Dodgers vs. Brewers NLCS Game 1: a battle of all the cliches

SB Nation

After a fun (read-stressful) and pitching filled battle with the Philadelphia Phillies, the Dodgers are moving on to take on the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLCS. By manner of having the best record in the National

and Major Leagues, the Brewers will host Games 1 & 2 in Milwaukee.

As has been brought up many times, the Brewers are entering this series with the aww-shucks, we’re just a little team taking on the Big Bad Dodgers.

This series has all of the cliches that people like to put on things – Good vs Evil Empire, low payroll vs high payroll, Average Joes vs The Monsters, you name it.

Except, as stated above, if you finish the season with the best record in the majors, you can’t really play the “poor us we’re just average Joe’s” card. But boy are they gonna try.

All of their players do at least one thing well – if they’re not good offensively, they are probably great at defense, and vice versa. They’re an incredibly smart team and are intelligent baserunners. They only have three true starters, but they have a solid, reliable bullpen that can be mixed and matched in multiple ways. If they have one ‘flaw’, it’s that they’re not a particularly high powered, home run hitting team.

For Game 1, the Dodgers are sending Blake Snell to the mound. Snell is 2-0 on the postseason so far, striking out 18 in 13 innings pitched, including six innings in Philly, where he allowed only one hit in an incredibly hostile environment.

The Brewers had to go all five games in their NLDS series against the Chicago Cubs, so they are opting for an opener for Game 1. As of publish time neither the opener nor the bulk guy had been announced. The team did say that Freddie Peralta will be their Game 2 starter.

So far this postseason, the Brewers have gone the way of the 2024 Dodgers in that they have used a bullpen game in two of their five games against the Cubs. Their starting rotation took a big blow when they had to place Brandon Woodruff on the injured list on Sept. 21. And now, the Brewers plan in the NLCS is the same thing – strategize the pitching rotation pitch-by-pitch, game-by-game.

None of their starters went long in the NLDS. Quinn Priester only garnered two outs in his start in Game 3, where he threw 39 pitches and the Cubs scored four runs. Jose Quintana came in for relief of him, where he threw 49 pitches. Quintana hasn’t started a game for the Brewers since injuring his calf on Sept. 14. Jacob Misiorowski, their rookie phenom pitcher, had two huge relief appearances in the NLDS and could be used as a starter in this series.

Milwaukee is going with 12 pitchers on their NLCS roster, with 14 position players.

The Dodgers offense was not rocking and rolling in the NLDS, but that had a lot to do with the strength of the Phillies pitching staff. Shohei Ohtani. Freddie Freeman, and Max Muncy need to get it going at the plate. The key to the Dodgers taking this series is the offense getting to that Milwaukee pitching staff, and making them make more moves than they want to.

Yes they are the Big, Bad Dodgers who spent a kajillion dollars on players after having won it all last season. So, they should just act like it and go out and win this series too