Related Reading: American League Rooting Guide

Today: The National League

Los Angeles Dodgers

Regular Season Results: From August 26th, against the Brewers, to September 11, the Dodgers lost 16 of 17 games. They still managed to finish 104-58 overall, the best record in baseball. At no point this season were the Dodgers considered anything less than 60 percent favorites to win the division.

Remember, that’s the division that both of the wild-card teams came from. In case you couldn’t tell, these guys are good.

Brewers Connection: There’s no cross-pollination to speak of between the two rosters, but I dug deep. The playoff-bound 2008 Brewers rostered a reserve outfielder who was coming out of retirement named Gabe Kapler. Today, Kapler is the Farm System Director for the Dodgers. Also, the seemingly-immortal Ryan Braun for Yasiel Puig trade rumors sorta count as a connection, I suppose. That being said, if you’re basing your playoff loyalty on former Brewers, the Dodgers basically score a .1/10.

Why You Should Root For Them: In a lot of ways, the Dodgers are the model 21st century franchise. They amass stupid amounts of depth, treat their players very cautiously with regards to injuries, and stubbornly refuse to err on the side of overtaxing their pitchers. Clayton Kershaw is the kind of player you’ll tell your grandkids about seeing. Yasiel Puig is controversial and fun in all the ways that Brewers fans are fond of. Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger are both young and exciting. Austin Barnes is a C/2B, which feels like a positional combination picked by a video game AI at random and I immediately love it.

Why You Shouldn’t Root For Them: I’ll refer you to the graph of every team’s projected World Series odds:

The 2017 Dodgers are a testament to the immutable fact that, given a financial advantage and competent people calling the shots, victory is all but certain. Save for a three-week stretch late, this was a team that won because they were supposed to win. Cleveland might be a trendier bandwagon pick at the moment, but if so that’s only because picking the Dodgers was so mindlessly easy for most of the season. They’re not the trendiest bandwagon pick, but they’re undoubtedly the easiest.

Plus, Wisconsin sports fans generally tend to absolutely loathe the West Coast, and California in specific. That alone is going to be a dealbreaker for a good number of people. If it makes you guys feel any better, my wife and I have been out here five years now and the cheese still sucks.

Washington Nationals

Regular Season Results: 97-65, winning the NL East with a 20-game cushion. If the Braves’ current iteration of a rebuild turns out to be a dud, these guys could own the division for a decade-plus. Jose Fernandez and the Marlins were basically the best shot to do it in the next year or two, but Fernandez has been gone for over a year and Miami is shopping Giancarlo Stanton (Note: Brewers front office staff who might be absentmindedly skimming this article in your downtime, this is the moment you should perk up and pay attention.).

Brewers Connection: Adam Lind, baby.

Lind’s 2016 with Seattle was a nightmare, and the Nationals were able to scoop him up on the super-cheap this year: $1 million with a mutual $5m option in 2018. With playing-time incentives that $1 million ended up turning into $1.8 mil. Whoop de do. For this meager compensation, all Lind did was slash .303/.362/.513 in part-time action, filling in both at first base and in the outfield as the Nationals were ravaged by injuries.

Why You Should Root For Them: Bryce Harper, Anthony Rendon, and Daniel Murphy are all .300/25 guys with .900+ OPS numbers across the board. Max Scherzer is the most fun pitcher to watch this generation, and it’s a joyful bonus that his unique mound presence is paired with one of the filthiest arsenals a starter has ever deployed. Their bullpen was literally improvised and constructed through trades in July when the first half was a neverending parade of late-blown games. But most importantly, they’re playing the Cubs in the first round.

Oh, and you know you’ve got your old #AdamLindAppreciationSociety membership card buried in a drawer around here somewhere. That thing never expires, hombre.

Why You Shouldn’t Root For Them: Remember what I said back in the beginning of this section, about the rudderless mess that is the rest of the NL East? If the Braves are following the Marlins path, only five years later in time, the Nationals should be able to win this division every single year for the next decade. There’s a really good chance that you’re going to be completely sick of seeing these guys every October in another three years.

Beyond that, Bryce Harper throws a helmet like 50 Cent throws out a first pitch:

Yeah, that’s right. Throw at Harper if you dare this postseason. Your second baseman will suffer the consequences.

Chicago Cubs

If you’re planning to root for the Cubs this October you can just go right ahead and drop off all of your Brewers apparel in a garbage bag in front of the turnstiles at Miller Park. The Cubs are the worst, the Cubs’ fans are the worst, and the moment the Cubs are eliminated from the playoffs will easily be one of the top-5 highlights of 2017 for me. Remember, this is a guide to the playoffs for Brewers fans. If you consider yourself a Brewers fan, and you want to adopt the Cubs as your bandwagon team, you can’t come back.

