In the second game of the NLCS on Monday, Jake Bauers had one of the best at-bats in franchise history. Against Yoshinobu Yamamoto, one of the best postseason pitchers of his generation, he issued a 12-pitch walk, which was followed by a two-run single that chased down Yamamoto and sent the Brewers on their way. That at-bat had a brief reign as the best at-bat of Bauers’ career. With one out in the seventh inning, against a cruising ace, just after the Dodgers had gotten Abner Uribe, they took a late lead and took over every game. momentum, Bauers outdid himself. He battled Blake Snell for 11 pitches, the last of which ended up deep in the right field seats at Dodger Stadium. The Brewers never looked back. Bauers wasn’t the only hero. Jackson Chourio homered on the first pitch of the game. Garrett Mitchell followed Bauers with his own home run. Robert Gasser was huge, with five scoreless innings. DL Hall had one of the biggest moments of any Brewers reliever in a postseason full of great moments for Brewers relievers. The defense looked good. But Bauers stole the headlines and the memories, and the Brewers now need only one win in four tries to reach something they haven’t been to in 44 years: the World Series. Milwaukee got things going right away. On the first pitch of the game, Chourio jumped on a fastball up the middle and hit it over the right field wall. It was the last thing the Dodgers needed and a big early jolt for the visiting team, as Milwaukee took an early 1-0 lead. With his third career postseason leadoff home run, Chourio tied for second on the all-time list of leadoff home runs in the playoffs. This is where I remind you that he is 22 years old. It’s a good thing they got to Snell when they did. After Chourio’s home run, Snell struck out the next three batters on just 11 pitches. In the second, he allowed a pair of runners (Mitchell walked and Cooper Pratt singled with one out), but he got out of that jam and then completely locked himself out. After Pratt’s single, Snell retired the next 14 in a row. He seemed dominant while doing so. However, in a twist that few would have predicted, Gasser was ready to match Snell. He did it much differently: Gasser wasn’t working with strikeout material and got some help from his defense (as seen in Luis Lara’s play in the second inning, shown below), but the Dodgers found themselves unable to deal with him. He scattered a few hits and took care of the first runners three times, but no runner advanced beyond second, and the Dodgers never felt like they had much of a threat against the Brewers left-hander. Gasser even stayed on to face the top of the order for the third time; with a runner on first base and one out, Mookie Betts hit a hard liner to center that was caught on a slide by Mitchell, and Freddie Freeman hit a harmless grounder to end the fifth and Gasser’s night. It was a fantastic outing for the Brewers’ young lefty. Building on his good performance in San Diego, when he allowed one run and three hits in four innings, Gasser went five scoreless, with three strikeouts, three hits allowed, one walk and one hit. After Snell pitched a fourth consecutive perfect inning in the sixth, the Brewers bullpen took control, with Uribe to face the middle of the Dodgers lineup. Uribe, however, did not have it today. He walked Teoscar Hernandez and Kyle Tucker on just nine pitches, injecting a lot of life into the Los Angeles crowd. Dave Roberts, sensing a moment, pulled Andy Pages to give Max Muncy an at-bat against right-hander Uribe, an aggressive but understandable move since Uribe needed to face another hitter. Muncy got ahead of Uribe 2-1, but Uribe found him and came back to strike out Muncy. With Hall hot in the bullpen, Pat Murphy made a surprising non-play: he let Uribe stay to face Shohei Ohtani. Uribe still had not found the area; He walked Ohtani on five pitches and the bases were loaded with one out for Will Smith. Smith, knowing that Uribe desperately needed a first-pitch strike, sat on the fastball and hit one right up the middle; He hit it off the left side wall for a two-run double that gave the Dodgers a 2-1 lead. Murphy has made all the right moves this entire postseason so far, and it’s hard to guess… but not pulling Uribe for Hall against Ohtani was a mistake you could see coming. Uribe has worked a lot and tonight he didn’t have it. After the Dodgers announced Josué De Paula as a pinch-hitter, Murphy replaced Uribe with Hall and Roberts responded by replacing De Paula with Kiké Hernández. With runners on second and third and one out, Hall struck out Hernandez and Tommy Edman to keep the Dodgers at two, a pair of huge outs from the Brewers left-hander. Now, however, the Brewers needed to cook something up against a starting pitcher who had been absolutely peppering them since the second pitch of the game. Snell had only 81 pitches left and had yet to allow a runner