Well, this was fun while it lasted.
Home-field advantage has been a bit of a booby prize this postseason, with the home team losing all five LCS games heading into Thursday night’s contest. Tyler Glasnow, the Dodgers’ Game 3 starter, is arguably the closest thing to a weak link in this rotation. So maybe the Brewers aren’t as dead as they seem in the series standings. Win one and you’re back.
Unfortunately for the Brewers and the neutrals who want this series to be six or seven exciting games, that’s not going to be possible. The Dodgers scored one run on the game’s first two batters, and when Milwaukee tied the game in the next inning, Glasnow shut the door. A couple of singles, a four-base hit and a throwing error in the sixth inning were enough for the Dodgers to win the game, 3-1, and take a 3-0 lead in the series. At this point you already know what the odds are.
The four highest-paid players in this series are four players in the Dodgers’ playoff rotation: Shohei Ohtani, Blake Snell, Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Having those four healthy and performing well allows head coach Dave Roberts to run a highly traditional pitching scheme in this series. In Game 1, Snell went eight scoreless innings, striking out three while allowing a runner on base (he singled a runner on first). It’s no exaggeration to say that this was one of the best postseason pitching performances of the 21st century.
Yamamoto followed with a one-run, seven-strikeout victory in Game 2; the first batter he faced, Jackson Chourio, homered. No other Brewer reached second base the rest of the night, and after the end of fourth, no other Brewer even reached first base.
Milwaukee’s rotation is neither that strong nor that deep, so the opener will continue until results improve. Game 1 starter Aaron Ashby, who also faced three pinch hitters in Game 2, took the mound again. Ashby’s hard-sinking ball to the left has the potential to tie together Los Angeles’ dangerous lefties in the top half — Ohtani and Freddie Freeman — and perhaps buy one more high-volume reliever in the lineup.
Ohtani didn’t exactly light up Ashby’s first triple in the first inning — he reached down and hit a slider that hit 81.9 mph into the right-field corner — but it was recorded as a triple in the scorebook. Mookie Betts followed, folded his hands, and flicked a sinker into the right-center gap—squint your eyes and you’ll see peak Derek Jeter—and knocked Otani down. Ashby deleted the “no.” No. 3 hitter Will Smith, but then walked Freeman, the other guy he was assigned to deal with.
The opener has been around long enough that there is now an orthodoxy on how to manage it. Typically, you’ll want to use dedicated relievers (people who are used to warming up quickly and entering games with heavy base traffic) to avoid congestion. That’s what Brewers manager Pat Murphy did in Game 2 of the NLDS; Ashby was hit, and then Nick Mears exited the inning, leaving a run for his big reliever, Jacob Misiorowski.
This time, Murphy goes straight for Miz. The lanky, hard-throwing Misiorovsky’s All-Star selection a few months ago was controversial as MLB attempted to make new Paul Skenes an All-Star for the second straight year. The rookie has struggled ever since, going from presumed No. 1 to No. 2. All 1 starters have withdrawn from the playoff rotation.
But in the playoffs, Misiorowski performed very well. In two multi-inning relief appearances against the Cubs, he allowed just one run in seven innings, leading to wins both times, including the decisive Game 5.
Despite Misiorovsky’s tricky introduction, he ended Game 1 with back-to-back strikeouts. He retired 15 of the first 16 batters he faced, nine of them on hard punches. More than once, he celebrated an inning-ending strikeout by pumping his fist and twirling on the mound, an unusual sight for a pitcher whose demeanor on the mound typically leans toward the somber end of the spectrum.
Matching Misiorovsky to a $135 million playoff rotation clearly energized the Brewers, who almost took the initiative. With one out in the second inning, Caleb Durbin opened up Glasnow’s fastball for a triple of his own. With so much to play, Roberts pulled the infield and Jake Bowles hit a single to center field that scored Durbin to tie the game.
Bowles (39 stolen bases in 613 career games) stole the second spot from Glasnow, who was longer and more languid than Misiorovski. (Local fans might have mistaken the two pitchers for a pair of oil derricks, similar ones dotting the hills of Southern California.) Glasnow compounded the problem with an errant catch-and-pitch pitch, and Bowles (again, who wasn’t exactly Lou Brock), ended up going to third.