In fact, to enjoy the postseason while staying faithful to the Milwaukee Nine, you might want to go the opposite route instead by forgoing one steady bandwagon fling and shamelessly flirting with whoever is playing the Cubs at that given moment, then following the team that beats them the rest of the way out of loyalty.

Arizona Diamondbacks

Regular Season Results: The Diamondbacks won 93 games, second-most in franchise history, but never stood a chance of winning their division thanks to the wire-to-wire stompfest the Dodgers unleashed upon the NL West. Still, you could make a very strong case that the Diamondbacks’ 93 wins in the West was far more impressive than the Nationals’ 97 wins in the moribund East. The advanced metrics support this: Arizona ranked second in the NL to the Dodgers in team WARP, and first in the league in team DRA.

Arizona won the Wild-Card Play-In Game on Wednesday. They opened up a 6-0 lead on the Rockies, saw the lead evaoprate to 8-7, and then finally won 11-8. The Diamondbacks were very nearly a case study in “how to get hosed by a stacked division.” Instead, they’ll get a best-of-five chance to upset the Dodgers and make that regular-season dominance a mere historical footnote.

Brewers Connection: Yesterday, we caught up with our old friend C.C. Sabathia. But he’s not the only former Milwaukee ace on a potential adopt-a-team. Zack Greinke came into Spring Training throwing slower than he ever has, but the veteran made it work with a 3.20 ERA, 9.6 K/9, and 5.8 wins above replacement, anchoring a vastly-improved rotation.

The Diamondbacks also employ Jorge De La Rosa, a 36-year-old who pitched for Milwaukee from 2004-06. It’s a deeper connection than you’d think originally. De La Rosa appeared in 61 games for the Brewers, starting just three of them. The Royals and Rockies, his employers from 06-16, used him almost primarily as a starter. This year, De La Rosa made 65 relief appearances for the Royals.

So, hey! Zack Greinke on the hill, with Jorge De La Rosa coming in out of the ‘pen when he starts to lose his shine! That sequence of events never once happened, never even came close to happening, but just roll with it. You can pretend that it’s a version of the Brewers that Kim Jong-Un “expertly” recreated for a North Korean propaganda film.

Why You Should Root For Them: There’s David Peralta, a onetime minor-league pitcher who evolved into Arizona’s leadoff hitter. There’s Paul Goldschmidt, a superstar for years, making his first postseason appearance. There’s J.D. Martinez, who was cut by the Astros when they were perennial 100-game losers before resurrecting his career in Detroit. And there’s one of the best pitching staffs in baseball, start to finish. Greinke, Robbie Ray, Zack Godley, and Taijuan Walker can go toe to toe with anybody else’s playoff rotation. After them Fernando Rodney, Archie Bradley, and Andrew Chafin lock down the back innings.

Clearly, the Dodgers are the superior team. But they’re not superior enough to where it’s difficult to see Arizona taking three games. And rooting for the second-place finisher over the powerhouse is what playoff bandwagoning is all about! How often can you do that and feel somewhat confident in yourself?

Why You Shouldn’t Root For Them: Because lovable as Zack Greinke might be, he’s overshadowed by the thick vines of St. Louis Cardinals connections dangling from this roster. Tony La Russa’s their Chief Baseball Analyst, Daniel Descalso plays second base when Brandon Drury isn’t there, notable Brewer-killer Jeremy Hazelbaker appeared in 41 games for them, and Shelby Miller is injured and on the roster.

On the one hand, yeah, they’re a fun underdog taking on the Dodgers, with better odds than you might think of pulling something magical out of their ass. On the other hand, for the same reasons you can’t root for the Cubs as a Brewer fan, you probably shouldn’t support the Western Annex of the Cardinals, either.

Photo Credit: Gary A. Vasquez, USAToday Sports Images

This year, in a promising sign for the Great Brewers Rebuild, that process almost didn’t have to occur. The Brewers were in the playoff hunt right up until Game 161: Team 11, the last remaining squad left on the outside looking in when it comes to the playoffs. This leaves Brewer fans like me, who are used to adopting a temporary rooting interest for the playoffs, in the old familiar “oh crap, I forgot to do my homework” situation.

Fortunately, I brought enough crib notes for the whole class. Let’s have a run over our options, and I hope we can make things a little bit clearer for you, and a little bit more enjoyable over the next few month. Because just thinking “someday the Brewers will be here” to yourself over and over is a really crappy way to spend a month.

Today: The American League

Cleveland

Regular Season Results: A 102-60 record and the AL Central championship. Cleveland is coming into the playoffs on an unbelievable 33-4 run dating back to August 24.

