Things couldn’t have gone better for the Brewers in Milwaukee to start the NLCS. For the first time in their history, they’ve got a 2-0 lead in the Championship Series. Things get trickier today, though, as the series shifts to California and the glaring advantage that the Dodgers hold in starting pitching could become more obvious.
The Dodgers will start two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, the 33-year-old lefty who pitched to a 1.90 ERA in nine starts this regular season and who pitched eight
innings of nearly flawless baseball when he shut down the Brewers in Game One of last season’s series to the tune of eight innings, no runs, one hit, no walks, and ten strikeouts. But it remains to be seen whether Snell is in top form at the moment. While he was excellent when on the mound during the regular season, Snell threw only 42 2/3 innings, and he hasn’t had a start that went more than four innings—including a shaky outing against the Braves in the NLDS—since September 11th.
In that start against Atlanta, the “bad” Snell reared his head, even though he was able to hold them to one run in 3 2/3 innings—Snell gave up only one hit but walked five batters while getting only 11 outs on 90 pitches. Milwaukee will look to do what they’ve been doing in this series: grind out at-bats, get the pitch count up, not let him get comfortable. Snell is fully capable of turning in a start like he did in the NLCS last season, but if the Brewers can be patient enough to get a few runners on the bases, the fact that he’s one of the most unhittable starting pitchers in the league may not matter as much.
To counter Snell, the Brewers go with their own lefty, the young Robert Gasser. Bobby Gas has pitched quite well over the last couple of months, and that continued into the NLDS, when he allowed one run on three hits and a walk in four innings in the series-clinching game four in San Diego. He’ll hope things go a little better than they did last year: Gasser pitched against the Dodgers last year and didn’t allow a run, but he did give up a hit and a walk while only getting two outs. Aside from that, Gasser started against the Dodgers in Los Angeles in August; that was the one game of that four-game set that the Brewers lost, but he wasn’t bad, with 6 1/3 innings, three runs, and seven strikeouts.
The big news from the dugout is that, with the lefty Snell on the mound, the Brewers did make a change in their lineup. Andrew Vaughn is in, while Christian Yelich heads to the bench despite his recent success. Vaughn also started in the first game of the series against lefty Tarik Skubal, but it’s surely stressful for Murphy to leave Yelich out of the lineup. There was no room today for Gary Sánchez, whose career numbers against Snell are wild—in 31 career plate appearances, Sánchez is 7-for-23 with five homers and eight walks (giving him a 1.484 OPS). most of those at-bats and all of those home runs are from at least six years ago, though, so it’s been a minute for the former AL East foes.
The Brewers stick with a solid defensive lineup of Jackson Chourio, Garrett Mitchell, and Luis Lara in the outfield plus Joey Ortiz, Cooper Pratt, Brice Turang, and Jake Bauers around the horn. William Contreras is behind the plate (can’t take him out right now!), and Vaughn will be the DH. On the other side, Shohei Ohtani has moved even further down in the Dodger lineup—despite his insistence that he’s on the verge of figuring it out, Dave Roberts has moved him to sixth, lower than he’s batted since his rookie season. Kyle Tucker, who despite an awful season has looked solid in this series, moves up to fourth. With Gasser starting, the Dodgers have also taken Max Muncy out of the lineup, and Miguel Rojas gets the start at third.
First pitch will come sometime shortly after 7pm central. Find the game on FS1, or listen on the Brewers Radio Network.
