The Dodgers spent $163 million on the back end of their bullpen the last two years. The Milwaukee Brewers did not.
So two games into the National League Championship Series, guess which team’s relief corps has been lights out and which one has been lit up? (Spoiler alert: it’s not the team with all the money.)
Milwaukee sent a parade of four relievers to the mound for a second straight game Monday, and for a second straight game they didn’t give up a run, retiring the last 15 Dodgers in order in a 7-4 win that gives Milwaukee a commanding 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series, which moves to Dodger Stadium for Game 3 on Wednesday.
The Brewers’ bullpen has pitched 9 2/3 innings in the series, allowing just two hits — both off Abner Uribe — and three walks. That’s it. Both wins have gone to relievers, DL Hall in the opener and JoJo Romero in Game 2.
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Dodger relievers, meanwhile, have pitched 9 1/3 innings in the two games, giving up four runs on nine hits. Reliever Brock Stewart took the loss Monday.
In a series that’s rapidly shaping up as a battle of the bullpens, the Dodgers clearly aren’t getting what they paid for.
“I don’t have an answer,” Dodger manager Dave Roberts shrugged when asked why the Dodgers relievers have struggled while the Brewers have shone. “I know that they’ve got good arms; so do we. I think they’re just finding ways to win pitches better than we are.”
Slugger Max Muncy has a theory on the same question.
“They’re really good,” he said.
The Brewers’ 48 bullpen wins was the most in baseball during the regular season and its 3.40 ERA was best in the National League. And it has been even better in the postseason, allowing just one earned run in 28 2/3 innings against the Dodgers and San Diego Padres. In the divisional era (since 1969), only the 1991 Minnesota Twins have a lower bullpen ERA through six playoff games and with a reliever earning the victory in all five of Milwaukee’s postseason wins, the Brewers have done something only the 2014 Kansas City Royals had done previously.
“There’s a reason they’re where they’re at right now and the bullpen’s a big piece of that,” Muncy said. “If there is a positive, you can say that a lot of our guys are starting to get looks at their backend guys. But when they’re as good as they are, I don’t know how much that helps.
“They’re all throwing 100 [mph] plus and they all have really nasty stuff.”
Especially Aaron Ashby, who has pitched in both games, holding the Dodgers to a walk in 3 2/3 innings, striking out three. He’s the Brewers’ best-paid reliever, earning $5.5 million this season.
The Dodgers have three relievers making at least twice that — and one of them, Blake Treinen, didn’t even make the postseason roster. One of the others, Tanner Scott, gave up twice as many runs in his first postseason appearance as the Brewers’ bullpen has given up this month.
“They attack the hitters. They throw strikes. They got good stuff. They throw hard,” Dodger outfielder Teoscar Hernández said of Milwaukee’s relievers. “We’ve just got to do a better job.”
Hernández then echoed Muncy in pointing out the Dodgers have now seen six of Milwaukee’s nine relievers, with Ashby and Uribe throwing in both games. And while the Dodgers haven’t done anything against them yet, that familiarity could help going forward.
“We know what we’re going to get,” Hernández said.
Brewer manager Pat Murphy conceded the point — sort of.
“Familiarity, as the numbers tell us, does provide an edge,” he said. “So what we try to do is make sure they don’t face the same guys the next time they pitch if they’re one-inning guys.
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“Can’t always do that.”
Sometimes you can, though. Uribe, who has appeared in all six Brewer games this postseason, has already faced eight Dodger hitters in the series, but only one of them, Andy Pages, twice. And when he does face someone a second time, Murphy said with a smile, who’s to say he’ll him pitch the same way?
“Uribe might have something up his sleeve based on how those other times went,” he said. “Like ‘well, I never gave him this.’”
That would count as a surprise. However the dominant performance of the Brewers’ bargain-basement bullpen would not. Because even in baseball, the Dodgers are finding out, there are some things money can’t buy.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.