The Pittsburgh Pirates have been playing some pretty good baseball lately, but the Milwaukee Brewers are on another level.
The Brewers have surged to the best record in baseball this year, going 74-44 and opening up a 6.5-game lead over the Chicago Cubs in the National League Central. They’re 24 games in front of the last-place Pirates.
Milwaukee’s been on a ridiculous run this summer. Since starting 25-28, the Brewers have gone 49-16 with a plus-144 run differential over their last 65 games — a .754 winning percentage. That’s easily the best record and run differential in baseball during that time.
Their run has also included two separate winning streaks of at least 10 games. They won 11 straight from July 6 to July 21 sandwiched around the All-Star Break, then extended their current winning streak to 10 games with their 7-1 win over Pittsburgh at American Family Field on Monday. Since the start of their first winning streak, they’ve gone 25-4 (.862 winning percentage), including 10-0 to start August.
With Monday’s win, Milwaukee became just the 10th team in the Divisional Era (since 1969) with multiple winning streaks of at least 10 games in the same season, including the first team in the 2020s to accomplish the feat. The Brewers are also the first team since the 1978 Pirates to have multiple 10-game winning streaks in July or later.
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There wasn’t much drama involved in Monday’s win, which the home team dominated from start to finish. They grabbed an early 1-0 lead on Brice Turang’s leadoff homer off Andrew Heaney in the bottom of the first, then broke the game open with a four-run third. They cruised from there behind Jose Quintana’s six innings of one-run ball, tacking on a pair of insurance runs to put the game away.
Pittsburgh will try to snap Milwaukee’s winning streak on Tuesday behind Paul Skenes (7-8, 1.94 ERA), who’s on a historic run of his own. He’ll try to outduel Brewers ace, Freddy Peralta, who leads MLB in wins (13) this season and is 3-2 with a 3.58 ERA against the Pirates in his career.
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Featured image via Benny Sieu-Imagn Images