TODAY’S SPORTSTAT — Brewers are on track for playoff berth
By JERRY TAPP
How many wins would the Brewers need in the 2018 season to secure a Wild Card spot in this year’s playoffs (that’s assuming they don’t overtake the Cubs for the National League Central title)?
Since the 2012 season, Major League Baseball has had in place a playoff format whereby two teams from each league get a Wild Card berth in post-season in addition to the three division winners. That means there have been 24 teams that have been Wild Card participants since that ’12 season.
In the American League, the 12 Wild Card teams since 2012 have won an average of 89.5 games; in the National League, the 12 Wild Card teams since 2012 have won an average of 90.9 games.
Of the 24 Wild Card teams (12 in each league since 2012), 11 won 90 or more games to reach the post-season; 18 of the 24 won 88 or more games.
The most wins by a Wild Card team since 2012 was 98 by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2015. The fewest wins by a Wild Card team since 2012 was 85 by the Minnesota Twins last season.
The Brewers are currently 83-63. They are two games behind the Cubs in the N.L. Central race, but they hold the number one Wild Card spot in the league, 2 games ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals. If we use 90 wins as a benchmark for making the playoffs, the Brewers would need to go at least 7-9 in their final 16 games.
Since 2012, only two teams with 90 or more wins failed to reach the post-season: In 2012, Tampa Bay won 90 games but did not make the playoffs. The next season the Texas Rangers won 91 but did not reach the post-season.
Follow Jerry on Twitter @StatsonTapp
Jerry Tapp
Jerry Tapp is a freelance writer from Racine, WI with a major concentration on sports statistics and numbers that define sports teams and players. He began his foray into sports stats-focused writing as a regular contributor to the “Numbers” column in Inside Sports magazine in the mid-1980’s and then began writing a weekly “Stats on Tapp” column for the Racine Journal Times. That column was eventually nationally syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate. He later wrote sports stats items for the Washington Post under the “Stat of the Day” heading. After launching his blog, www.statsontapp.com in 2011, Jerry turned his sports stats attention to sports websites. He wrote regularly for Bleacher Report, BallHyped, football.com and Heavy.com. Today he keeps busy writing weekly columns of stats-centric articles for three sports websites, Today’s Pigskin (NFL), Today’s Knuckleball (MLB) and Today’s Fastbreak (NBA), and as a monthly contributor to the Milwaukee Brewers “GameDay” publication that is distributed to fans attending games at Miller Park.