SAN DIEGO – For the second straight year, the Brewers will play for the pennant.
And for the second straight year, the Dodgers are standing in the way.
If this Milwaukee team really is different after winning a franchise-record 103 games in the regular season and taking down baseball’s hottest second-half team in the National League Division Series, which ended Wednesday with a 3-1 Brewers win over the Padres in Game 4 at Petco Park, then this is the time to show it. Milwaukee is moving on to the League Championship Series for the second straight season and the fifth time in franchise history. Their last three have been against the Dodgers.
“We have a monumental task ahead of us, based on what I know about the Dodgers. There’s like an All-Star at every position,” said Brewers manager Pat Murphy. “But you know what? Teams win. And we’ve got to play as a team.”
Game 1 is Sunday at American Family Field, after the Dodgers finished off the Braves in four games earlier Wednesday. And if you’re wondering what’s different about this Brewers team compared to the others, it starts with this: Jacob Misiorowski will be on the mound.
The NL Cy Young Award front-runner was in the bullpen for the start of Wednesday’s game in a sign of the urgency the Brewers carried into the night. If they could take the NLDS in four games, they would have Misiorowski primed and ready to throw the first pitch of the NLCS. But for that to become a reality, the Brewers had to rewrite the narrative that they cannot win a postseason game on the road. They had come up empty in each of their last 12 tries, tying for the longest road losing streak in the postseason in MLB history.
The last time they had won on the road in the playoffs? Game 3 of the 2018 NLCS, when they beat Walker Buehler at Dodger Stadium.
And who started for the Padres on Wednesday night? None other than Buehler.
“I’m just proud of the guys,” said Christian Yelich, the Brewers’ only active player left from 2018. “This is a really tough team that we beat. We knew coming into the series that, with the pitching involved on both sides, a lot of these games were going to be really tight. You’re going to have to win on the margins, and win some moments, and execute.
“For the most part, we did that. We didn’t play perfect, but the guys did a great job coming together as a group and finding ways to win these games.”
The Brewers won the way they won games all year long, getting contributions from everywhere on the roster.
It started with left-hander Robert Gasser, the onetime Padres prospect traded to Milwaukee in the Josh Hader deal in 2022, who’d missed most of the previous two seasons rehabbing from Tommy John surgery and didn’t crack Milwaukee’s Opening Day roster. He rose to the moment with four effective innings when it mattered most, including escaping a bases-loaded jam in the first inning after third baseman Joey Ortiz opted not to risk throwing away the baseball on a potential double play grounder, and again in the fourth after rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt committed his third error in as many games. Gasser departed with Milwaukee leading, 2-1.
“It gives you confidence going forward,” Gasser said. “I feel like I probably heard the crowd at its peak volume and I was able to execute pitches there.”
The runs came mostly from Garrett Mitchell, the former first-round Draft pick who battled four years of injuries before playing more games this season than his first four seasons combined, broke free from a 2-for-11, six-strikeout start to this series with an RBI single in third inning and a leadoff triple in the fifth that led to the go-ahead run. Jackson Chourio, the 22-year-old star in the making, lined a one-out single through a drawn-in infield for the 17th postseason RBI of his young career, passing Ryan Braun for the franchise record and matching Hall of Famer Andruw Jones for the most postseason RBIs in Major League history for a player shy of his 23rd birthday.
As of that moment, Chourio had driven in six of the Brewers’ first 12 runs in the series.
By the time Sal Frelick’s sixth-inning sacrifice fly made it 3-1, the game belonged to the Brewers’ dynamic bullpen, starting with left-hander Aaron Ashby, whose uncle Andy pitched eight seasons for the Padres and made two All-Star teams. Ashby delivered three hitless innings to bridge the gap to Abner Uribe, facing the top of San Diego’s star-studded lineup while pitching for the fourth time in five days.
He got through it, but not by much. Mitchell went all the way to Petco Park’s short center-field wall to catch what would have been a tying, two-run homer off the bat of Manny Machado for the second out of the inning, then saw second baseman Brice Turang make a tricky catch in foul ground to end the threat.
The Machado fly ball was one of the Brewers’ biggest scares of the season. According to Statcast, it would have been a home run in 19 of 30 MLB ballparks, including American Family Field.
"I thought that was way gone,” Uribe said.
"I just took a deep breath and said, 'Whatever's going to happen is going to happen, and we just have to respond and be ready for the next pitch,’” Murphy said.
"It kind of just happened,” said Mitchell. “Instinctually, just do what I do. Make a good jump and see what happens."
Said Machado: “Nice play. Should have hit it harder.”
Because he didn’t, the Brewers managed to hand a lead to Trevor Megill, who logged his second save in the series while Misiorowski got loose by throwing what bullpen catcher Ty Duvall swears were 110 mph fastballs in the bullpen. Misiorowski later said he was ready to go. Murphy said it was all a deke.
Whatever the truth, Megill made sure the Brewers didn’t need him. Unlike last year against the Cubs, when the Brewers won the first two games at home only to lose the next two on the road, there will be no NLDS Game 5.
There were some close calls along the way, but, yes, the Brewers are capable of winning a postseason game on the road.
“The momentum switched after [the Brewers’ Game 3 loss], and to come out today and be so diligent in front of this crowd, it was a great win all the way around,” Murphy said. “I’m proud of the guys. They had to do it. They were resilient, relentless, went pitch to pitch, and were not going to be denied.”
Because of that, the Brewers are moving on.
If the NLCS is anywhere near as entertaining, everyone is in for a treat.
“Just the level of baseball played was so intense, was so high,” said Padres outfielder Fernando Tatis Jr. “They play really good baseball, man. We have to give it to them. Nothing but to wish them luck and to stay healthy onto the other side.”
So, with that hurdle cleared, how about another? The Brewers are one of five active franchises, with the Mariners, Padres, Rays and Rockies, never to win a World Series.
For the second straight year, they find themselves one step away.
“It just feels different, man. I feel like this year we just have a different type of confidence, a different type of belief, and we’re just going out there and having fun -- not putting too much pressure on ourselves. And we know we’re a force to be reckoned with,” Mitchell said. “We know the Dodgers are a force to be reckoned with, too, and it’s going to be a really, really fun series and hopefully we come out on top.”