Note: All stats/records as of the morning of June 24
Though it sort of feels like their first game was not that long ago, the Milwaukee Brewers have played 78 games and are nearing the mathematical halfway point in the season. I thought it would be a good time to reassess the division, to see how things are going elsewhere, and to check on the Brewers’ outlook the rest of the way.
The National League Central got off to quite a start in 2026; as recently as June 4, all five teams were over .500. Compare that to the entire American League, which has just five teams above .500 total. But as the season has gone on, the back of the NL Central has slowed a bit, while the Brewers — who were not, I will remind you, generally regarded as preseason favorites — have opened up a cautiously comfortable lead at the top.
Let’s take a look at the other four teams to see how things are going and how we might expect the rest of the season to play out. We’ll go in reverse standings order.
Record: 37-41 (5th)Paul’s preseason record prediction: 85-77 (3rd)Best position player so far: Elly De La CruzBest pitcher so far: Chase Burns
The Reds got off to a hot start. On May 1, they were 20-12 and led the division. But the next day, they started a seven-game losing streak which dropped them all the way to last place in the division, and they’ve hovered around .500 ever since. They’re just 7-13 in June, which coincided with the loss of De La Cruz, who didn’t play between May 31 and June 23 because of a hamstring strain.
De La Cruz has ascended to star status after tantalizing but inconsistent play during his first three seasons. He has career highs in all three slash-line categories, and he’s seen an uptick in power that could get him to his first 30/30 season despite missing most of June. His defense, which was excellent in 2024 but took a step back in 2025, has also seemingly rebounded.
Rookie Sal Stewart carried the offense over the first month. Through April 25, he was hitting .303/.398/.626 with nine home runs, 29 RBIs, and seven stolen bases in just 27 games. But he has cooled considerably since then: in his last 51 games, Stewart is hitting just .216/.305/.351 with five homers.
One nice surprise has been outfielder JJ Bleday. A former No. 4 overall pick, Bleday had a nice season with the A’s in 2024 but took a major step back in 2025 and was non-tendered after the season. Bleday signed with Cincinnati, and he’s put together an excellent year: in 50 games, he’s slugging .530 with 13 homers, 11 doubles, and 35 RBIs. His 138 OPS+ leads the team.
On the pitching side, the headlines belong to the 23-year-old Burns. The flamethrowing right-hander was the No. 2 overall pick in 2024 and quickly climbed prospect lists. He has some of the nastiest stuff in the league, and through 15 starts and 85 innings this season, he’s pitched to a 2.00 ERA with 102 strikeouts. If not for his fellow second-year pitcher Jacob Misiorowski, Burns would perhaps be the biggest pitching story in the league this year; with Burns, Misiorowski, and Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes all under 25, this division boasts one of the best young pitching trios we’ve seen in the league for some time.
There are disappointments elsewhere on the roster. Closer Emilio Pagán got off to a rough start before going on the injured list with a hamstring problem, and the team has had trouble replacing him. He’s expected back soon, but his ERA (6.43) and FIP (5.82) were both unsightly before his IL stint. Eugenio Suárez was the team’s big free-agent acquisition, signed to a one-year, $15 million contract before the season after he hit 49 homers for the Diamondbacks and Mariners last year. This year has been awful: he’s hitting just .201/.260/.253 and has only seven home runs in 51 games. The rotation, considered a strength coming into the season, has just two players with an ERA below 4.80.
That rotation has also been missing one of the league’s most dynamic starters, Hunter Greene. Greene was an All-Star and finished eighth in Cy Young voting in 2024 before getting off to an even better start in 2025, but he missed the entire second half of last season with a groin injury before needing to undergo surgery to remove bone chips in his elbow during spring training this year. He may be nearing a return, which would be a major boost.
Threat level: Low. There’s some potential for this pitching staff; if Greene and Pagán look good upon their returns and Nick Lodolo (who pitched well against Milwaukee on Tuesday) improves, they could be a challenge to score on. But the problem lately has been offense, and unless Suárez goes on a major heater and Stewart finds his early season form, there’s not enough here.
Record: 39-40 (4th)Paul’s preseason record prediction: 78-84 (4th)Best position player so far: Bryan ReynoldsBest pitcher so far: Paul Skenes
A trendy pick to do well in the division at the beginning of the season, I never bought in with the Pirates; I didn’t think they did enough to improve upon what was one of the worst offenses in the league last year, and while I thought the pitching staff had some potential, I thought they were still a ways away.
