The Brewers say they can beat the Dodgers in a best-of-three National League Wild Card Series, but even Milwaukee manager Craig Counsell conceded that they would be better positioned with healthy Corbin Burnes taking the mound in Game 1 on Wednesday.

Drawing on their playbook from the last time the Brewers met the Dodgers in the postseason, Counsell said the club wouldn’t announce its starting pitching plans until the eve of Game 1 at Dodger Stadium. It could be a bullpen day -- left-hander Brent Suter delivered three scoreless spot starts in September -- or Josh Lindblom on a short leash, or even Brandon Woodruff on short rest.

• NL Wild Card Series Game 1 presented by Hankook Tire: Wed., 9 p.m. CT on ESPN

It won’t be Burnes, who had been lined up for a start like this for weeks, only to suffer a left oblique strain in his final regular-season start. He is on the 10-day injured list.

The Brewers haven’t ruled out Burnes pitching again this season, but it would require a deep playoff run.

“Look, we lost Corbin Burnes. That’s a big loss,” Counsell said. “You can’t understate that loss. But we have to win games by scoring more than the other team. It’s not a ‘pitching-led’ team. We’re a baseball team, and we need to score more than them.

“Our pitching plans have changed. We had it set up in early September for Corbin to get to the first day … and unfortunately, we had an injury. So, that’s going to change how we pitch. But we still have got guys that can do it.”

Armed with corrected eyesight, a stronger mental plan thanks to offseason sessions with a performance coach and a vastly improved cut fastball, which Burnes used more often and to great effect, the 25-year-old produced a 2.11 ERA and 13.27 strikeouts per nine innings -- marks that would have put him fourth and second in the NL in those categories had his injury occurred one out later Thursday at St. Louis, giving Burnes the 60 total innings he needed to qualify for the ERA title. Instead, he finished at 59 2/3 innings.

Also questionable for this opening series is left-handed starter Brett Anderson, who exited the regular-season finale Sunday with a blister on the index finger of his pitching hand before the Brewers found themselves in the postseason as the NL’s No. 8 seed. Since the Brewers gave players Monday off, they won’t know about Anderson’s availability until Tuesday. Teams are not required to submit their 28-man roster until the morning of each round in the postseason.

The Brewers have been here before. When they faced the Dodgers in Game 1 of the 2018 NL Championship Series, veteran lefty Gio González started and delivered two innings on 32 pitches, followed by Woodruff for two innings (and a home run off Clayton Kershaw) when he was an upstart reliever. Essentially, Milwaukee pitched it like a bullpen game.

Counsell offered no clues about how the Brewers would tackle this Game 1. When asked whether Woodruff was even an option on three days’ rest after he threw eight brilliant innings on Saturday in St. Louis, the manager offered only, “I can assure you that Brandon Woodruff will start a game.”

Will it be the opening game? The Dodgers have already announced right-hander Walker Buehler.

“There’s going to be pitchers on the mound, I can assure you that,” Counsell said. “Might guys pitch one inning or guys pitch two innings? It could be, but we’re hoping we have some healthy guys who can give us good starts.”

Vogelbach’s status TBD
The Brewers’ injury issues heading into the series are not limited to the pitching staff. Designated hitter Daniel Vogelbach, who delivered a .987 OPS in 67 late-season plate appearances for the Brewers while hitting mostly against right-handed pitchers, grabbed at his right leg while running down the first-base line in his final at-bat on Sunday. Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns suggested it might be a quadriceps issue, but the club has not made any formal announcement.

Because the team took Monday off, it’s unclear whether Vogelbach will be able to start the series opener against Buehler, a tough customer who had a 0.96 WHIP in 36 2/3 regular-season innings.

"It's important that he's in the lineup. That's a big deal for us,” Counsell said. “I know Daniel will do everything he can, and we will do everything we can to get him in there.”

Another left-handed hitter, Ben Gamel will go through a workout Tuesday to determine his status for the series. He has been on the IL with a left quad injury.

Last call
• A group of additional players joined the rest of the team in St. Louis on Sunday night to travel to Los Angeles, raising to 39 the number of players available in the event of injuries or illness. It was many of those extra players who took part in a voluntary workout at Dodger Stadium on Monday, along with a handful of pitchers who wanted to throw and some others who required treatment.

• For the rest of the team, this year’s schedule allowed the Brewers to “take a deep breath,” Counsell said, compared to the past two years, when they had only one off-day off before the 2018 NL Division Series against the Rockies and the ’19 NL Wild Card Game at the Nationals. It was important to give players a day away from the field before they report for an evening workout scheduled for Tuesday. Counsell was looking forward to watching some of the American League playoff games during the day.

“It’s a day where you can literally sit back and enjoy baseball a little bit for us and still be excited about playing,” he said. “[Tuesday],I think, is the day a lot of us are looking forward to. We’re in it, and don’t have a game and we get to enjoy a lot of baseball.”

• “It was like Twitter. You couldn’t take your eyes off it. … I’ve never been a part of that, where the out-of-town scoreboard was so distracting.” -- Counsell, on the detailed out-of-town scoreboard at Busch Stadium, which delivered out-by-out updates about the Phillies’ and Giants’ games, which ultimately figured in the Brewers’ path to the postseason.