Let me enjoy the moment.

Having spent more preseason column space than I really care to think about having preached about the depth and stability of the Yankees’ starting rotation and the virtues of Kei Igawa, I can at least take a small bit of solace in my March prediction that the Milwaukee Brewers will win the National League pennant. Happily, the Brewers have been the best team in baseball up to this point in the season, making me look clever, and as the Mets have played up to expectations, my prediction that the National League Championship Series will be a contest between New York and Milwaukee also looks reasonably prescient. Thus, while this weekend’s series between the two teams will be a chance for New York fans to inspect the Brewers up close, it will also serve the purely functional purpose of letting one baseball writer forget a variety of inane predictions.

It is, of course, only May, and before I crow too much I ought to let the season play out a bit more. The point here, though, is that the Brewers really shouldn’t be treated as a surprise or a fluke. They looked good before the season and aren’t playing as far above expectations as you might think.

Milwaukee probably won’t end up the season with the best record in baseball, but they’re very much for real and quite capable of sweeping the Mets in Shea Stadium this weekend. Further, they’re worth your attention not just because they’re playing well, but because this team should be very good for years to come.

Like last year’s Tigers and the 2005 White Sox, the Brewers are good not so much because they’re getting unexpectedly good performances (although they are) or because they spent great sums on the best available players (although they did spend some cash this winter), but because their team has very few holes. As the Yankees have shown so far this year, it’s very hard for a team to do well when it gives substantial playing time to players who aren’t ready for, or don’t belong in, the major leagues. Obvious as this is, there’s a difference between knowing this and being able to do something about it, and most teams, even good ones, ask a few of their players to do more than they can do.

The Brewers really don’t. They may not have any truly great players, but they also don’t have many bad ones. Take their rotation, for instance. The man who attracts all the attention is the oft-injured Ben Sheets, who when healthy posts ridiculous strikeout-to-walk ratios and looks like the best pitcher in the league. The team’s strength, though, is what lays behind him. Chris Capuano, the team’s no. 2 starter, is about as good as Barry Zito or Tom Glavine, a near lock for 200 innings and a 4.00 ERA. Past him, the team has Jeff Suppan, a slightly lesser pitcher of this same class; Dave Bush, a significantly lesser pitcher of this same class; and Claudio Vargas, a hard thrower who looks as if he might be harnessing his pitches after frustrating the Nationals and Diamondbacks for several years.

That’s not at all a glamorous crew, but entering the season the team appeared to have three pitchers who among them could be counted on for 200 innings of, at worst, league average pitching; a fourth they could count on to pitch like an ace barring injury, and a fifth with breakout potential and a downside as a guy who would take the ball and give five passable innings every time his turn came up. This sounds a lot like the plan with which the Mets entered the season, and it’s had similar results: Entering last night’s contests, the two teams were tied for first in the league with a 3.46 ERA from their starters.

What’s really set the Brewers apart so far this year is the end of their bullpen, which has been excellent. Francisco Cordero, their closer, has a 0.92 ERA since coming over in a trade last summer and has given up two hits in 16 games this year. He’s backed by former All-Star Derrick Turnbow, who ran up a near-7.00 ERA last year but has reverted to his previous form this year.

Cordero and Turnbow simply not giving up runs and shortstop J.J. Hardy unexpectedly hitting like Alex Rodriguez are the keys to their having the best record in baseball right now, but the team is simply solid, through and through, and that’s what will keep it in the race this year. It’s an intriguing mix. Second baseman Rickie Weeks, first baseman Prince Fielder, and center fielder Bill Hall, the heart of the team’s lineup, are all, like Sheets, homegrown products, nothing more than the result of sound scouting and player development. The rest of the lineup mainly resembles the staff past Sheets — players picked up when their stock was low via shrewd trades and the waiver wire. Committing to durable pitchers and everyday players who all hit at least at the league average for their positions and don’t make too much money is hardly a novel strategy, but the ability of GM Doug Melvin to consistently identify and acquire such players bodes very well for the team’s future. As Weeks and Fielder develop into All-Stars, there’s no particular reason Melvin shouldn’t be able to fill in the gaps around them with lowprofile, quality players. And as Milwaukee starts to develop more goodwill toward a franchise that’s long treated its fans rather shabbily, the Brewers should even be able to make more free agent signings like the one that brought them Suppan.

Rosy as all this sounds, it’s going to be a long season for the Brewers, a young team that has no real culture of winning. A great deal can go wrong, from injury to selfdoubt to bad luck to the inherent inconsistency of young players. Having predicted that they’ll shock the world and take the pennant, I’m still not nearly convinced they’ll do it, and how they play against the Mets this weekend will be telling. But you have to like the way they’ve played so far, and at absolute worst there’s right now a bit of glamour attached to a Milwaukee visit to New York in May. Who would have thought it?

tmarchman@nysun.com