Milwaukee carried a 7-4 Game 2 victory into the Los Angeles portion of the National League Championship Series on Monday night, giving the Brewers a 2-0 edge over the Dodgers and a far different October feeling than the club carried a year ago.
| NLCS Game 2 | Runs | Hits |
|---|---|---|
| Dodgers | 4 | 3 |
| Brewers | 7 | — |
The Brewers scored more runs in this one game than they managed during their entire 2025 NLCS sweep. They will now try to finish the job on the road, with Game 3 scheduled for Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET, 7 p.m. CT and 5 p.m. PT on FS1, FOX Deportes and FOX One.
Contreras supplied the answers
William Contreras again looked comfortable in the middle of a postseason spotlight. After Los Angeles opened with a 1-0 lead in the first inning, the Milwaukee catcher tied it with an RBI single. When the Dodgers moved back ahead, Contreras answered in the fifth with a solo homer.
His most important swing came in the sixth. Contreras lined another RBI single to put the Brewers ahead for good, finishing with three hits—matching the entire Dodgers lineup.
Contreras had already gone 6-for-16 in the Division Series against San Diego, with two home runs including the Game 1 winner. Against the Dodgers, he has continued to set the tone for a club playing with the memory of last year close at hand.
“They’re hungry,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “That’s the big difference.”
Murphy noted that Milwaukee had the best record in baseball last season before running into a dominant opponent. This year, he said, the Brewers are not intimidated by a Dodgers roster he called one of the finest ever assembled.
“They don’t want to be denied,” Murphy said. “They won’t be denied.”
Dodgers need their stars to break through
Los Angeles has plenty of familiar October hitters, but its offense has not found much traction through six postseason games. The Dodgers are batting .193 overall, going 37-for-192, and are 2-for-26 with runners in scoring position. They went 0-for-4 in those situations Monday.
| Dodgers postseason offense | Line |
|---|---|
| Team batting average | .193 (37-for-192) |
| Runners in scoring position | 2-for-26 (.077) |
| Will Smith | 1-for-23 (.043) |
| Mookie Betts | 5-for-21 (.238), no extra-base hit |
| Shohei Ohtani | 3-for-20 (.150), no extra-base hit |
| Freddie Freeman, past three games | 1-for-11 |
Smith, Betts, Ohtani, Freeman, Teoscar Hernández, Max Muncy and Kiké Hernández have all been major contributors for Los Angeles in recent seasons. But the Dodgers have not yet received their usual lineup-wide production. Freeman homered twice early in the Division Series, then went 1-for-11 across his next three games.
Milwaukee, meanwhile, went 6-for-15 with runners in scoring position in Game 2 and is batting .281 in those spots this postseason, going 16-for-57.
The bullpen innings keep piling up
The series has not yet produced a starter who worked beyond five innings. Milwaukee owns the 2-0 lead despite asking its relievers to cover 9 2/3 innings, more than the 8 1/3 supplied by its starters.
| Pitching workload through two games | Starter innings | Bullpen innings |
|---|---|---|
| Brewers | 8 1/3 | 9 2/3 |
| Dodgers | 7 2/3 | — |
Los Angeles received only 2 2/3 innings from Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 2, leaving its starters with 7 2/3 innings total for the series. The Dodgers entered with what appeared to be the deeper rotation, featuring Tarik Skubal, Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, while Milwaukee came in with Jacob Misiorowski as the strong National League Cy Young favorite.
The pitching matchup turns in the Dodgers’ favor on paper for the next two games at Dodger Stadium: Snell is set to face Robert Gasser in Game 3, while Glasnow is lined up for Game 4 against a Brewers starter yet to be announced.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts made the immediate need plain: “You need Snell to go out there and give us some length. Give us a typical Blake Snell outing, and let us deploy guys with a lead.”
Two wins down, but not a finish line
By sweeping the first two games at home, Milwaukee assured itself of another game at American Family Field. That return could be Game 5 of the NLCS, or it could be Game 1 of the World Series.
History favors the Brewers. Teams that have taken a 2-0 lead in a best-of-seven postseason series have advanced 79 times in 95 chances, an 83 percent rate. Still, the Dodgers have recent reminders that a comeback remains possible: Toronto overturned a 2-0 deficit against Seattle in the 2025 ALCS, and Arizona did the same against Philadelphia in the 2023 NLCS.
For Milwaukee, the road trip is not about celebrating a statistical advantage. It is about carrying Contreras’ urgency, a working bullpen and a sharper lineup into a stadium where the Dodgers will be desperate to make their championship pedigree matter.