Suddenly, the Brewers were the same Brewers again, slogging through tough pitches, throwing out soft liners in the outfield and building on their opponents’ mistakes. (Dubin’s triple would have been a double at best if Enrique Hernandez hadn’t rolled over as the ball rolled past him.)
The infield arrives again. Only this time, Joey Ortiz took a terrible swing on a curve ball well away from the outside corner and pulled it toward third base. Max Muncy, who I usually think of as a motionless tungsten cube who happens to be walking 20% of the time, has recently been possessed by the spirit of Brooks Robinson. He hit the ball perfectly, throwing Bowles away from home plate. One pitch later, Glasnow was out and the Brewers never scored again.
Glasnow wasn’t as flashy as his two rotation teammates (or Misiorovsky), but he was good enough: eight strikeouts, three hits, and three runs allowed in 5 2/3 innings.
In all three NL wins against the Phillies, the Dodgers’ first two drives have been unlucky. But they prevailed each time, with enough offense to survive: two runs in the sixth inning of Game 1, three runs in the seventh inning, four runs in the seventh inning of Game 2, and one run in the bottom half of the seventh inning of Game 4 to tie the game.
The same thing happens here. I’ve said before that Misiorovsky retired 15 of his first 16 batters; the last three he faced all reached it. The magic was clearly starting to wear off. Smith hit a medium-speed ball at 108.1 mph, and Freeman walked to put Smith in scoring position. Then Tommy Edman sliced a first-pitch slider almost off the dirt and into the outfield in front of center fielder Sal Frelick. Frick might have been home to Smith or Freeman at the 3 when he caught the ball, but his pass was cut off and redirected to the 3 too late to catch Freeman.
The season was indeed in jeopardy so far, so Murphy called in his best reliever, Abner Uribe, for the sixth inning. Uribe is one of the hardest pitchers in the game, but having him carry runners in the middle of a game is a bit like trying to put tractor tires on the rims by filling them with WD-40 and lighting them up. That would be cool if it worked. But combining petrochemicals, compressed air and flames in an enclosed space comes with risks, and the gods of physics have expressed their displeasure from time to time.
Uribe’s command was such that I didn’t expect him to make another throwing error on a catch that led to an insurance run. Curt Hogg milwaukee sentinel Point out that Uribe hasn’t allowed a major league base steal since 2023; we’ll never know why he cared so much about Edelman.
Just like in the National League, all the Dodgers’ opponents can really ask for is a strike against the fragile weakness between the starters and Riki Sasaki. When Durbin led off the seventh inning, the Brewers tied the game with a double. They even got two of their best hitters – Isaac Collins and Jolio – to get on base against Blake Treinen. If holding a rally with Uribe was like trying to fit a tire that would explode, then holding a rally with Treinen was like trying to stick a lit match into a pool of gasoline before igniting the vapor.
But Collins popped out, and Jorio, who had exited the first game against the Cubs with a hamstring injury, was sidelined with cramps, leaving pinch-hitter Blake Perkins to take over with two outs on an 0-2 count. Even if he can’t find it, Trenin’s sweeper is still a truly nasty pitch. With a two-pitch lead, he finally managed to throw one in the right spot, allowing Perkins to take a step back, and Perkins was dead the moment he wanted to move his bat.
Regardless, the Brewers’ feel-based pitching approach has been pretty reliable so far in this series. The Dodgers averaged 5.1 points per game during the regular season, the most among National League teams, while the Brewers held them to 10 points (nine earned) through three games.
But every year we wonder if the Brewers can create enough offense with their pitching, and every year it’s the same old song. They had allowed one run in each of the three NLCS games; by the time Misiorovsky entered the second half of Game 1, the Brewers had allowed as many points as their offense had scored in this series. Miz could have unleashed the heat and hit an unhittable curveball before New Year’s Eve, but it didn’t matter.
This ill-timed interruption to the offense will once again be the first line of the Brewers’ obituary. Unless they somehow overcome the odds and come back from 3-0 down, in which case feel free to shove that statement back in my face. Fever Pitch 2 came out.
