Old rivalries die hard. Craig Stammen can't bring himself to root for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the postseason — not yet, at least.
Via Tom Krasovic of the San Diego Union-Tribune, the San Diego Padres manager told Milwaukee Brewers pitchers Aaron Ashby and Robert Gasser “congratulations, guys” while exiting his postgame news conference after Game 4 of the National League Division Series.
“I hope you go all the way,” Stammen added.
If he's watching the National League Championship Series, Stammen would have observed a familiar sequence of events — and a satisfying ending — in Game 1 between the Brewers and Dodgers on Sunday.
The Padres forced Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski to throw 88 pitches across four innings on Oct. 3 in Game 1 of the NLDS, and manager Pat Murphy used five relievers across the final five innings. Milwaukee won the game, 3-2.
The Dodgers forced Misiorowski to throw 92 pitches across 4.1 innings on Sunday, and manager Pat Murphy used four relievers across the final 4.2 innings. Milwaukee won the game, 2-1.
The Brewers are seven wins away from winning their first World Series title — still a long ways to go, yet closer to a championship than any of the four remaining teams in the postseason field through Sunday.
Stammen pitched for the Padres from 2017-22, seeing the Dodgers often enough for familiarity to breed contempt even before he became the team's manager. He made 48 of his 562 career regular-season appearances against Los Angeles, not including two in the 2020 postseason, in which the Dodgers eliminated the Padres en route to a World Series title.
Count Stammen among those who are tired of seeing the Dodgers win in October. There's still another possible motivation underpinning Stammen's rooting interests.
Should the Brewers win the championship, it will affirm what anyone who saw their four-game NLDS against the Padres already knows: the four-game series, decided by a total of five runs, looked like a matchup of two of the best teams in MLB. That's an easier claim to make if Milwaukee takes care of business in the NLCS.
The better the Brewers look against the Dodgers — and the American League champion, should they advance to the World Series — the better the Padres' postseason looks in hindsight. It's tough to reach the World Series when you face baseball's best team in the Division Series round.
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