since Pratt’s one-out single in the second inning. But he had been sitting for a while. Finally, leading off the seventh inning, the Brewers ended Snell’s streak of 14 straight when Andrew Vaughn issued a seven-pitch walk, getting the Los Angeles bullpen moving. Christian Yelich replaced Vaughn as a pinch runner while Bauers came to the plate. With Bauers’ long at-bat against Yamamoto fresh on the mound, and with Snell approaching 90 pitches, the Brewers hoped Bauers would be able to turn in another long at-bat. So they took a 2-1 lead. At 2-2, he fouled on a couple of shots. He worked until 3-2. He fouled out on another pitch. And then another. Then he hit it hard down the right field line, one that looked like it was going to come off the bat… but it also fouled out. The next one did not foul. Bauers got a mid-mid fastball on the 11th pitch of the at-bat and detonated it. He hit it at 109.4 mph deep into the right field seats, a two-run homer that turned the score in the Brewers’ favor. Two days after his 12-pitch at-bat that sparked Milwaukee’s comeback against Yamamoto, an 11-pitch at-bat ended even better against Snell. A remarkable moment. The Brewers weren’t done with Snell. With Mitchell, a left-hander, up, Roberts tried to get one more batter out of his starter. It was a bad idea. Mitchell threw a 1-0 changeup that took up too much of the plate, and Mitchell threw it even harder and farther than Bauers, a 111.5 mph, 428-foot throw, no doubt, that doubled Milwaukee’s lead. Hall continued for the Brewers in the bottom of the seventh, now pitching with a 4-2 lead. He got some help from his defense: Joey Ortiz made a good pick on a short jumper to get Betts for the first out, and Chourio made a nice running catch for the second. Ortiz made another good play on a weak grounder, and Hall had taken his turn in the spotlight of the Brewers’ bullpen: five batters, five outs, two high-difficulty inherited runners stranded. Roki Sasaki started the eighth for the Dodgers, but he was getting a lot of plate. Turang reached on an infield single with one out, and Contreras followed with a hit up the middle, putting runners on the corners with one out for Yelich, who was making his first at-bat of the game. Roberts moved to left-hander Justin Wrobleski in place of Yelich, who faced a tight infield. He just missed an extra-base hit on a helicopter down the left field line that was called foul on the first pitch he saw (upon closer review…it really looked like it could have been fair), but it turned out that the Brewers didn’t need Yelich to pass to get that insurance run: a ground ball popped off Smith, both runners advanced, and the Brewers took a 5-2 lead. Wrobleski struck out Yelich and Bauers to end the inning, but Milwaukee now had a three-run lead that they only needed to protect for six more outs. Hall, who had one night, stayed until the bottom of the eighth. Tucker struggled to lead off the inning, but he’s no Bauers, and he flew to center on the eighth pitch of the at-bat. Hall then had a favorable matchup against Muncy, who had come in for Pages in the sixth, and Muncy exited. With two outs, Ohtani hit a 114 mph single up the middle (by far the best contact of the series for him) and Hall was removed in favor of closer Trevor Megill, who was brought in to face Smith. Smith flew harmlessly to Lara in right, and the Dodgers were left with three outs. Pratt got his third hit of the game in the top of the ninth, and with two outs moved to second on a stolen base. Ortiz, who looked a little better at the plate today but had some bad luck with the BABIP, snuck one in this time: He grounded past Muncy to left field and Pratt scored. Classic Brewers baseball. Chourio rebounded to end the inning, but Megill, a pitcher not accustomed to getting more than three outs, now had a four-run lead to work with. It turned out that Megill didn’t need the extra mattress. He calmly retired the Dodgers in order, and the Brewers earned a 6-2 victory and a 3-0 series lead. What an extraordinary and resistant piece of equipment. After looking helpless against Snell for most of the game, and after the Dodgers finally broke through against the Brewers bullpen in the sixth, Bauers, Mitchell and the Brewers struck back with a sledgehammer. Bauers’ home run is immediately one of the greatest moments in franchise history. Mitchell’s was another exclamation point. But let’s not forget Hall’s work; his two strikeouts in the previous inning, in retrospect, couldn’t have been bigger. The Brewers, improbably, have a chance to close out the series tomorrow night. That game is at 7 pm Tyler Glasnow will start for the Dodgers and we’ll see what the Brewers do with their pitching staff; we’ll probably see Dustin May, and I’ll bet you some money that Aaron Ashby will show up big time since he didn’t end up settling in tonight. For now, I’ll just be thinking about this.
