Brewers should just avoid the Pirates

If Bud Selig really wanted the Brewers to make the playoffs, he'd pass massive division realignment in the National League... pronto.

Hopefully then the Brewers can't have their momentum derailed by the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Pirates haven't had a winning season since 1992. Yet they have managed to suck the life out of the Brewers at least four times in the last five seasons.

At the end of June in 2001, the Brewers, coming of a three-game sweep of the Chicago Cubs, had a 38-34 record. The Pirates were 20 games below .500. The result? Pittsburgh swept the Brewers in a four-game set. Milwaukee went 29-57 the rest of the season.

In 2003, the Brewers were seven games above .500 and 1/2 game out of the wild card before another four-game series with the Pirates. Again, they lost all four games and had one of the worst second halves in MLB history.

Last year, with the Brewers' first winning season since 1992 in reach, they only needed to win one of the final two games of the season at Pittsburgh. They lost them both.

And, more recently, another sweep of Milwaukee by the Pirates leaves Brewer backers scratching their heads. If Milwaukee is ever going to be a serious playoff contender, these are the games it needs to win. The difference between a .500 team and one that challenges for the wild card is, at the most, 10 victories. Spread that out over the course of a season, and that's two wins a month.

If that's the case, the Brewers can't afford to be swept by the Pirates. They just can't. In the last two years, when the Brewers have been somewhat respectable, they are 18-24 against Pittsburgh. Unless that number is turned around soon, it's going to be difficult for Milwaukee to turn around its losing ways.