Every team that's beaten the Milwaukee Brewers in the postseason has gone to the World Series, including Arizona

The Reverse Curse of the Milwaukee Brewers will continue in 2023.

With the Arizona Diamondbacks winning Game 7 of the National League Championship Series over Philadelphia on Tuesday, it continued a strange trend.

The Brewers have been to the playoffs five times in the past six years — and nine times in team history. One thing has remained true through the franchise's bumper crop of regular-season success: Anyone who defeats the Brewers in the postseason ends their year in the World Series.

With just 84 wins in the regular season, the Diamondbacks became the most surprising team to continue the trend. Teams that have beaten the Brewers in the postseason are now 9-0 in subsequent series that precede the World Series and 6-2 in the World Series itself.

The Brewers won 86 games in 2022 and did not make the playoffs. That's one of nine teams in Brewers franchise history to win at least 84 games and not make the postseason.

Here's the history of the Reverse Curse:

1981: New York Yankees (59-48), American League champion

The strike-shortened season created a format that was strange at the time, essentially a division series (between winners of the first and second half) during a time when only two teams per league typically reached the postseason. The Brewers fell in a five-game series against the Yankees, with a 7-3 loss in Game 5, and New York went on to sweep Oakland in the ALCS. In the World Series, the Bronx Bombers fell to the Los Angeles Dodgers, four games to two.

1982: St. Louis Cardinals (92-70), World Series champion

This one is obvious, because it marks the one time the Brewers themselves appeared in the World Series. In one of the more heartbreaking outcomes for Wisconsin sports fans, Milwaukee took a 3-2 lead in the Fall Classic but dropped back-to-back games in St. Louis, including a 6-3 setback in Game 7.

2008: Philadelphia Phillies (92-70), World Series champion

After 26 years out of the postseason, the Brewers made a triumphant return as the National League wild-card winner, carried by an incredible showing from midseason acquisition CC Sabathia. But the Phillies got to Sabathia in Game 2 of the NLDS to pull ahead in the series, 2-0, and though Brewers fans bathed in the thrill of a postseason win in Game 3, Philadelphia took care of Milwaukee in Game 4, 6-2. The Phillies were on a roll, going on to defeat the Dodgers in the NLCS, 4-1, before downing the Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series, 4-1.

2011: St. Louis Cardinals (90-72), World Series champion

St. Louis went on to win the whole thing as a 90-win team that had to scratch and claw just to make the playoffs (helped by a notorious Atlanta Braves collapse). The Cardinals battered Milwaukee for 12 runs in the clinching Game 6 and prevailed, 12-6, then defeated the Texas Rangers in a thrilling World Series, four games to three, including an unforgettable 10-9 win in 11 innings during Game 6.

2018: Los Angeles Dodgers (92-71), National League champion

Again, this was in the NLCS, so obviously the Dodgers were going to the World Series with a win. On paper, it was an upset when the Dodgers edged the Brewers in that series, four games to three, with a 5-1 win in the decisive seventh game (and, for the third playoff appearance in a row, the Brewers were eliminated on their home field). The Dodgers wound up falling to Boston in the World Series, four games to one.

2019: Washington Nationals (93-69), World Series champion

Here's where the teams that beat the Brewers start facing a more complicated path to the title and still make it happen. Nobody in Milwaukee will soon forget the 2019 wild-card game in Washington, where the Nationals rallied for three runs in the eighth (aided by one crucial error) against Josh Hader to stage a 4-3 comeback win. What made it perhaps more frustrating was what came next: Washington winning in 10 innings of Game 5 in the NLDS over the Dodgers, 7-3, then sweeping the Cardinals in the NLCS, 4-0. After that, the Nationals battled back from a 3-2 series deficit to shock the Astros in the World Series, with wins by a 7-2 and 6-2 count. All seven games in that World Series were notably won by the road team.

2020: Los Angeles Dodgers (43-17), World Series champion

On paper, the Dodgers were the best team in Major League Baseball, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that they dismissed the Brewers in the first round of the playoffs and advanced onward to win a championship. But nothing about 2020 was normal, least of all the playoff format that featured eight opening series with a best-of-three format, and a 60-game season in which the Brewers never had a winning record and entered the playoffs with a mark of 29-31. L.A. had a lot of hoops to jump through after a 2-0 series win over the Brewers, including a 3-0 sweep of San Diego in the NLDS, a 4-3 series win over the Braves in the NLCS (including a Game 7 win by a 4-3 score) and a win over Tampa Bay in the World Series, four games to two. Ironically, in a year where the samples were smallest and the threat of random results was theoretically the highest, the best team in the AL met the best team in the NL for all the marbles, and the team with the best record prevailed.

2021: Atlanta Braves (88-73), World Series champion

Like with Washington in 2019, it was another case of an NL East team getting hot in the playoffs, starting with the Brewers. Milwaukee won Game 1 of the NLDS against the Braves but went scoreless in the next two games before falling in Game 4, 5-4, on an eighth-inning homer by Freddie Freeman. Former Brewers reliever Will Smith recorded saves in all three Atlanta victories. The Braves went on to upset the Dodgers in the NLCS, 4-2, and then took down the Houston Astros in the World Series, 4-2.

2023: Arizona Diamondbacks (84-78), World Series qualifier

Arizona rallied from down multiple runs to win both games in the best-of-three wild-card series at American Family Field, 6-3 and 5-2, putting the No. 6 and final NL seed into the NLDS against the Dodgers. The Diamondbacks certainly didn't slow down from there, including a four-homer inning in Game 3 of the NLDS that accounted for all the offense in a 4-2 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers to trigger a stunning series sweep. After falling behind in the NLCS against Philadelphia, 0-2, and needing a walk-off single from Ketel Marte to win Game 3, Arizona won once more at home and twice in Philly to advance to the World Series.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Arizona reaches the World Series; Brewers 'reverse curse' stays alive