For a brief moment, it felt like things were going to go the Brewers’ way on Tuesday night in Milwaukee. Milwaukee had their ace, Freddy Peralta, on the mound, and he put up a zero in the top
of the first against the high-powered Dodger offense. In the bottom of the inning, Los Angeles’s starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto—who the Brewers hammered earlier this season—gave up a solo home run on his very first pitch. But the Dodger offense had an answer and the Milwaukee offense did not; after that home run, Yamamoto locked in and for the second straight night, Brewer hitters were helpless against a starting pitcher who cruised.
Peralta got things started the night by using off-speed pitches on four of the five pitches he threw to the likely National League MVP, Shohei Ohtani, the last of which was a slider which Ohtani struck out swinging over. Mookie Betts was next, and he walked after Peralta’s 3-2 fastball missed just below the zone. Freddie Freeman hit a routine fly ball to right for the second out, and Will Smith struck out on a fastball on the outer edge, and Peralta had an important first-inning zero.
After being shut out until the ninth last night, the Brewers needed only one pitch to get on the board in this one. Jackson Chourio got a fastball in the lower-inside quadrant of the strike zone and crushed it, sending it out to right field for a solid opposite-field homer. The Brewers had their first lead of the series.
Yamamoto recovered and retired the next three batters on groundouts, though one of those—from William Contreras—was crushed at 105 mph.
Peralta came out looking to preserve that early lead, and got off to a nice start by getting Max Muncy to pop out in foul territory near third base. But Teoscar Hernández got a 3-2 curveball on the inner half that didn’t get low enough, and he pulled it down the left-field line for a towering home run. The next batter, Tommy Edman, got a hanging curveball and hit it hard to right but Chourio made the catch for the second out. But the Dodgers put together a two-out rally: Kiké Hernández hit a 2-2 pitch up the middle for a single, and Andy Pages—who came in hitting .037 in the postseason—lined one into the right-field corner for an RBI double. Ohtani hit a ball 115 mph but it went right to Chourio for the third out. It was a rough inning for Peralta, who was up to 45 pitches after the second inning and was now trailing, 2-1.
Andrew Vaughn was the first batter of the bottom of the second, and he hit a grounder to third that Muncy was unable to handle. Vaughn reached on the E5, but he was quickly replaced when Sal Frelick grounded into a fielder’s choice that was too slow for a double play. Caleb Durbin attacked a couple of fastballs early in the count but fouled them off, and he struck out looking on the third pitch for the second out. Jake Bauers grounded out, and Yamamoto held the Brewers in the second despite the error.
In need of a quick inning, Peralta took a nice step in that direction by getting Betts to ground out on the first pitch of the third. Ortiz made a tricky play on a Freeman grounder that hit both the mound and second base, but he stuck with it and threw him out for the second out. Smith then popped out, and Peralta did get a quick, nine-pitch 1-2-3 third inning.
Ortiz started the bottom of the inning by grounding out weakly back to Yamamoto. Chourio followed with a three-pitch strikeout, but Brice Turang prevented a clean inning by lining a two-out single to left. Contreras hit a hard line drive, his second batted ball of the game with an exit velocity of 105 mph, but he hit it right at Betts, and Yamamoto was out of the inning.
Muncy started the fourth by hitting a line drive that looked destined for the right-field corner, but a leaping Vaughn snagged it out of the air for the first out. Teoscar Hernández worked to a full count but grounded out to third. A 1-2-3 inning wasn’t in the cards, though, as Edman put one into the gap that bounced over the wall into the Dodger bullpen for a ground-rule double. Luckily it didn’t hurt the Brewers, as Peralta struck out Kiké Hernández to end the inning.
Christian Yelich’s struggles continued as he got four straight splitters and struck out swinging at the last one; via Curt Hogg, Yelich at this point was 0-for-15 since doubling to lead off game three of the NLDS. Vaughn flew out to center a couple pitches later, but Frelick slapped a base hit to left to extend the inning. But Yamamoto struck out Durbin on three pitches, too, and for the second straight night, the Brewers were looking somewhat helpless against a Dodger starting pitcher.
Peralta’s first pitch of the fifth rode up and in on Pages and it hit him on the hand (he had a checked swing at the pitch). That put a leadoff baserunner on in front of the dangerous top of the Dodger order, and Aaron Ashby started throwing in the Milwaukee bullpen. But Peralta struck out Ohtani for the first out and, after a lengthy battle, got Betts to ground into a 5-4-3 double play to end the inning.
Bauers led off the bottom of the fifth and he finally put together a nice at-bat against Yamamoto: he worked to a full count before just missing a homer on a fly ball that died on the warning track in right field. After two straight balls to Ortiz, the catcher Smith initiated a mound visit, but it didn’t work, as Ortiz, who is batting .125 in the postseason, drew a walk—a major mistake for Yamamoto. There were signs of life from the Milwaukee crowd, and Chourio smoked a ball 111 mph into left, but luck was not on his side, and he hit it right at Hernández for the second out. Ortiz took off on a 1-2 pitch but Turang watched it float over the plate for strike three, and despite some better at-bats for the Brewer lineup, they had nothing to show for it.
After better efficiency in the 3rd-5th innings, Peralta had gotten his pitch count under control enough to go back out for the sixth inning. He started nicely by getting Freeman to hit a high, shallow fly ball to right on the first pitch of the inning. Durbin made a nice play on a grounder down the third-base line to retired Smith for the second out, but Peralta fell behind Muncy (with no help from the umpire; the first pitch looked good) 3-0. A called strike and a couple of foul balls followed, but on the seventh pitch of the at-bat, and Peralta’s 97th pitch of the night, Muncy snuck one just over the glove of a leaping Frelick in center field, and the Dodgers took a 3-1 lead.
