
The Rockies may have the easiest schedule of the bunch, with one remaining against the Diamondbacks on Thursday, then back home to face San Diego over the weekend. From there they travel to San Francisco, who have just helped the slumping Dodgers recapture their mojo, for two before making the quick trip down to San Diego to take on the Padres. They wrap up the season at home against the Marlins and the Dodgers.
With the way that the schedules are laid out and all the travel that Chicago will have to endure in the coming weeks, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Milwaukee could come away with the division with a little help from these three games. Say they take one more game than they would have against the Marlins. That’s a big swing this late in the season, and while the Cubs could certainly gripe if they wanted to, it’s hard to complain too much when there is a natural disaster that caused the relocation of the series in the first place. This wasn’t a season-long lobbying campaign by the Brewers.
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Some things are bigger than baseball, and hurricanes are definitely one of those things.