Category: Baseball

Dodgers leadoff hitter Mookie Betts slapped his bat with his free hand after tipping a slider from Brewers right-hander Abner Uribe back into catcher William Contreras’ mitt.

Betts had been setting the tone from the leadoff spot all postseason, taking good at-bats against some of MLB’s best starting pitchers. But there wasn’t much even he could do against a sinker-slider mix like Uribe’s.

Uribe shuffled off the mound, and the home crowd roared.

Then, with Dodgers left-handed hitter Freddie Freeman coming up to the plate, the Brewers had an answer for him, too. Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy signaled to the bullpen, and left-hander Aaron Ashby emerged, and he struck out Freeman on four pitches, only one of which touched the strike zone.

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“They all throw 100 [mph] from different angles,” Freeman said after the Dodgers’ 7-4 loss to the Brewers in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series on Monday.

Those back-to-back strikeouts in the eighth inning were part of five perfect innings thrown by the Brewers bullpen — an MLB postseason record. And the Dodgers’ inability to rally against the Brewers’ relievers, paired with the shortest start in Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s career, sunk the Dodgers’ chances at evening the series.

The NLCS heads to Los Angeles with the Brewers leading 2-0 in the best-of-seven series.

The Dodgers’ performance against the Brewers bullpen on Monday magnified how much the star-powered lineup hasn’t been clicking with Shohei Ohtani struggling at the plate. He went 0-for-4 in the cleanup spot in Game 2, bringing his postseason total to three hits, all singles, in 20 at-bats.

Manager Dave Roberts told The Athletic after the game that he would “have a conversation” with Ohtani Tuesday to determine “what’s best for him, what’s best for [the team].”

Factoring into the decision of whether the situation has become dire enough to bench Ohtani is an understanding that the superstar designated hitter likely is not completely healthy, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Ohtani has dealt with left knee and right biceps issues for much of the year. But it’s been difficult since he returned from the injured list to determine whether health, bad swing habits caused by earlier injuries, or some combination of the two have been to blame for his poor performance.

Ohtani hasn’t addressed the media since the day before Game 1 of the NLDS.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

MILWAUKEE – One by one, their advantages are vanishing.

Their edge in starting pitching?

Marginalized by the Brewers’ lineup.

Their superior offensive firepower?

Held without a home run in the first two games of this National League Championship Series.

Shohei Ohtani?

Reduced to being blown away by mid-90s fastballs.

The Dodgers are behind by two games in this race to four wins, and in the wake of their 7-4 defeat in Game 2 at American Family Field, they have to be praying for the Brewers to run out of gas before they reach the finish line. 

“It’s certainly a challenge,” manager Dave Roberts said.

Before the Dodgers can win this series, they will have to get back into it first. They will play at home over the next three games. They have Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow lined up to pitch in Games 3 and 4, respectively. 

“Still a pretty good scenario we’re in,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said.

Sending Snell and Glasnow to the mound won’t mean anything, however, if the Dodgers don’t start hitting. An error or wild pitch by the Brewers played a role in every run scored by the Dodgers, who collected only three hits, all of them coming against starter Logan Henderson. The four relievers deployed by Brewers manager Pat Murphy combined to pitch five no-hit innings.

The Dodgers will have to jumpstart their offense with a version of Shohei Ohtani who remains physically diminished. 

Ohtani was 0 for 4 in Game 2, failing to reach base in a game for the first time this postseason. Pitching as if they didn’t think that Ohtani couldn’t hurt them, the Brewers attacked the four-time Most Valuable Player, leading to a couple of strikeouts in which he looked completely overmatched. 

Henderson struck him out with three fastballs in the first inning. Left-hander JoJo Romero tricked him into waving at a sweeper that ended up in the batter’s box on the other side of home plate in the sixth.

Ohtani is batting .150 in the playoffs without a single run batted in. He’s struck out seven times in 20 at-bats. His last home run was on Aug. 18.

“It’s hard to see,” Betts said. “We know he’s working and hopefully he gets out of it. We need him. We need him for sure.”

Ohtani alone couldn’t take down the Brewers, regardless how well he was playing. In addition to a relentless bullpen, they have an unspectacular but industrious offense. They have the kind of edge that makes it obvious they believe they can take down the two-time defending World Series champions.

Game 2 was a prime example of that. If there was a game the Brewers were expected to drop, it was this one. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was pitching for the Dodgers.

The Brewers didn’t just beat Yamamoto. They wore him down, pushed him out of the game after only 2 ⅔ innings and forced Roberts to empty his bullpen. Tarik Skubal lasted only five innings against them in Game 1.

The result was an unmitigated disaster for the Dodgers, who have made it an annual tradition to have the Japanese right-hander bail them out of trouble at this time of the year.

The Dodgers were intimately familiar with the script from which the Brewers read.

Run up the pitch count of the starter.

Force him out of the game early.

Get into the other team’s bullpen.

Only this time, the Dodgers weren’t the team executing the game plan. They were the team against which the plan was being executed, and Yamamoto was the target of the attack.

Once the game morphed into a battle of the bullpens, the game was decided. The Brewers were able to play to their greatest strength. The Dodgers had to expose their greatest weakness.

To win the World Series last year, the Dodgers had to overcome a three-games-to-two deficit against the Toronto Blue Jays. Their title run the previous year started with them reversing a two-games-to-one deficit against the San Diego Padres.

The Dodgers have overcome deficits before. 

But the Brewers are presenting them with the sort of problems they might not even be able to solve.

