CHICAGO -- It took less than 24 hours for the Brewers to go from riding a nine-game winning streak to contemplating back-to-back losses in games started by Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff.

Momentum can shift like the wind in Major League Baseball.

In Wednesday’s 3-2 loss to the Cubs on another trying day for hitters at Wrigley Field, the Brewers finally scratched out the tying run in the eighth, only to see the Cubs snatch the lead right back in the bottom of the inning when Joel Payamps, Milwaukee’s stout setup man, was hit on the right ankle by a Cody Bellinger comebacker that caromed away for the hit that decided the game.

Just like that, the Brewers (74-59) departed Chicago with a three-game lead over the Cubs (71-62) with 29 games to play -- which end with three head-to-head matchups at Milwaukee’s American Family Field that could settle it all.

“Seems pretty familiar,” said Woodruff, one of the holdovers from 2018, when 162 games weren’t enough and the Brewers had to come to Wrigley Field and beat the Cubs to win the division.

How much could ride on that series? Consider that the Brewers and Cubs have split their first 10 head-to-head games, so the season series will come down to the end. In the event of a tie atop the standings, the division crown would go to the winner of that series.

“Obviously, we believe the division is reachable,” Bellinger said. “We've thought that for a while.”

Brewers manager Craig Counsell wasn’t prepared to contemplate that far-off scenario on Wednesday. Asked whether it feels like these teams are as evenly matched as can be, Counsell quipped, “It feels like we’re three games up.”

“Absolutely,” Woodruff concurred. “I know these last two games hurt, but at the end of the day, we’re still three games up. We still have to go play some more baseball. We still have to play these guys again. There’s still a lot of baseball ahead of us.”

Just like Tuesday, it was a bad day for hitters, with aces on the mound and the wind blowing in. But Woodruff immediately fell into a 2-0 deficit in a first inning that began with Cubs leadoff man Mike Tauchman walking on a series of pitches that Woodruff and Counsell thought were strikes, and Nico Hoerner standing still as a Woodruff fastball grazed his elbow. Both of them would come around to score.

Woodruff locked in after that, striking out eight while dueling Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks for the first six innings of a game that stayed close at 2-1 until the eighth, when the Brewers tied it with a two-out rally starting with a Sal Frelick single. Walks by Willy Adames and Rowdy Tellez prompted the Cubs to call for their closer, Adbert Alzolay, who hit Mark Canha with a pitch to force home the tying run.

But the tie didn’t last long. In the bottom of the eighth, Adames was charged with an error on a ground ball to the hole at shortstop -- “I almost wouldn't say error there,” Counsell said, “that’s a very difficult play” -- and Tauchman walked again before both runners advanced on Hoerner’s sacrifice bunt. 

After Ian Happ grounded into a fielder’s choice, the Cubs’ most dangerous hitter, a resurgent Cody Bellinger, came up, and with a base open, the Brewers did have options. But Counsell said the plan all along was for Payamps, a veteran in the midst of a breakout season in which he’s been Milwaukee’s best reliever not named Devin Williams, to go right after Bellinger.

Payamps got exactly what he wanted: A ground ball that was headed right for Adames near the bag at second.

Unfortunately for the Brewers, the ball struck Payamps on the right ankle and bounced away. Payamps underwent X-rays after the game to check for a fracture.

The Brewers had chances in the ninth as well, but they couldn’t find a similarly fortuitous bounce. After Andruw Monasterio reached on an error, Christian Yelich hit a hard ground ball for a double play. And after William Contreras walked, Carlos Santana hit a hard grounder up the middle that avoided Alzolay and went to Dansby Swanson right on the bag at second, ending the game.

After scoring 64 runs during their nine-game winning streak, an average of better than seven runs per game, the Brewers were held to two runs in their back-to-back losses to the Cubs with the wind blowing in at Wrigley.

“Margins are small throughout the baseball season,” Counsell said. “There’s little stuff that happened in the last five outs, certainly, that went their way, but that’s the way it goes.”

Or as Woodruff put it, “That’s just baseball.”

“We’ll just keep trucking,” he said. “It was two tough losses, but two well-pitched games by both sides. It’s kind of crazy; in the winning streak, a lot of good things happened. Today, a lot of good things happened but we just hit it straight at people. That’s the nature of the game.”