Jacob Misiorowski gets the ball Sunday night as Milwaukee opens the National League Championship Series against Tarik Skubal and the Dodgers at American Family Field. First pitch is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET, and the Brewers arrive with a franchise-best 103 wins behind them and a chance to reach the World Series for the first time since 1982.
The result
Milwaukee and Los Angeles were the National League’s two best regular-season clubs, and both needed four games to get through the Division Series. Now the Brewers get another October crack at a Dodgers club that swept them a year ago on the way through the postseason.
Pat Murphy sees the challenge as part of the appeal. If Milwaukee is going to complete its season with the kind of ending the club has chased all year, he said, it ought to come through Los Angeles.
The Dodgers brought a familiar core into this meeting, led by Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy. Ohtani will not pitch in this series after injuries kept him out of the club’s mound plans, but the Brewers know what he can do when he is healthy and rolling. In last year’s Game 4, he hit three homers and worked six scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts to finish the sweep.
His bat has been quieter lately. Ohtani had a .566 OPS across eight September games while spending much of the month on the injured list, then went 2-for-13 against Atlanta in the NLDS. He was moved down to fifth in the lineup for Game 3 of that series.
Los Angeles still sees value in an Ohtani plate appearance that ends without damage. Dave Roberts said the assignment against Misiorowski is to take disciplined at-bats; a walk can be just as useful as a home run in a low-scoring matchup.
Misiorowski plans to approach Ohtani with the same respect he would give the game’s premier hitter, while trusting the pitches that earned him this start.
Milwaukee’s defense will have a major say in whether that plan holds up. The Brewers committed five errors in their series against San Diego, including three in Game 2. Cooper Pratt’s throwing error helped bring home a run in the one-run Game 3 defeat.
Pratt also made key plays in the clinching game, which Murphy viewed as an important response. October games can get untidy, Murphy said, and a club has to recover when they do. Against the Dodgers, extra outs could turn into additional trips to the plate for an order built to punish them.
Another concern is finding more October production from Brice Turang. He entered the Padres series with two strong regular seasons behind him, batting .278 with an .805 OPS over that span. But he began the NLDS 0-for-10 before a two-out seventh-inning single in Game 3, and Milwaukee moved on despite a 2-for-16 series from its second baseman.
Turang is 11-for-65 in 18 career postseason games, a .169 average with a .516 OPS. Murphy does not want to draw broad conclusions from those at-bats, noting Turang’s home run in last year’s NLDS Game 5 and pointing to his final two trips to the plate in this year’s clincher.
There was no shortage of work put in. While Murphy was at the ballpark with his children Friday night, Turang remained in the cage taking swings off the Trajekt machine. Murphy called him a player who simply loves being around baseball.
A productive Turang would give Milwaukee another threat around Jackson Chourio, William Contreras and Christian Yelich. If he stays quiet, the Dodgers can narrow their focus on the Brewers’ better-established bats.
The rotation next
Sunday’s opener puts Skubal against Misiorowski, a matchup that underscores the quality at the front of both staffs. Los Angeles has added Skubal to a group that includes Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow. Andrew Friedman said after the Division Series clincher that the Dodgers believed their rotation was one of the club’s chief strengths entering October.
Milwaukee counters with Misiorowski in Game 1 and Logan Henderson positioned for the second game. That gives the Brewers a different look from the pitching situation they carried into last year’s meeting, when they scored only one run per game in the sweep.
Neither lineup may get many clean chances. Yelich said the Brewers understand that scoring opportunities could be limited, making execution essential whenever runners reach base. Milwaukee’s path is likely to include patient at-bats, contact and pressure on the bases, with the goal of forcing these starters out before they can settle into a series-long rhythm.