Brewers Connection: In September of 2008, as they were making their own push into the postseason, the Brewers sent a minor-league outfielder named Michael Brantley as the player-to-be-named-later in the C.C. Sabathia deal. Nine years and fifteen wins above replacement later, the Brewers really wish they had insisted on a different player being thrown in to complete that deal. Featured prospect Matt LaPorta was a bust, but it could be argued that Brantley more than makes up for that in the deal from Cleveland’s perspective.

Brantley is good when he’s healthy, but he’s not healthy often, and he’s been injured for most of August and September. He was activated from the disabled list on September 30th, but manager Terry Francona isn’t exactly confident that Brantley isn’t rushing back before he’s ready.

Here's Francona on Brantley being activated from the disabled list. pic.twitter.com/9qhlp89bxE

— Jordan Bastian (@MLBastian) September 30, 2017

There’s a more recent, but weaker, connection that bears mentioning as well: the vetoed Jonathan Lucroy Trade Number One of the 2016 deadline.

Why You Should Root For Them: There was some initial animosity between the fan bases after the ill-fated Lucroy deal, but that seems to have dissipated in light of the way things have gone since then. The Brewers got a bigger package for Lucroy, and Cleveland avoided making one of the worst deadline purchases in baseball history. Plus, they’re the team that gave us Sabathia, and I think a lot of Milwaukee fans will be forever grateful for that.

Going beyond the Brewer-specific, this is a fun team. They’re on a 33-4 run! Corey Kluber is one of the two serious contenders for the AL Cy Young. Their rotation is deep enough to banish Mike Clevinger and Danny Salazar to the bullpen, and those two guys would be in the rotation of at least 25 teams. And their lineup, while not standing out in any one facet of the game,  is an overall top-five unit in all of MLB by VORP.

Why You Shouldn’t Root For Them: Picking the team that’s been basically unbeatable for over a month doesn’t seem very sporting. PECOTA agrees, and gives Cleveland 24.4 percent odds of winning the World Series.

Throw in the fact that they lost the World Series in an extra-innings Game 7 last year and the bandwagon potential here is off the charts. If you’re picking them, you’d better be comfortable with steering into all of those fair-weather fan jokes.

Plus, Cleveland almost screwed up the Lucroy deal, then they couldn’t keep the Cubs’ drought going. If, as a Brewers fan, you feel skittish because these guys have let you down a lot lately, that’s perfectly valid.

Boston Red Sox

Regular Season Results: 93-69, good enough to squeak past the Yankees in the AL East by two games, despite a run differential per game of exactly a half run lower than their bitter rivals. Don’t you just love the modern twist that sabermetrics brings to feuds like this? Yankee fans now have a valid reason to trash-talk their rivals who just beat them by two games, but Red Sox Nation can still shut it down with the equivalent of the old “scoreboard” chant. Do any of them care that they don’t “deserve” the division championship? Absolutely not. Even the most rational and logical Sox fans care only that they have it, and the Yankees don’t.

Brewers Connection: They gave us Travis Shaw last offseason for a pitcher who hasn’t appeared in a game yet due to injury. Thanks, guys! You shouldn’t have! No, seriously, you really shouldn’t have. They made that trade because they wanted Pablo Sandoval to play third base, not Shaw. Sandoval gave them 108 plate appearances of uselessness before they released him. It’s all good now, as rookie Rafael Devers has slashed .284/.338/.482 since his call-up in July, but for a good part of the season the Sox really looked like they had shot themselves in the foot.

Tyler Thornburg, the former Brewer that Boston now has as a result of that deal, underwent surgery on his shoulder in June. He’s not going to pitch this post-season.

Why You Should Root For Them: Because Mookie Betts is one of the most excellent, complete players in all of baseball. He’s a first-round fantasy talent who contributes in all categories, and he’s a joy to watch in the outfield.

Additionally, if Corey Kluber does not win the AL Cy Young, that will be because Chris Sale stepped his game up to Kershawesque heights in 2017. He struck out just shy of 13 batters per nine innings, walked barely more than a tenth of that, and only Kluber and Max Scherzer had a better DRA this year.

But probably the best reason for a Wisconsinite to root for the Red Sox to win it all this year is that third baseman Rafael Devers turns 21 on October 24th. If they win the Series, he’ll be bathing in champagne while 21 in less than a month.

Why You Shouldn’t Root For Them: Because they’re the Target to the Yankees’ Wal-Mart and you’ve got choices beyond those two identical-but-for-their-colors giants. This summer’s slapfight over sign stealing is the perfect example of that dichotomy. Both teams accused the other of using Apple Watches in order to steal signs and, personal opinion, both teams were probably guilty as hell (if you think otherwise you know little of human nature and/or baseball history). Despite that, both sides were stunned that the other guys could pull such treachery, while acting as if they were the victims and hadn’t been counter-surveiling in the exact same way. There are other teams out there you can adopt who aren’t staffed and supported by such self-important hypocrites.

