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MILWAUKEE – The Dodgers have a fight on their hands.
In their 2-1 defeat to the Brewers at American Family Field on Sunday night, the Dodgers were shown what they’re in for in this National League Championship Series.
The blue-collar Brewers won by playing the kind of baseball they played in their 103-win regular season.
They made four pitching changes on a night in which they started their prohibitive favorite to win the Cy Young Award.
They bunted.
They played clean defense.
Here’s what they didn’t do: They didn’t roll over the way they did last year when the Dodgers swept them in four games at this stage of the postseason.
The Brewers played with an edge they didn’t have a season ago, which was evident by a remark made by manager Pat Murphy before the game about Dodgers starting pitcher Tarik Skubal.
“I just want to step on his throat, do you know what I mean?” Murphy said. “I mean that respectfully because I really like Tarik, but I just want to beat him.”
He was joking, but he wasn’t.
The Brewers didn’t so much step on Skubal’s throat as they scratched and pinched him into submission, scoring once off him in the fourth inning and once more in the fifth and making those runs stand.
This was a game the Brewers had to win, and they played like it.
Jacob Misiorowski on the mound.
In front of a home crowd at American Family Field.
The Brewers won more games than any team in baseball this year, but what works in the regular season doesn’t necessarily work in October.
In the case of the Brewers, their majority of their starting rotation became almost unusable once the postseason started.
Outside of Misiorowski, they have only one other pitcher capable of making a traditional start in rookie Logan Henderson.
But the 24-year-old Henderson is by no means a workhorse. In each of his last three regular-season starts, he pitched five innings. In his postseason debut against the San Diego Padres in the Divisional Round, he pitched five innings.
Beyond that, they have right-hander Dustin May and left-hander Robert Gasser. May lasted only three innings in his NLDS start. Gasser wasn’t much better, pitching four.
The point is that manager Pat Murphy will be counting on his relievers to pitch the majority of the innings in this series. The Brewers have one of the more reliable bullpens in baseball, but the longer the series goes, the more fatigued the group figures to be, and the greater the advantage the Dodgers will have.
Forcing Misiorowski out of the game early, therefore, served two purposes for the Dodgers. In addition to taking the ball out of the hands of the best pitcher in baseball, it would begin the process of exhausting the Brewers’ relievers.
Mission accomplished …?
Misiorowski lasted only 4 ⅓ innings, as the Dodgers drove up his pitch count by forcing him to throw 35 pitches in the second inning alone. His quick departure prompted Murphy to use every one of the Brewers’ high-leverage relievers.
DL Hall finished the fifth inning.
Abner Uribe, the team’s second-best reliever, pitched the sixth.
Aaron Ashby, who pitched the second-most relief innings in the majors during the regular season, covered the seventh and eighth.
Closer Trevor Megill took care of the ninth.
This was what the Dodgers wanted – well, except for the not-scoring part.
While they succeeded in stressing Misiorowski, they couldn’t inflict much damage against them.
Roberts wanted his players to cut down on their swings, emphasizing the importance of “seeing the ball a little bit longer to spoil pitches, to shoot the ball the other way.”
“That’s how you’ve got to beat this guy,” Roberts said. “To think you’re going to catch him out front and pull it in the air is bananas.”
Misiorowski’s first pitch showed why. The fastball was clocked at 102.3 mph.
The Dodgers most productive inning was also their most frustrating.
Shohei Ohtani started the second inning by drawing a four-pitch walk. Ohtani advanced to second base on a single by Teoscar Hernandez and was driven in on a hit by Andy Pages.
Pages’ run-scoring single was followed up by a 10-pitch walk by Kyle Tucker that loaded the bases. Up came Kiké Hernández, who worked a seven-pitch at-bat that ended in an inning-ending doubleplay.
The Dodgers finished the game with nine men left on base. They were 1 for 6 with runners in scoring position.
On this night, they lost the battle.
At this point, they have to hope the effort will help them win the war.