With Cubs, Reds ahead for Brewers, NL Central writer breaks down both

The Milwaukee Brewers head into an interesting quirk of the schedule beginning Monday, Aug. 31, when they visit Wrigley Field for the first of four games with the Chicago Cubs, then follow that with series against the Cincinnati Reds on the road, the Cubs again at home and the Reds again at home.

The two-week round-robin comes with the Brewers holding a healthy eight-game lead over the Cubs in the National League Central and can basically slam the door shut with a good showing against Chicago.

Gordon Wittenmyer of the Cincinnati Enquirer covers the Reds, but before that, he covered the Cubs and still appears weekly on the Cubs ReKap podcast, so he knows a great deal about both teams.

He discussed the Cubs and the Reds on this week’s episode of the Microbrew podcast. Here’s some of the conversation:

GW: I do think they did a good job at the trade deadline. The rotation now looks strong and deep, but they have a lot to figure out in that bullpen.

It looked like crap against a Reds team that’s near the bottom in almost every offensive category in baseball this year. Gave up 10 runs to them [Aug. 28]. That doesn’t bode well. They come off a tough series in Arizona [followed by a series loss to Cincinnati].

Right now, not a lot of good vibes here. We know they’re going to be in a good position going into the playoffs, but they had hopes just a week, certainly two and three weeks ago, of chasing down the Brewers, and that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

GW: One guy that’s missing right now for the Cubs that we expect would be there by then is Dansby Swanson, the Gold Glove shortstop. Right now, you’ve got a Gold Glove second baseman [Nico Hoerner] playing shortstop for you, and it’s still one of the better defenses in baseball [and they can] pitch in the starting rotation better than you did at various points in the first half.

You’ve always had this defensive team, which is only going to get better in October when Swanson comes back, and you’ve got one of the best lineups in baseball. It comes back to that bullpen and what you can do there.

Obviously, in a matchup with the Brewers, [Jacob] Misiorwoski is the key to everything for the Brewers. You’ve got to win that game. You start going up against teams that have [Cristopher] Sánchez and [Zack] Wheeler in the rotation [in Philadelphia] or even this team with Clay Holmes and Matt Boyd, when you get to Game 2, if somebody has stolen the Misiorowski game, you’re going to lose the series.

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GW: When the team was not pitching well and not playing well and not winning, there weren’t a lot of good feelings at all about him. You know how that goes. If they’re winning, they love him.

At the time [when he joined the Cubs], highest-paid manager in baseball … but overpaid by that definition. I don’t think that he’s an elite manager that has tended to get a lot more out of his teams than the talent. I’ve covered some guys that have. I think some of the teams Lou Piniella [managed] got more out of them than their talent, same way with Joe Madden and Terry Francona, the manager I cover now in Cincinnati.

I don’t put Craig Counsell in the category. I think the proof positive of that is he took over essentially the same team that won 83 games the year before he got there and won 83 games with the same team.

But I don’t think anybody here thinks he’s a bad manager. With the talent that he’s got, he doesn’t have any excuse this year. If he goes against the Dodgers and they beat him straight-up, nothing you can do about that.

But they get the bullpen figured out, and that’s part of his job, they should be able to have a shot in any series in the postseason against the Brewers, certainly against the Padres, maybe against the Phillies. Then it’s just about the Dodgers.

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GW: We’ve seen this for half a season at a time. This is the year he’s putting it together for the full season. Given his young age, he’s got ceiling left. That’s the scary part when you look at this.

He might be the best defensive player at any position in baseball right now. And he’s a 30/30, maybe a 40/40 type of offensive player. He’s got wheels like few other guys in the game.

What he can do in the next 3-4 years as he gets into his traditional prime years is really going to be interesting to watch and, if you’re from around here, fun to watch.

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GW: He might have been pressing a little bit with the new contract, and that happens to a lot of guys, especially guys who are really competitive and care a lot about living up to things like that and doing well for their teams. He has started to come around, especially lately.

Given this guy’s track record and … experience in big games, I would suggest you’re going to see going forward down the stretch here and into the postseason, he’s going to be a high performer.

There were rumors or speculation that they should maybe trade him [in prior years] because he was a guy that had value and club control. I always thought, ‘You can’t trade this guy.’ He’s way better than a lot of people think, even offensively. Maybe he didn’t hit a whole lot of home runs.

Luis Arraez – the ultimate contact hitter – one of the reasons people keep picking him up for playoff runs is because that’s a skill set that’s rare in the game these days and helps you win low-scoring postseason games. Nico Hoerner is a guy like that. He could be a guy that swings a series for them because of that skill set, and the fact that he’s coming around now.

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GW: The one thing they had a right to bank on coming in [to 2026] was the starting rotation. It was one of the best two by most metrics last year. They brought essentially all those guys back. They not only brought them all back, they added to them because they had some key guys coming off injuries.

Hunter Greene didn’t pitch much at all this year. Nick Lodolo, arguably their second-best starter in terms of veterans on that team, missed 10 weeks this year with a blister issue. So that’s two guys right there that you got nothing or next to nothing out of for half or more of the season.

You did get Chase Burns back-filling, but Brady Singer pitched through some injuries early in the season and wasn’t really effective. Andrew Abbott took a while to get his feet under him. The rotation was nothing more than about average for the first half of the season.

Bullpen was pulling rabbits out of its hat in April when they got off to a good start. Walking guys, pitching around traffic. And then the roof caved in on them in May. Injuries impacted them in a bigger way than we thought they would.

They never got the pitching that they expected. The depth behind to backfill for injuries was never there. There were some guys who broke in last year who did well that they expected could do that again this year if needed and didn’t – Zach Maxwell, Connor Phillips, guys like that. The lineup, which was below-average last year, and they added Geno Suárez to it, which was supposed to make it average or a little better than average, got worse.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: With Cubs, Reds ahead for Brewers, NL Central writer breaks down both