MILWAUKEE -- The Brewers have gone into postseasons as underdogs and as favorites. They have been hot and cold, home and away, with a multitude of stars or a collection of undersized hitters and unheralded out-getters. And yet no matter the circumstances, the venue or their talent on paper, the result of each of their last five forays into October since 2019 had been, maddeningly, the same: One and done.
Not this year.
This year, the Brewers are moving on.
William Contreras and Andrew Vaughn each hit go-ahead solo home runs and Brice Turang shrugged off a miserable series to mash a huge insurance shot while five Brewers pitchers -- including All-Star closer Trevor Megill as the starter and a huge dose of rookies Jacob Misiorowski and Chad Patrick -- allowed only six baserunners while cobbling their way to 27 outs and a 3-1 win over the Cubs in winner-take-all Game 5 of the National League Division Series at American Family Field on Saturday.
It snapped Milwaukee’s streak of six consecutive postseason series losses, sent the rival Cubs home and propelled the Brewers onward to the NLCS against another rival in the star-studded Dodgers.
“This was more than the usual Division Series,” said Christian Yelich, who is so prominent among the players and coaches who have felt every one of Milwaukee’s recent postseason heartbreaks. “Everyone wants to point to past postseasons, but the majority of these guys weren’t even here for that. So you try to downplay it going into this series against the Cubs and call it any other Division Series, you say you just want to advance.
“But the rivalry between these two teams -- I feel like it’s been our two teams going at it the last eight years. All of the storylines there. We just really wanted to perform for our city and this organization and our fanbase. We knew it meant a little bit extra.”
The first pitch of NLCS Game 1 comes quickly -- it’s scheduled for Monday at 7:08 p.m. CT, once they clear the streamers from the field and dry the carpeting in the clubhouse. But first, the Brewers savored one of the sweetest victories in franchise history. It not only gave them bragging rights over Craig Counsell and the rival Cubs, not only snapped a postseason hex that began with a loss to the Dodgers in Game 7 of the 2018 NLCS, when Counsell was Milwaukee’s hometown manager, but it provided a satisfying end to a best-of-five series that had grown exceedingly tense.
The Brewers had taken control of the first postseason matchup between these Interstate 94 rivals with early-inning scoring barrages in Games 1 and 2 in Milwaukee, lost control of the series while dropping Games 3 and 4 at Wrigley Field, then returned home to settle things in front of a charged-up crowd of 42,743 fans, with thousands more watching around the state of Wisconsin.
“I bet you could have robbed a bank in this state tonight,” GM Matt Arnold said. “Everyone was watching this game, and I hope we can win a couple more for them.”
They included Brewers owner Mark Attanasio, ever superstitious, who wore the same Nikes he wore the last time the Brewers won a winner-take-all postseason game in this ballpark: Game 5 of the 2011 NLDS against the D-backs.
The shoes were so old that Brewers equipment manager Jason Shawger had to glue them back together. But they worked.
“I haven’t let out a scream like that in 15 years,” Attanasio said. “This reminded me of getting over the hump and getting to the playoffs [in 2008 after a 26-year drought]. This started to feel that no matter what we did, the narrative was ‘the Brewers fade in the playoffs, they don’t go anywhere,’ forgetting that nobody ever thought we would get to the playoffs. Then when we do, it’s, ‘Oh, there they go again.’ Five years of futility. So it’s huge to get back to the NLCS.”
Another rival awaits. It was the Dodgers, after all, who left the Brewers one victory shy of the World Series in 2018.
“We’re always the underdogs,” said longtime Brewers right-hander Brandon Woodruff, who missed the NLDS because of a lat injury and will miss the NLCS, too. “But winning this series against our division rival, first time we won a series since 2018, we’ve got nothing to lose. We’re going to play free. I think getting over this hump is huge.”
Once again, the first inning set the tone. Megill, the Brewers’ All-Star closer who missed a month down the stretch but returned in time to fill whatever role was asked of him, made the start as an opener and became the first Milwaukee pitcher to keep Cubs hitters in the ballpark in the first inning.
Contreras homered with two outs in the bottom half of the first, making this the first series of at least five games in postseason history to feature a first-inning home run in each game, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. And while Seiya Suzuki answered with a homer for the Cubs as the very first batter to face Misiorowski, the 23-year-old rookie flamethrower settled in and sent the Brewers toward a victory the same way they won so many games during the regular season: With run-prevention.
Misiorowski delivered 12 outs on 54 pitches, followed by hard-worked left-hander Aaron Ashby for one out, rookie righty Patrick for five and Abner Uribe for the first multi-inning save of his career.
“It’s a team that deserves and earned their way for the right to go to the World Series,” Counsell said of the Brewers. “That's a good baseball team.”
Uribe allowed only one baserunner (via a walk) while powering his way through those two innings on 22 pitches. The ninth was three-up, three-down on nine pitches. But that didn’t mean it felt easy. Even with the turnover of today’s MLB, plenty of the Brewers remembered the pain of last year’s NL Wild Card Series loss to the Mets, which turned on Pete Alonso’s stunning, lead-flipping home run in the ninth off then-Milwaukee closer Devin Williams in legendary broadcaster Bob Uecker’s final game.
The Brewers didn’t shy away from the bad memory of that night. They embraced it.
“It absolutely entered our mind,” manager Pat Murphy said. “At the end of last season, we sat down in the room and were all shellshocked. I said, ‘Guys, I don’t know what to tell you. Somehow, this is going to help us.’ And sure enough, it was prophetic.”
Once Uribe induced a two-out bouncer from Cubs catcher Carson Kelly, and shortstop Joey Ortiz converted it into a victory, the Brewers no longer had to answer questions about a postseason series losing streak.
Yelich searched for the right word to describe what that feels like for the players, coaches and men and women of the front office who have had to hear about that for so many years.
“I don’t know if it’s relief,” Yelich said. “It was more getting over that first hurdle. We just really wanted it and we believed in each other the whole way, even though we lost those two games at Wrigley. It was two really good teams going at it and we came out on top.”