The Brewers win again. Meanwhile, the second-place Cardinals beat the Florida Marlins, 2-1. Milwaukee’s record moves to 64-50; St. Louis is now 61-53.
With 61 wins so far and 48 games to go, St. Louis has a maximum possible win total of 109. If the Cardinals win out the rest of the season, that means the Brewers would need 110 wins to guarantee winning the division. With their 64 wins, that would take 46 more wins to assure Milwaukee a playoff spot. That’s their magic number.
Of course, even the best team isn’t going to win 48 games in a row. Every Cardinal loss means one less victory the Brewers need to clinch.
That means any combination of Brewer victories and and Cardinal losses adding up to 46 will guarantee Milwaukee an NL Central division championship.
This also means that this blog’s previous magic number calculations were too high by 10; mea culpa.
Inertia Wins! 