CHICAGO (AP) Christian Yelich got three more hits in falling just short of the Triple Crown as the Milwaukee Brewers won their first NL Central title since 2011, beating the Chicago Cubs 3-1 on Monday in a tiebreaker game.
Lorenzo Cain hit a go-ahead single in the eighth inning to help Milwaukee win its eighth in a row and earn home-field advantage throughout the NL playoffs. The Brewers will host the wild-card winner starting Thursday in the best-of-five Division Series.
Chicago stays at Wrigley Field for Tuesday night’s wild-card game. The Cubs will play the loser of Monday’s second tiebreaker between Colorado and the Los Angeles Dodgers for the NL West title.
Yelich singled home Milwaukee’s first run and won the NL batting title with a .326 average. He had 110 RBIs, one behind the Cubs’ Javier Baez, and finished with 36 home runs – Colorado’s Nolan Arenado had 37 going into the Rockies’ game at Dodger Stadium. The tiebreakers were game 163 of the regular season and counted in the totals.
Joe Medwick in 1937 was the last NL player to win the Triple Crown. Miguel Cabrera did it for Detroit in 2012.
Milwaukee trailed Chicago by as many as five games in September, but manager Craig Counsell’s club pushed the season to an extra day with a furious finish and then used its deep lineup and bullpen to outlast the playoff-tested Cubs.
Orlando Arcia, batting in the eighth slot, had a career-high four hits, and Josh Hader closed out another dominant relief performance for the Brew Crew.
Jose Quintana pitched six-hit ball into the sixth inning and Anthony Rizzo homered, but Chicago’s bullpen faltered at a key moment. Daniel Murphy and Javier Baez had the only other hits for the Cubs.
The game was tied at 1 before Milwaukee opened the eighth with three straight hits. Arcia singled on a 0-2 pitch from Justin Wilson (4-5), Domingo Santana had a pinch-hit double and Cain greeted Steve Cishek with a single back up the middle.
After Yelich struck out swinging – a rare occurrence during an extraordinary stretch for the NL MVP favorite – Ryan Braun got the Brewers an insurance run with a run-scoring single to center.
It was more than enough for Milwaukee’s vaunted bullpen. Corey Knebel (4-3) extended his scoreless streak to 16 1/3 innings with a perfect seventh, and Hader worked two innings for his 12th save.
Rizzo had one last chance for Chicago, but he flied to right with Baez on second for the final out. When it was over, Hader wrapped his arms around catcher Erik Kratz for a big hug as the rest of the Brewers poured out of the dugout.
A sizable portion of Milwaukee fans in the crowd of 38,450 chanted ”Let’s go Brewers! Let’s go Brewers!” – a rarity at Wrigley Field over the past few years.
Yelich also heard repeated ”MVP!” chants while he singled in each of his first three at-bats. He drove in Arcia with his two-out hit in the third, giving him 110 RBIs on the season.
Jhoulys Chacin sailed into the fifth inning with the lead, retiring 11 of his first 12 batters. But Rizzo led off with a massive drive to right for his 25th homer, tying it 1.
The crowd roared as Rizzo rounded the bases and then popped out of the dugout for a curtain call.
Chicago had a chance to grab the lead in the sixth, but Joakim Soria escaped the threat by striking out Baez with runners on first and second.
Chacin allowed one hit in 5 2/3 innings, setting up Milwaukee’s bullpen quite nicely. The right-hander struck out three and walked two in another solid effort in a career year.
Quintana kept the Cubs in the game with another stingy performance against Milwaukee, allowing one run in five-plus innings. The left-hander is 4-1 with a 2.13 ERA in seven starts against the Brewers this year.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Cubs: C Willson Contreras was visited by manager Joe Maddon and a trainer after Wilson’s eighth-inning pitch bounced and hit him in the groin area. But he stayed in the game.
UP NEXT
The Brewers get a couple days off before the division series. The Cubs have a short turnaround before likely sending ace left-hander Jon Lester to the mound for the wild-card matchup.
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Jay Cohen can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jcohenap
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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/tag/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP-Sports
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