MILWAUKEE -- The Brewers spent much of Sunday doing things they usually don’t.
They walked hitters. They threw a wild pitch. They committed three errors, turning routine opportunities to get off the field into more work against a dangerous Padres lineup.
Then, with their last three outs approaching, the Brewers did something they’ve done all year:
They found a way.
Milwaukee’s 4-3 walk-off victory in Game 2 of the National League Division Series turned an afternoon of uncharacteristic mistakes into a commanding 2-0 series lead. Jackson Chourio supplied the winning swing against Mason Miller, but the comeback began with a group that refused to let its worst moments become its final ones.
“Definitely, it wasn’t my best performance out there, and to have teammates who picked me up like that was huge,” Brice Turang said. “This team is resilient, we’ve been resilient all year, and I’m just glad they had my back today.”
The Brewers won 103 regular-season games by combining patient offense, strong pitching and dependable defense. Sunday, that last piece repeatedly abandoned them.
In the fifth inning, Fernando Tatis Jr. hit a potential double-play grounder toward Turang at second. Milwaukee’s 2024 Platinum Glove Award winner moved across the bag, but the ball slipped beneath his glove.
“That ball in the fifth inning was tough,” Turang said. “I just lost concentration for a second, was thinking about tagging the base and trying to turn two before I fielded the ball, and that can’t happen.”
Three pitches later, Turang fielded Dustin Harris’ grounder and fed Cooper Pratt to get an out, but the shortstop’s relay to first resulted in another error as a run scored. Two innings after that, David Hamilton bobbled Tatis’ soft grounder, helping set up Ty France’s second RBI single of the afternoon.
The three errors matched Milwaukee’s season high. One of the two previous instances came in San Diego in August, during an 11-2 loss.
This time, the Brewers kept the damage manageable.
Logan Henderson’s postseason debut had begun with its own departure from the norm. The rookie, who threw only one wild pitch during the regular season, uncorked one after a two-out walk to Manny Machado in the first. France followed with a run-scoring single.
Henderson tied his season high with three walks before recording his fifth out, but he settled in enough to keep Milwaukee within reach while Michael King retired the first 14 Brewers he faced.
“It was a really close ballgame the entire time, and we were in it,” Henderson said. “So we knew we had a shot.”
Even the late innings offered another awkward moment: With Aaron Ashby pitching in the eighth, a bunt left nobody covering first base. Ashby heard catcher William Contreras telling him to hold the ball, stopped the play and moved on.
“Next play; that one’s over,” Ashby said.
That approach eventually carried into the batter’s box. Down 3-2 in the ninth, Milwaukee worked three walks against Miller to load the bases for Chourio, whose two-run single ended it.
The Brewers had rallied for 42 wins during the regular season. They have now come from behind in both games of this series.
“It doesn’t matter how it gets done,” Christian Yelich said. “It just matters that you get it done.”
Still, Yelich wasn’t confusing the result with a clean performance. The Brewers head to Petco Park one win from advancing, knowing both games could have gone the other way.
“We’ve got to play a little cleaner than we did today,” Yelich said. “Obviously, we’ll take it -- we got away with it -- but going into that environment against that team, we’re going to have to continue to play well if we want to come out on top.”