The offense has improved quite a bit more than I expected it to. Some of that is from external forces: their new second baseman, Brandon Lowe, has been excellent, and he’s been holding it down defensively at second base, which was a question. Their other acquisitions have had mixed results; Ryan O’Hearn has been okay, but Marcell Ozuna has been a disaster — he has a 65 OPS+ and -0.8 WAR in 54 games.
The biggest reasons the offense has improved came from within. One is Oneil Cruz, who was flaming hot for a stretch during the season’s first month. He’s cooled a bit, though, and strikeouts will always be a problem: Cruz is ninth in the majors with 98 strikeouts, but he’s played 10 fewer games than any of the eight players in front of him.
The biggest factor for the Bucs this season has been an old Brewer nemesis: Bryan Reynolds. I’ll admit that after the then-30-year-old Reynolds had a thoroughly unspectacular season in 2025 I wrote him off. I was wrong. Reynolds is having his best season since he finished 11th in MVP voting in 2021: through 79 games, he’s hitting .287/.401/.482 with 18 doubles, 11 homers, and 51 RBIs, and he’s on pace for his best season by WAR in years.
On the other side of the ball, Skenes has been really good… but he hasn’t quite been the “this is one of the two best pitchers in the league” guy he’d been in his first two seasons. Skenes already has four games in 2026 in which he’s given up four runs or more; he only had five such games in his first two seasons combined. Skenes’ peripheral numbers are mostly in line with previous years: his strikeout rate (30.6%) is slightly higher than it was in his unanimous Cy Young campaign last season, and his walk rate (5.1%) is the lowest of his career. The big difference has been the long ball; it’s not a huge jump, but Skenes is giving up home runs at a rate that’s a couple ticks higher than in either of his previous fantastic seasons.
Some concerns still remain. It is a question as to whether Reynolds and Lowe, who’ve been carrying the offense of late, can keep their pace, and similar questions apply to surprising role players like Spencer Horwitz. Konnor Griffin is off to a solid start as a pro, but Pittsburgh will need more from his bat if they want to make noise this season. The pitching staff is a mixed bag: Braxton Ashcraft has been good, and Carmen Mlodzinski has been a nice surprise, but Mitch Keller and Bubba Chandler, who were both being counted on to be major contributors, have been disappointing. Evan Sisk has been incredible in 34 innings in the bullpen, but Dennis Santana couldn’t hold the closer job at the beginning of the season and Gregory Soto, who has been plagued by inconsistency over his career, is now closing games. It’s gone well so far, but I would not want to rely too heavily on Soto.
Threat level: Low. I’ve been down on Pittsburgh as a short-term threat all year. The offense has been significantly better than I expected, but that’s with several guys outperforming their expectations, and I wouldn’t expect that to keep up. They’ve also sacrificed defense in order to improve the offense: at -14.4 fielding runs, they’ve got the fourth-worst defense in the league via FanGraphs.
Record: 41-37 (3rd)Paul’s preseason record prediction: 91-71 (2nd)Best position player so far: Pete Crow-ArmstrongBest pitcher so far: Ben Brown
The bad news, if you’re a Brewers fan: Pete Crow-Armstrong is, I think, better than we all gave him credit for. As of Wednesday, PCA is the MLB leader in bWAR among position players with 4.7. Despite the occasional boneheaded move, he is the best defensive outfielder in baseball by far. After a slow start that extended a months-long slump from the second half of last year, someone poured gasoline on PCA and flicked a match at him: in June, he is batting .432/.488/.946 in 18 games. That scorching stretch has bumped his season numbers up to .287/.366/.529 (a 152 OPS+) with 17 homers, four triples, and 18 stolen bases. He’s also improved his batting eye; PCA may never walk a lot, but with 30 free passes in 2026, he’s already surpassed last season’s total in fewer than half the games.
The good news, if you’re a Brewers fan: little else has gone right for the Cubs, particularly on the pitching staff. They have had horrible injury luck: as of this writing, Matthew Boyd, Cade Horton, Justin Steele, and Jameson Taillon — four fifths of what they hoped would be their rotation this season — are on the injured list, as are relievers Daniel Palencia, Riley Martin, Porter Hodge, and Hunter Harvey. Their remaining starters have struggled: Shota Imanaga, Colin Rea, and Edward Cabrera — who they traded their top prospect, Owen Caissie, for in the offseason — have a combined -1.3 bWAR. The bullpen has been similarly erratic; aside from one bright spot in Ryan Rolison, consistency has been difficult to come by.
