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Milwaukee Brewers one of 2 losing teams to sneak into expanded baseball playoffs

The Yankees' Gerrit Cole delivers a pitch in the first inning against the Toronto Blue Jays on Sept. 16 in New York. (AP file photo)

Christian Yelich and the Milwaukee Brewers got off to a ragged start this year. They never got above .500. And they dropped their last game to finish with a losing record.

Guess what? They’re going to the playoffs.

“Weird. I guess that’s the only way to describe it. It’s fitting for 2020,” Yelich said Sunday.

A pandemic-altered, 60-game regular season that many believed would never get completed and saw games postponed because of virus outbreaks, racial injustice protests and a hurricane went into the final day without a single playoff matchup set.

Then, in a flurry, the entire, expanded 16-team postseason field was full.

Not a bad way to start, either: Gerrit Cole vs. Shane Bieber in a mega-watt duel as the New York Yankees face the Cleveland Indians in the best-of-three wild-card round Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the NL gets going. That’s when the Brewers, at 29-31, open their series against Los Angeles ace Walker Buehler at Dodger Stadium.

The Astros and first-year manager Dusty Baker also are in at 29-31.

The only other team in major league history to reach the playoffs with a losing record was the 1981 Kansas City Royals — at 50-53 overall, they made it by winning the second half in a strike-split season.

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