After the Muncy homer, Pat Murphy made the somewhat curious decision to move to Abner Uribe, who threw 24 pitches on Monday and 22 on Saturday and looked tired in yesterday’s ballgame. Teoscar Hernández was up, and on the second pitch, he hit a grounder that bounced off of Uribe’s leg. Uribe tried to recover and throw Hernández out at first, and he made it somewhat close, but his throw was a bit wild and went into the camera well, which put Hernández on second. Uribe struck out Edman to end the inning without further damage, but the Brewers needed to find their offense to overcome what was beginning to feel like an insurmountable two-run deficit.
Peralta wasn’t terrible today, but on a night when the Brewers needed him to be near-perfect, he was not. He finished with three runs allowed on five hits and a walk in 5 2/3 innings, but he needed 97 pitches to do that. He was one strike away from a very respectable two-runs-in-six-innings outing, but his inability to put Muncy away cost him and was a microcosm of the efficiency problems that have plagued him for his whole career. In retrospect, the Brewers probably shouldn’t have let Peralta face Muncy (or Freeman) in the sixth, when he was around 90 pitches and on his third time through the order. But he’d been good leading up to that inning, and it’s not difficult to understand why that decision was made (apparently after Peralta talked Murphy into letting him go back out, according to the on-field reporter Lauren Shehadi).
Frustratingly, Contreras grounded out to third on the first pitch of the bottom of the sixth at a time when the Brewers desperately needed to get to the Dodger bullpen. Yelich’s hitless streak continued when he grounded out to second, and Vaughn hit a soft liner to third to end another quick inning. Yamamoto needed only 11 pitches, and was only at 76 through six innings.
Uribe returned to the mound in the seventh. He got ahead of Kiké Hernández, the leadoff hitter, but on a 1-2 pitch he hit a fly ball into the left-field gap. It seemed like a catchable ball, but with Bauers in left field and Frelick playing to the right-field side of center, it dropped, and Hernández had a double (and, for what it’s worth, Statcast gave it a .660 xBA). Pages dropped a bunt down and got Hernández to third, and with Ohtani looming, Murphy summoned Aaron Ashby from the bullpen.
The Brewers pulled their infield in (against the guy who hit one 115 mph earlier in the game), and after a battle, Ohtani hit a grounder between Vaughn and Turang for an RBI single that made it 4-1. After a Betts fly-out to right, Ohtani stole second, but Freeman struck out and the inning was over.
The Brewers offense now had a lot of work to do, but they had nothing for Yamamoto, who got Frelick, Durbin, and Bauers on consecutive groundouts in the seventh.
Tobias Myers made his first appearance of the 2025 postseason in the eighth, but he was rudely greeted by Smith, who dinked his first pitch into shallow right for a leadoff single. Myers got ahead of Muncy 0-2 but then threw four straight balls, and the Dodgers were threatening in the eighth with two on and nobody out. Teoscar Hernández hit a weak grounder to Durbin that was, effectively, a sacrifice bunt. The Brewers again pulled the infield in, and Edman did just what Ohtani did in the previous inning and bashed a single between Vaughn and Turang for an RBI single.
Muncy held at third, which gave Milwaukee a chance to get out of the inning without a second run crossing. After getting ahead of Kiké Hernández, Myers lost him too and issued a walk that loaded the bases. He got the second out on a pop-out by Pages, but Murphy wasn’t going to let Myers face Ohtani with the bases juiced: instead, he brought in the lefty Robert Gasser, who, of course, promptly struck out the league’s best hitter, with the bases loaded, on three pitches.
Isaac Collins came in to pinch-hit for Ortiz to start the bottom of the eighth, but he didn’t fare any better than anyone else, and struck out looking at a pitch on the outside corner. Chourio grounded out meekly on the first pitch he saw. Turang at least hit a hard ground ball, but Edman made a nice play and threw him out at first. For the second straight night, a Dodgers starter had gone eight innings, a true “white whale” event in modern baseball.
Gasser’s first pitch of the ninth hit Betts. Freeman followed with a line drive through the middle that he turned into a hustle double—yes, 36-year-old Freddie Freeman hit a hustle double—and the Dodgers had runners on second and third with nobody out. Milwaukee intentionally walked Smith and, for the third time, pulled the infield in, this time against Muncy. Gasser did get the first out with a strikeout of Muncy, and with a chance to get out of the inning, Murphy brought in Grant Anderson to face Teoscar Hernández. That move worked: Hernández grounded into a 5-4-3 double play that ended the inning.
Yamamoto was out to go for a complete game (and a hidden shutout) in the bottom of the ninth. Contreras flew out to shallow center for the first out, Yelich hit a weak grounder back to the mound, and Vaughn struck out. It was the Dodgers’ first complete game in the postseason since 2004, and Yamamoto’s first in MLB.
The Brewers are now not only in a deep offensive rut, they’re in a 2-0 hole as the series shifts back to Los Angeles. Their mission there will be simply to get the series back to Milwaukee for a game six. This series isn’t over, but unless the bats wake up, it will be soon.
Tomorrow is an off day, and the series continues in Los Angeles on Thursday at 5:08 p.m. central time. Tyler Glasnow will take the mound for the Dodgers, while the Brewers’ pitching plans are unknown.
