Baseball fans throughout Wisconsin are all geeked up over the prospect of their favorite team reaching the playoffs for the first time in over a quarter-century, and understandably so.  Though the fans are focused on that singular goal, the focus of the 25-man roster is on a higher rung on the success ladder:  The World Series.  Do not take this discussion to mean I think the Brewers are a lock for the post-season at this point...they aren't.  Should they get there however, what Milwaukee would face might be similar to what we are seeing on this road trip through San Diego and Los Angeles.  In the playoffs, runs are often at a premium because the pitching is better.  In a short playoff series, a manager doesn't have to worry about having an exhausted bullpen or how his fifth starter will perform.  You use your best arms repeatedly until the series is over and then get ready to do the same thing in the next round.  Generally speaking, games are tighter, lower-scoring, and more pressurized.

  There isn't any real high-end pressure on this road trip per se, but playing at Petco Park and Dodger Stadium against pitching-oriented clubs could be similar to having a playoff match-up with Philly, New York, or Arizona, and there is a good chance that there could be a reprisal of this Dodger series in October.  Philadelphia has a park and a club not dissimilar to that of Milwaukee and a match-up between those two teams could be more of a shoot out, but Brewers-Mets, Brewers-Dodgers, and Brewers-Diamondbacks would most likely feature great pitching and low-scoring games.  LA is number one in the NL in ERA, Milwaukee is #3, Arizona is #4, and New York is #6.  Philly is #5 by the way, so even that series could have less offense than you would expect.

  So what are we seeing in the big pitchers' parks this week with the Brewers?  Milwaukee did rack up twelve earned runs in the first two games in Petco Park, but those came against pitchers Cha Seung Baek and Josh Banks.  There won't be many Baeks or Banks in October to worry about.  Game three saw the Brewers against Jake Peavy, and the results were not good.  It wasn't until the seventh inning that the Brewers could score at all, and that was an unearned run.  Ultimately Milwaukee dropped that game 3-1 despite Ben Sheets pitching for the Brewers against a horrible San Diego lineup.  Last night, it was tough right-handed Chad Billingsley who limited the offense to just seven hits and three runs in a 5-3 loss.  The Brewers hits two or three balls that would have been home runs back home which died on or near the warning track in Chavez Ravine.  Relying on home runs in a pitcher's park can be problematic.

  Milwaukee has shown better patience at the plate lately but coaxed only two walks last night after getting four against Peavy&Co.  Also, in the last two games, the team has not successfully stolen any bases or laid down any sacrifice bunts.  If hits, especially home runs, are hard to come by against a top pitcher or in a tough ballpark, you need to be able to generate offense in other ways.  If they can't do a better job of executing small ball tasks like walks and bunts in October, they'll find themselves in trouble.  It is a small sample to study two August games closely, but a two-game losing streak in October often proves to be fatal.  We'll see if the club rebounds from back-to-back losses on this trip to finish well tonight and tomorrow.  It will be more than just the end results which I will be monitoring.  The way the team plays the game this weekend will give us more hints about what kind of a playoff team they might be ultimately.

  Meanwhile, there is much work to be done to make this discussion more than just academic.  The Cubs look awfully hard to catch, and the Cardinals are nipping at the heels of the Wild Card-holders.  Fortunately for the Brewers, there won't be many pitchers' parks in the Brewers regular-season future after they jump on the Midwest Airlines charter tomorrow afternoon.  No matter what happens in the last two games in SoCal, I like Milwaukee's chances of qualifying for the playoffs.  But that is only step one of what everyone is hoping is a much longer journey; a journey which will not lead all the way to the promised land if the Brewers can't find ways to win in places like this against teams like the Dodgers.