The Milwaukee Brewers are coming off the high moment of their season. On Wednesday, they walked off the Philadelphia Phillies on the same day that they officially won the National League Central. If they come out a little flat on Thursday, we may have an idea of why.

The Diamondbacks, though, need to keep their foot on the gas. They’re currently the second Wild Card in the National League, but they’re only two games ahead of the fourth-place—and currently outside the postseason—Atlanta Braves. The Brewers, too, could still improve their position: with 10 games left in the season, they sit two behind the Los Angeles Dodgers for the second-best record in the National League (though it’s effectively three games, as L.A. holds the tiebreaker).

These two teams, of course, faced off in a three-game series at Chase Field just last weekend, as all seven of their games this season are crammed into a 10-day stretch. The Brewers won the first two games of that series and nearly the third, but that was the sort of bizarre “Devin Williams warmed up but didn’t pitch” game, which Milwaukee lost 11-10 in 10 innings. Since then, the Diamondbacks dropped two of three against Colorado, who seem to be playing National League contenders tough in the last month of the season.

It’ll be a four-game set this time between two teams that battled in the Wild Card round of last year’s playoffs and possibly could again in just a couple of weeks.

Probable Pitchers

Thursday, September 19 @ 6:15 p.m: Tobias Myers (3.07 ERA, 4.11 FIP) vs. Brandon Pfaadt (4.81 ERA, 3.66 FIP)

Myers has slowed a little down the stretch, but he’s still had a wonderful season. He picked up his eighth win of the season on Saturday in the Brewers’ 15-8 dismantling of Arizona, a game in which he allowed four runs in six innings.

He’ll face Brandon Pfaadt for the second time in a week; Pfaadt, however, had what was probably his worst start in a frustrating season, as he gave up eight earned runs without getting out of the second inning. Pfaadt’s ERA doesn’t look particularly good this season but he has a solid 3.66 FIP and his peripherals look good, suggesting he’s had some bad luck. In any case, the Brewers sure saw his stuff well on Saturday, and we’ll see if that continues on Thursday.

Friday, September 20 @ 7:10 p.m: TBD vs. Zac Gallen (3.61 ERA, 3.28 FIP)

This is the spot that DL Hall started in on Sunday for the Brewers, and ostensibly Colin Rea’s spot in the rotation if the rest of the probables are correct. Rea pitched 2 ²⁄₃ innings on Monday, so he’d be on short rest, technically, if he made this start. My guess is we see Hall again, but it could be a piggyback situation.

Gallen has finished in the top five in Cy Young voting in each of the last two seasons. He’s not going to do that this year, but he’s been solid; his walks are up a little bit, but he’s striking out basically the exact same number of batters as the last two seasons and his FIP has remained remarkably consistent (3.28 this season versus 3.26 in last season’s third-place CYA finish). He started that wild game on Sunday and allowed three runs on six hits in five innings, but he’d allowed zero runs in three of four starts prior to that one.

Saturday, September 21 @ 6:10 p.m: Aaron Civale (4.48 ERA, 4.17 FIP) vs. Merrill Kelly (4.00 ERA, 4.79 FIP)

Civale has a 3.68 ERA since joining Milwaukee after a mid-season trade, and has trended up lately: he’s got a 2.56 ERA (though a 3.95 FIP) over his last seven starts. In his last time out on Monday, he threw five innings of one-run ball in a 6-2 victory over Philadelphia.

Kelly missed much of the season and didn’t pitch between April 15 and August 11. Kelly has been a solid pitcher for the last couple years and was a big performer for Arizona in last year’s postseason; he got off to a great start this season and had a 2.19 ERA at the time of his injury, but he went through some struggles upon his return in August. He’s looked better in September, and has a 3.18 in three starts this month.

Sunday, September 22 @ 1:10 p.m: Frankie Montas (4.50 ERA, 3.92 FIP) vs. Jordan Montgomery (6.23 ERA, 4.59 FIP)

Montas has been quite good lately, though he’s had a few starts where he has looked excellent and then given up a few runs late. His stuff looked great against the Phillies on Tuesday, as he struck out 10, but the Phillies got him for three runs and hung a loss on him. In general, Montas has been very good since joining the Brewers and has perhaps positioned himself as the likely third starter on the postseason depth chart.

It has been a rough year for Montgomery, who went through a fraught free agency process before joining the Diamondbacks for far less money than he was certainly hoping to get. With a late start to the ramp-up process, Montgomery came out of the gate slowly and never really found his footing. Arizona has been occasionally using him out of the bullpen lately, though he was back in the starting rotation for his last outing on September 17, when he allowed three runs to the Rockies in 4 ²⁄₃ innings.

Prediction

I do expect that the Brewers will probably have a little bit of a post-clinch hangover on Thursday, whether that’s literal or not, and given how unlikely the Brewers are to chase down the Dodgers or Phillies in the last 10 games, the Diamondbacks are probably more motivated. But they’ve also struggled the last week and the Brewers had their number last weekend, so I’ll predict a split.