Lets assume, for a second, that the Brewers have a 60% chance of beating the Pirates in any given game. The chances that they win two in a row at that rate would be 0.6*0.6, which equals 0.36, or 36%. A three-game sweep? The odds of that are 21.4%. The odds of the Brewers winning 17 in a row? The chances of that are 0.17%. Even if you assume the Brewers have a 70% chance to beat the Bucs, the odds jump to 0.23%. If we bump the odds of a Brewers win in any given game to 80% (which is pretty high, even for the Pirates and Brewers ), this sort of thing only happens 2.3% of the time.

The thing is, the Pirates arent that bad this year, and Milwuakees not that good. The teams have nearly identical runs per game, and Pittsburgh has a better ERA. I doubt the Pirates will get swept by the Brewers over the full season.

Maybe the Brewers keep claiming to be orphans, which is a sure way to defeat Pirates.

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