Bradford Doolittle
Multiple Authors
MILWAUKEE — In last year’s National League Championship Series, the Brewers did not score more than one run in any contest of a four-game sweep against the Dodgers. In the first game of this year’s rematch, they managed two against one of the game’s best pitchers on Sunday, and it was enough to do something Milwaukee couldn’t manage last year: Win.
The Brewers beat Los Angeles ace Tarik Skubal by eking out two somewhat improbable runs in Game 1 as Milwaukee edged the two-time defending champions 2-1, snapping a seven-game postseason skid against the Dodgers.
“Just proud of our guys,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said.
In the box score, it looked simple enough. Brice Turang homered off Skubal in the fourth. Luis Lara bounced an RBI single up the middle against Skubal in the fifth. Milwaukee starter Jacob Misiorowski and four relievers held the Dodgers to Andy Pages’ RBI single in the second.
Easy peasy, right? Not so much. As so often is the case in postseason baseball, the drama is in the details.
“You’ve got to just do what they give you and roll with the punches,” Misiorowski said.
Skubal rolled through his first three innings with such a combination of dominance and efficiency that, given the way last year’s NLCS unfolded, it looked like Milwaukee might be in for yet another long, frustrating night.
Turang led off the fourth with the memory of a first-inning Skubal inside sinker that he fouled off his knee, leaving him hopping around the plate in discomfort. Three pitches into his second shot at Skubal, the lefty-hitting Turang got another inside sinker and this time somehow turned it around into an opposite-field solo shot to left, tying the game.
“I didn’t want to foul a ball off my knee again, so I was like ‘I’m going to stay inside of this one,'” Turang said. “I just got it. Sometimes less is more.”
And sometimes more is something unprecedented. According to TruMedia, it was the first opposite-field homer Turang has hit against a lefty pitcher in the big leagues, regular season or playoffs. And it was also the first opposite-field homer to a lefty that Skubal has allowed in the majors. Welcome to October.
“A 2-0 sinker in, I’m going to live with that left-on-left,” Skubal said. “He put a good swing on it.”
The Brewers’ go-ahead run was in some ways just as surprising. After Garrett Mitchell walked to lead off the fifth, rookie Cooper Pratt laid down a successful sacrifice bunt. That much was standard business except perhaps for the fact that it brought up Lara, a 21-year-old, switch-hitting rookie who has mostly stood out for his defense so far in the majors. He struck out on a Skubal fastball in his first at-bat and didn’t look comfortable in doing so.
Apparently, Lara learned from the experience. When Skubal started him off with a changeup, Lara bounced it sharply into center field to drive in Mitchell, giving the Brewers the slimmest of advantages, one that their bullpen protected from there.
“I was just looking to push the runner across,” Lara said via an interpreter. “That was the only thing that was going through my mind.”
For Murphy to set up the go-ahead rally with a sacrifice, knowing Lara was on deck, spoke volumes about what he thinks of his rookie outfielder.
“He didn’t come into this thing thinking he was playing in the big leagues this year, and he didn’t come into this thing knowing who Skubal was,” Murphy said. “That’s kind of a beautiful innocence.”
Game 1 was billed as a showdown between Skubal, the two-time Cy Young winner whom the Dodgers nabbed at the trade deadline, outbidding other teams including, reportedly, the Brewers, and the fireballing sensation Misiorowski. Neither starter saw the sixth inning.
Instead, the bullpens combined to put up 7⅔ scoreless innings, leaving the Brewers’ improbable tallies as the decisive runs in the game. It’s the kind of game you might see more of as Milwaukee bids to end L.A.’s two-year championship reign and, in doing so, reach the World Series for the first time since 1982.
“These are the games we live for,” Turang said. “We love doing this. This is why we play the game, just to go out there and compete.”