Houston Astros

Regular Season Results: They were the sure-thing team to hold home field in the American League until Cleveland caught fire and edged them out by one game. Still, 101-61 was good enough to have the division basically locked up by the All-Star Break. Houston’s team OPS was best in the league by a 35 point margin, and only the Yankees’ pitchers accumulated more PWARP in 2017. Houston’s staff ERA of 4.12 should be lower according to both DRA and FIP advanced metrics.

Brewers Connection: Remember Mike Fiers? He was in the Astros’ rotation until about a month or so ago. He probably won’t see postseason action, though. He was bumped from the rotation in the first week of September, and his season ERA of 5.22, with a 5.32 DRA suggesting he wasn’t unlucky at all, might mean his time in Houston is over. Former Brewer Nori Aoki got 224 mostly mediocre at-bats for this team before they released him, but he did pitch an inning!

On the flipside of the equation Domingo Santana, Brett Phillips, and Jonathan Villar are all former Astros. As is general manager David Stearns, who clearly knew to start his own rebuild with the scraps of the previous one he worked on.

And, of course, it must be mentioned that these two teams were once division rivals. They never had any overlapping periods of competitiveness in the NL Central, but it still counts for something. More recently, the Astros had their internal data hacked by the sanctimonious turd-sniffing Cardinals, and that’s gotta be good for a handful of sympathy points.

Why You Should Root For Them: The Brewers’ general manager learned his craft in this front office. What does it say about Milwaukee’s future if they cap off a championship? The Astros’ sabermetrically gifted baseball operations department has turned a slew of top prospects into a great team. Carlos Correa was a consensus top-two guy, as was his neighbor on the left side of the infield, Alex Bregman. George Springer was a top-20 prospect. Yuli Gurriel was a high-profile international signing. And then there’s Jose Altuve, the tiniest superstar in all of sports. Altuve slashed .346/.410/.547, and finished just one home run shy of joining the 25-25 club despite being shorter than my wife. Altuve was never a “real” prospect, but you could make a great case for him being the 2017 AL MVP.

Houston is also the big sentimental favorite this year in the aftermath of hurricane season. Local pride is great, and in times of crisis teams can inspire national pride as well. But the Astros represent Team Humanity going up against Team Nautral Disaster! How do you galvanize a divided people better than that?!

Why You Shouldn’t Root For Them: Because you think it’d just be that sweet for David Stearns to win a World Series before his old team. Or because your fantasy team wasted a high draft pick on Carlos Gomez in 2016. Or maybe you just don’t like short people, so Altuve’s at-bats piss you off.

New York Yankees

Regular-Season Results: As I already touched upon, the Yankees outperformed the Red Sox sabermetrically, but finished two games back in the division. Still, 91-71 was good enough to secure the first wild-card game berth, and the Yankees overcame a first-inning implosion by starter Luis Severino to beat the Twins in that game Tuesday night.

Brewers Connection: The Yankees acquired Class-AAA first baseman Garrett Cooper from the Brewers this July, though he’s unlikely to feature on the playoff roster. More significantly, onetime Milwaukee postseason hero C.C. Sabathia will feature in the Yankees’ postseason rotation. Sabathia looked done after 2014 and 2015, but he has reinvented himself as a viable back-end starter the past two years, significantly outpitching his advanced metrics both seasons.

Why You Should Root For Them: Because even though the Brewers couldn’t keep C.C. Sabathia, and were right to not pay him the $25 million a year he wanted in 2009, he’s still family. And the Yankees have paid him well after he destroyed his arm getting us to the postseason. So in a roundabout, vicarious way, the Yankees are family too. Ugh, that sentence hurt to type.

Going beyond that, if you can shut out that they’re the Evil Empire, this is a young, exciting team. Aaron Judge is an MVP candidate and might not actually be human, Gary Sanchez is a stud catcher who gets shafted of the proper recognition for his skills because of the presence of Judge, Brett Gardner’s been about five different players over the course of his career but they’ve all been fun to watch, and the Didi Gregorious Breakout has been one of the most criminally underrated subplots of the 2017 season. And that’s before you even get to the bullpen, which is the strength of this team, the reason they survived the wild-card game, and the reason they’re built to excel in the postseason.

Why You Shouldn’t Root For Them: Because unless you were actually born and raised in New York you should never, ever root for the Yankees.

Photo Credit: Bob DeChiara, USAToday Sports Images