The Brewers have baseball's best record. Can they win their first playoff series?
The Brewers won their division on 16 September and hold baseball's best record, 95 wins and 58 losses, so they miss the first round of the playoffs.
What happened
Milwaukee took over the best record in Major League Baseball on and have held it since; finishing with one of the two best records in the National League earns a bye through the Wild Card Series, which runs from to , and the Division Series begins on .
The Milwaukee Brewers are 95-58, the best record in baseball, and have been on top since . The two best records in each league skip the first playoff round. With nine games of the regular season left, Milwaukee are close to that bye but have not yet made sure of it.
In the National League the Los Angeles Dodgers are next on 93-60 and the Atlanta Braves third on 89-64.
Milwaukee won the National League Central, their division, for the fourth season in a row. They beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 5-1 on Tuesday , and the second-placed Chicago Cubs lost 3-6 to Atlanta the same night. MLB.com dates the title , which was the early hours of that day in Britain.
The regular season ends on . The first round, the Wild Card Series, is a best-of-three from to . The Division Series starts on , with a possible fifth game in the National League on .
The League Championship Series starts on , with a possible seventh game on . Game one of the World Series is on .
The Pattern
We looked at every team with the best regular-season record in Major League Baseball from 2017 to 2025, and checked whether it won its first playoff series. In all eight seasons that was the Division Series. We left out 2020, a short season of 60 games. From 2022 the playoffs grew from ten teams to twelve, and the top two in each league got a bye with about five days off. We kept all eight seasons together, because four would be too few, and show the four since 2022 on their own. The Los Angeles Dodgers appear three times.
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The Read
History leans slightly towards Milwaukee, with the best record in baseball since and five days of rest. Five of the last eight best-record teams won their first series. Our estimate is a little lower, because since the bye began such teams have won two and lost two. The 2022 Dodgers at 111-51 and the 2023 Braves at 104-58 both lost in four games.
A Division Series is short. It is five games, and four of the last eight went to a fifth game, so one night of pitching can decide it. The reading fails if Milwaukee meet a team whose pitchers are lined up after a short first round. It also fails if the Dodgers and the Rays overtake them in the last nine games and the bye goes elsewhere. The World Series market depends on the same first series, since losing it settles both.
Disclaimer
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