SAN DIEGO, CA - MARCH 29: Milwaukee Brewers manager Craig Counsell looks on before Opening Day against the San Diego Padres at PETCO Park on March 29, 2018 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Denis Poroy/Getty Images)

With Milwaukee Brewers baseball just around the corner, it is time to take an in-depth look at their 2019 schedule.

After finishing just one game shy of a World Series trip, there are a lot of reasons to be excited about this 2019 Milwaukee Brewers team. Even though getting back to that point is a ways away, it is never too soon to take a look ahead at what the schedule has to offer.

The importance of March and April

The Milwaukee Brewers will kick-off the 2019 season on March 28th, against the St. Louis Cardinals at Miller Park for a four-game series. This will be the first series of three, that the Brewers and Cardinals will have before the month of May begins.

While getting off to a quick start is what every team would love to do, it may be even more important for the Milwaukee Brewers to do so given how their schedule lays out. Milwaukee and St. Louis will face each other 19 times in 2019 and ten of those games will have been played by the end of April. The two teams won’t meet again until August 19th at Busch Stadium.

Just as it was in 2018, we can expect the NL Central race to come down to the wire, so it will be crucial for the Brewers to begin the season playing some good baseball since the first month of the season will have such an impact on the division standings as well as tie-breakers between the two teams.

Another early matchup to keep our eyes on is the two series’ that the Milwaukee Brewers will have in April against the L.A. Dodgers. The entire seven-game season series will be played in a ten-day span. Once again, these are important games for the Brewers that could determine playoff seeding and is a potential tie-breaker that they would love to hold.

Interleague play

As is standard, the Milwaukee Brewers will have a home-and-home series with the Minnesota Twins that will consist of two games each and the Brewer fans will have the opportunity to welcome Jonathan Schoop back to Miller Park.

In addition to the Twins, the Brewers will face the AL West, which had three of the top seven teams in the American League in 2018. However, as a whole, the division may not be as daunting in 2019.

At Miller Park, the Brewers will host the Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers, both of which are in rebuilding mode and they will travel to L.A. to face the Angles who continue to mire in mediocrity.

While the Brewers should be able to hold their own against those three teams, they will have a difficult three-game road series against the Oakland A’s, along with a home-and-home series with the Houston Astros that will total four games and really put this Milwaukee team to a test.

Drawing the AL West in interleague play will prove to be much more challenging than the 2018 AL Central was.

The dog days of summer

Last season, the Brewers ran out of gas heading into the All-Star break and could face a similarly tough stretch this season. Beginning in mid-June, Milwaukee will play 23 games in 24 days leading up to the All-Star break, including 13 in a row.

When August rolls around, Milwaukee will get some reprieve in their schedule as they did during September of 2018. That month they will have four of the five Thursday’s off which will hopefully allow them to catch up on rest after a long July and have them feeling at their best as they head into September for the final weeks of the season.

It was the month of September last season when the Brewers were able to take advantage of their favorable schedule and make that final playoff push, let’s hope we see similar results this upcoming August.

Difficult September stretch

As noted above, a huge contributor to the Milwaukee Brewers push to catch the Chicago Cubs last year was their September schedule. That month they had every Thursday off, played just 24 total games and 15 of them were at home.

However, this September will be a different story. Of the 30 days in September, Milwaukee will have a game in 27 of them and only 13 will be at Miller Park. They will also have their longest stretch of games at 18 in a row.

In one way or another, it is likely that the Brewers will be fighting for a playoff spot come September, so being well rested and healthy will be key for them to finishing the season strong.

Divisional games

Milwaukee will face each of their divisional opponents a total of 19 times as they did in 2018. An advantage for the Brewers is that they will face both the Cubs and Cardinals ten times at Miller Park. In what will most likely be another close divisional race, having that extra game at home could be critical.

Against the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates, Milwaukee will have nine games each at Miller Park. The Brewers have recently struggled on the road against the Pirates and hope to right that ship in 2019. While at the hitter-friendly Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, Milwaukee has had success but this will be a better Reds team than in years past.

When looking at the schedule as a whole, the two key parts to the season will be the beginning and the end.

In March and April, the Milwaukee Brewers have important series’ against likely playoff teams, which means the outcomes early on in the season, could carry a lot of weight once October rolls around. Then in September, Milwaukee will have a tough schedule that they will have to navigate during the most important time of the year.

Like any season there are going to be highs and lows, but the Milwaukee Brewers can really help themselves out by taking advantage of a few particular points in the schedule.