One exception is Ben Brown, the 26-year-old righty. He started the season out of the bullpen, but the team needed starts, so he moved to the rotation in early May. In eight starts since then, Brown has a 1.70 ERA and 2.40 FIP in 42 1/3 innings.
Note: both Brown and Cabrera were also added to the injured list after this piece was written on Wednesday. Things just keep getting wore for the Cubs’ pitching staff.
The lineup has been okay, but the two highly paid guys on the left side of the infield are struggling. Dansby Swanson can’t get over the Mendoza line but is maintaining some amount of offensive utility only because he’s got 11 homers. Alex Bregman, in the first year of a five-year, $140 million contract, is having the worst offensive season of his 11-year career.
Threat level: Medium-low. The offense is still potent, the defense is still good, and PCA looks like an MVP candidate, but the pitching just isn’t coming together. Boyd might be back soon, but Steele may miss the whole season, and Horton won’t pitch until 2027. Taillon could be back in the second half, but he was leading the league in home runs allowed when he went out. Palencia’s status is iffy. There are just too many injuries.
Record: 42-35 (2nd)Paul’s preseason record prediction: 74-88 (5th)Best position player so far: J.J. WetherholtBest pitcher so far: Michael McGreevy
This team is the biggest surprise here, maybe in the whole league. The Cardinals were expected to be bad — they traded away Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, Nolan Arenado, and Brendan Donovan, their most accomplished players, before the season. But in a very Brewers-y twist, they’ve improved over last season’s 78-84 team, at least thus far.
A lot of that has to do with rookie JJ Wetherholt, who came into the season as a consensus top-five prospect. Wetherholt has played some of the best infield defense in the National League, and he’s more than carried his weight offensively, too. Through 73 games, he was hitting .267/.366/.421 (125 OPS+) with 12 homers and eight stolen bases in eight tries; as of Wednesday, he ranked only behind Crow-Armstrong and the Dodgers’ Andy Pages in bWAR among NL position players.
The other big reason is the resurgence of Jordan Walker. His story is well-known: he, like Wetherholt, was a mega-prospect. But he was called up when he was really young — he played 117 big-league games in his age-21 season in 2023 — and while he hit pretty well, the Cardinals couldn’t find a defensive home for him. Over the next two years, his offense disappeared, and he had to go back to the minors on various occasions. But he was still only 23 years old at the start of the 2026 season, so maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised when he finally started to deliver on his prodigious offensive talent. As of Wednesday, Walker was leading the NL in RBIs, with a .290/.343/.523 (143 OPS+) batting line and 18 homers.
I still have concerns. The pitching staff has only two above-average starters, one of whom — Andre Pallante — had -1.2 bWAR in 2025. The other, McGreevy, had barely thrown 100 big leagues innings prior to this season, and he’s got a FIP that’s more than a run higher than his ERA. The bullpen isn’t good; of the seven Cardinal pitchers with double-digit relief appearances, only two have an ERA+ better than 102.
The most notable crack in the St. Louis façade is in their run differential, which sat at just plus-four coming into play Wednesday. That’s worse than the Cubs and Pirates and gives them an “expected” win-loss record of 39-38, three games worse than their actual record.
Threat level: Low. The Cardinals should be praised for what they’ve done this season, and they’ve already exceeded my expectations, but they’ve done that with basically perfect scenarios from Wetherholt and Walker. The pitching staff, an expected weakness, has been middle of the pack and I see no reason to think it will improve, if it doesn’t regress. If the Cardinals hang around .500 for the rest of the season, it’d be a positive outcome for them; to ask for more than that is probably asking too much of this young, inexperienced group.
The Brewers have put themselves in a great position not because they’re lucky but because they are good. Even with a healthy pitching staff, I never thought the Cubs were quite on Milwaukee’s level and given how the Brewers have surprised everyone by seemingly improving again, they’ve built a cushion in this division that I don’t see any of the other teams being able to overcome.
There is still a lot of season left, but the Brewers are the class of this division, and the numbers bear it out: Milwaukee’s +122 run differential, the second-best mark in baseball behind the Dodgers, is almost 100 runs better than second place in the division (the Cubs at +31). Chicago is still the biggest threat, but I still expect Milwaukee to cruise to another division title.