Best laid plans went awry very early in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series, the sloppiest and wildest game of the Dodgers postseason to date. In a game with four lead changes and two ties, the Dodgers couldn’t get a big hit to save their life, while William Contreras had three different run-scoring hits in the Brewers’ 7-4 win at American Family Field on Monday afternoon in Milwaukee.

The Dodgers head home to Los Angeles down two games to none, with their largest series deficit since the 2023 NLDS.

Chaos to start

It took until the 23rd half-inning of the series for one of these teams to score more than once in a frame, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Both Jacob Misiorowski and Tarik Skubal labored in big innings in Game 1, but limited the damage to just one run in the rallies.

After single runs for both teams in the first inning, Yoshinobu Yamamoto ran into trouble. David Hamilton singled and stole second base. Brice Turang, who battled back from an 0-2 count and an unchallenged potential third-strike ball call for a double to score in the first inning, worked his way back from an 0-2 count again to walk in the third.

With two outs and two on, first baseman Jake Bauers fouled off six full-count pitches before earning a walk to load the bases.

“Yamamoto — it’s such a big pitch mix,” Bauers said during his media availability before the game. “There’s a lot that you have to try and deal with, and I think you can fall into the trap of trying to guess along with him.”

It took only two more pitches for Yamamoto to hang a curveball to Christian Yelich — in easily the worst of his 14 major league seasons — who singled home two to turn a Dodgers lead into a Dodgers deficit. It also ended Yamamoto’s day, stunningly after needing 75 pitches to get only eight outs, the shortest of his 11 postseason start with the Dodgers.

The dozen pitches to Bauers were the most in any single plate appearance in Yamamoto’s three years in the majors, the entire battle taking seven minutes, 15 seconds per the Fox broadcast.

Only way the Dodgers scored

Brewers starter Logan Henderson allowed only three hits, one of them a ball booted by shortstop Cooper Pratt. Henderson also walked two, but it was three errant throws that proved his undoing. His wild pitch in the first inning put Mookie Betts on third base directly before scoring on a sacrifice fly.

Henderson in the third inning with runners on the corners threw wildly on a pickoff attempt of Betts at first base, allowing Tommy Edman to score from third base. After Kyle Tucker doubled to lead off the fifth inning, Henderson had another throwing error when Edman tried to sacrifice, not only scoring Tucker but putting Edman on second base. He would later score on another sacrifice fly, on a play so close at the plate it required replay review to confirm.

Getting the big hits, or not

Contreras, the Brewers three-time All-Star catcher, singled home a run off Yamamoto in the first inning to tie the game, homered off left-hander Kris Bubic in the fifth inning to tie the game, then singled home a run off Brock Stewart in the sixth to give the Brewers the lead.

It was the third multi-hit game in these playoffs for Contreras, who has three home runs this October.

The Dodgers’ three-time All-Star catcher, Will Smith, was dropped to fifth in the batting order on Monday and was hitless in four at-bats. Smith has one single in 23 at-bats this postseason, with eight strikeouts.

“Obviously want the results to be a little better, but at the end of the day, it’s [six] games at the plate,” Smith told reporters in Milwaukee on Monday before Game 2. “No panic from me. So I’ll be fine.”

Smith isn’t alone in struggles at the plate.

Shohei Ohtani, still batting fourth, was hitless in four at-bats with two strikeouts in Game 2, and has three singles in 19 at-bats plus three walks this postseason.

The Brewers tacked on insurance runs in the eighth inning off Edgardo Henriquez and Justin Wrobleski with three singles and a walk. That put the Brewers up 7-4, the first time either team led by more than one run in this series.

Game 2 of the NLCS was just the second of 27 games this postseason in which both teams scored at least four runs.

Against Henderson the Dodgers were hitless in all of four total at-bats with runners in scoring position, dropping them to 2-for-26 with runners in scoring position this postseason. But once he left with no outs in the fifth inning, the Brewers bullpen completely shut things down the rest of the way.

Dustin May, JoJo Romero, Abner Uribe, and Aaron Ashby faced 15 batters and retired them all. Ashby pitched in multiple innings for a second straight day, this time earning the save.

The Dodgers now face a major uphill battle once they get back home.

NLCS Game 2 particulars

Home run: William Contreras (3)

WP — JoJo Romero (1-1): 1 IP 2 strikeouts

LP — Brock Stewart (0-1): 2/3 IP, 2 hits, 1 run, 1 walk, 1 strikeout

Sv — Aaron Ashby (1): 1 2/3 IP, 2 strikeouts

Up next

The NLCS moves location to Los Angeles beginning with Game 3 on Wednesday evening (5 p.m., FS1). Blake Snell probably starts for the Dodgers, though Dave Roberts earlier Monday wasn’t willing to confirm their plans just yet. Left-hander Robert Gasser starts on the mound for the Brewers.

MILWAUKEE — Now do you believe in the Milwaukee Brewers?

Do you believe that there was no fluke that the Brewers won 103 games this season, the most in the major leagues?

Now, do you believe the Brewers are on their way to reaching the World Series for the first time since 1982, and trying to win their first in franchise history?

Well, the entire state of Wisconsin sure does, watching their beloved Brewers rolling out the barrel over the powerful Los Angeles Dodgers, 7-4 Monday afternoon, taking a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven National League Championship Series in front of a frenzied sellout crowd at American Family Field.

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This is the first time in the Brewers 58-year history that they have ever taken a 2-0 lead in a best-of-seven series.

The last time the Dodgers won a postseason series when trailing 2 games to 0 was in the COVID postseason of 2020 when they came back to beat Atlanta, and ultimately won their first World Series since 1988.

But in a full season, the Dodgers haven’t managed to pull off the feat since the 1981 World Series against the New York Yankees.

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