I can't stress how odd the NL Central is. The best lineup in the league is the last place team. The defending World Champions are barely over .500. The fourth place team just beat said world champs by double digits today. The Cardinals are, by all intents and purposes, a bad team...yet they're still at third place.
I can't explain the Cardinals. Adam Wainwright has a 5.00 ERA, but has a 10-5 record. Matt Carpenter is hitting .236 and is still one of the best hitters on the team. Dexter Fowler and Carpenter have hit a bunch of home runs, yet keep striking out. Jedd Gyorko, Tommy Pham and Paul DeJong are the best hitters on the team, and nobody's heard of them outside St. Louis (though that statements a bit of a stretch for Gyorko to be fair, as he's great). This is just an odd team that has enough to be relevant, but not enough to be doing too well in the standings.
The Brewers are in first, but they're not a completely great team. The Cubs could catch up to them, but they're not doing as well because they don't have nearly as many surging players as they had in 2016. Things are sort of staying as they are for a while...which is odd, like the whole thing.
Coming Tonight: One of the most powerful active hitters in the game, winding down his career in on one of the best teams in baseball.
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