NL Central May Review

The NL Central Race is one of the most exciting races this year because every year it ends up being such a close divisional race. This year there are three teams are in the divisional race which are the Cardinals, Cubs, and the Brewers.

Front Runners

The Chicago Cubs and the Milwaukee Brewers are most likely the ones that will be making the playoffs this year as both teams look really good. The Brewers are led by former NL MVP Christian Yelich, Brandon Woodruff, Josh Hader, Kolten Wong, and Travis Shaw. The Brewers are second in the NL Central with a record of 38-22, one game behind NL Central leading Chicago Cubs. Many fans are surprised that the Cubs are doing really well after losing Yu Darvish when they traded him to the San Diego Padres.

The Cubs have a record of 39-32 are lead by the pitchers Kyle Hendricks, Jake Arrieta, Zach Davies, Alec Mills, but not only is their pitching doing well the batting is doing really well too. They are led by Wilson Contreas, Javy Baez, Anthony Rizzo, Patrick Wisdom, Kris Bryant, Patrick Wisdom, and Joc Pederson all hitting really well and helping maintain the Cubs’ positive record and with the way they are playing I think they will be able to make a wild card spot. That is if their hitting and pitching keep it up because recently the Cubs haven’t made the playoff in the last two years and one of those years that had the last season collapse and were knocked out of contention.

Strugglers

The St.Louis Cardinals are a team that should be definitely doing better with the quality of players they have, and they currently are standing fourth in the NL Central with a record of 35-35. Some of the players that should be performing better are Yadier Molina, Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado. They have all not been the best, and it is not only their batting that hasn’t been their best. They have pitchers like Jack Flaherty, Carlos Martinez, and Adam Wainwright all have been struggling and need to perform better in order to make their playoff spot. It seems like they should make another addition on the trade deadline. In my opinion, I don’t think that the Cardinals will make the playoff spot this year, but in the next coming years, there will be a dominant team in the NL Central, and I think it will be the Cardinals.

After losing Trevor Bauer in the offseason to the Los Angeles Dodgers it looked like there was going to be a rebuilding year for the Reds. The Reds are third in the NL Central with a record of 35-34, which is pretty good for a team that made the playoffs last year. But the pitching is really struggling this year with guys like Luis Castillo not performing up to expectations, Wade Miley is underperforming, and Sean Doolittle all just not doing enough to make the playoffs this year. Not only is the pitching doing well the hitting is underperforming too with guys like Eugenio Suarez, Nick Senzel, Nick Castellanos, and Jesse Winker not doing enough to propel the Reds towards a playoff spot. I firmly believe that the Reds will miss out on the playoffs based off that the key players wont be able to win games when they are needed the most

Rebuilders

The team we all knew that was going to struggle after trading several of their best players this offseason are the Pittsburgh Pirates based on that they are in dead last place in their division with a record of 25-44. The pitching is really struggling and the hitting isn’t even doing much with players like Colin Moran, Ke’Brayan Hayes, Adam Frazier, Kevin Newman aren’t doing enough and they look like a team that doesn’t want to win or can’t even win. They clearly need to focus on scouting for future prospects or go big in free agency.

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