With 13 games remaining in the regular season, the Brewers find themselves in an excellent position in the standings. They boast the best record by two games and hold a 6.5-game lead over the Chicago Cubs in the NL Central. Milwaukee became the first team in baseball to clinch a playoff berth this weekend, and FanGraphs’ playoff odds give the team a 97.8% chance of notching a first-round bye to the NLDS.

Pat Murphy doesn’t want to hear any of that, particularly when the Brewers still have some work ahead of them. They returned home after a three-game sweep at the hands of the Texas Rangers. Those games and a hard-fought extra-innings win against the St. Louis Cardinals on Saturday reinforced that having the math on their side doesn’t mean punching that Division Series ticket will be easy.

“When we start looking ahead or planning or coasting, we have an uphill battle,” Murphy said. “Every team on our [remaining] schedule can beat us. That’s been proven.”

“We’ve done some good things,” said Christian Yelich, “but there’s definitely things we can do better and clean up and kind of get back on track with where we want to be heading into the postseason.”

With the Brewers’ favorable standing in the playoff race comes the challenge of striking a delicate balance. They would be well-served using the rest of September to keep key players healthy and audition others for potential October roles, but they cannot lose their competitive edge. It’s not a switch they can freely toggle off and on based on the situation.

It’s hard to imagine a Murphy-led team running into that issue. While he acknowledged the Brewers are closely monitoring players’ health – a banged-up Sal Frelick has gotten more days off lately, and Freddy Peralta and Brandon Woodruff have had starts pushed back – he doesn’t sound like a manager planning to ease off the gas pedal down the stretch, particularly during games.

“We’ve come too far by playing, ‘Win tonight,'” he said. “It’s been, ‘Win tonight,’ every time. Now, are we being very mindful of health? Yes. But it’s, ‘Win tonight.'”

Murphy’s well-known aggression in pursuit of winning was on display Friday night. Rather than turn to one of his lower-leverage relievers, he still brought Aaron Ashby into a four-run game behind Quinn Priester to keep things under control. Whether that’s the best approach nightly, especially with several hard-worked relievers, remains debatable, but Murphy has demonstrated that he has no issue pushing the envelope if his arms say they feel strong enough to keep going.

His message to his players as October nears: remember what got you this far, and don’t let up.

“People all predicted we were going to be .500 or under,” Murphy said. “The reason people predicted that is because we’ve proven we’re way better as a team – playing as a team, playing together, acquiring bases, winning the moment, winning the pitch. We’re way better like that. We’re not built like some of these championship teams are built.”

They answered that call on Saturday. In what has become typical Brewers fashion, they clawed back against the St. Louis bullpen with a series of disciplined plate appearances and well-placed hits, culminating in Andruw Monasterio’s walk-off single.

“I want to be in the playoffs, trying to make it to a World Series, trying to win,” Monasterio said. “That’s the first thought. Our only goal is to win the World Series.”

“Making the playoffs is huge,” said Jacob Misiorowski, “but we want a little bit more.”