The two best teams in baseball squared off this weekend in a rematch of last year’s NLCS.
That series was a romp, a demolishing, a thorough obliteration of the scrappy Milwaukee Brewers by the juggernaut Los Angeles Dodgers. Throughout that one-sided showdown, the Brewers’ lineup was simply overmatched and undermanned against a historically dominant Dodgers rotation.
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Things were a little different the past few days at Chavez Ravine, as a lethargic Dodgers team dropped three of four to the visiting Brewers. As a result, Milwaukee holds the end-of-season tiebreaker against L.A. for postseason homefield advantage, should the two teams end up with identical records.
A lot can and will change between now and October. The rosters that faced off this weekend will look slightly different in a few months. Overreacting to any small regular-season sample is foolish. However, there were a handful of big moments, significant trends and meaningful developments to glean from this four-game set.
Unsurprisingly, The Miz came out firing against the Dodgers on Saturday. His first six pitches to L.A. leadoff man Shohei Ohtani were four-seam fastballs 102.3 mph or faster. Two frames later, the Dodgers scratched one across on a flukey Ohtani chopper-turned-triple over the first-base bag. In the fifth, Miz ran into big trouble after the bottom three hitters in the Dodgers’ order loaded the squares on three straight one-out singles. That brought Ohtani back to the dish as the go-ahead run. The Dodger Stadium crowd recognized the significance of the moment and rose to its feet.
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Misiorowski furrowed his brow, adjusted his cap and got to work, retiring the four-time MVP on three straight pitches. Curveball swinging. Triple-digit heater spotted at the knees looking. Slider down and in, swing and miss. A few pitches later, Miz used the same offering to set down Freddie Freeman, another future Hall of Famer, to escape the jam.
The flamethrowing string bean came back out and delivered a clean sixth inning to complete his afternoon: 6 innings, 1 run, 6 strikeouts and 1 walk. All but nine of his 62 four-seamers were over 100 mph. His ERA now sits at a sparkling 1.75. And that highwire escape act in the fifth inning against two of the game’s best might have earned him some hardware.
It’s important to remember that the Brewers didn’t have this version of Misiorowski last October. In an attempt to monitor his workload, Milwaukee mostly restricted the long-limbed righty to truncated outings out of the bullpen. But this autumn, the reins will be off, which could be a legitimate game-changer for the Brewers.
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2. The Dodgers’ offseason signings need to get it together
Last winter, Los Angeles plundered the free-agent market with deep-pocketed abandon. The Dodgers secured the services of arguably the two most dynamic talents available, outfielder Kyle Tucker and closer Edwin Díaz. Tucker got a record-breaking $60 million per year outlay thanks to his relative youth and tremendous offensive track record. Díaz had been one of the league’s best closers for going on a decade.
But this season, the duo has been massively disappointing. And this most recent series against the Brewers might have delivered the low points.
Let’s start with Tucker, who has effectively sleepwalked his way through Year 1 in SoCal. The sweet-swinging lefty has never been the most eager or engaged character, even when he was clocking dingers and making All-Star teams. But that laidback aura has looked more like a disinterested malaise in Los Angeles.
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This weekend, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts benched Tucker for Saturday’s game, implying that his poor home-road splits had gotten to the slugger’s head and referencing his “frustrations playing at home.” L.A. probably has enough offensive firepower to overcome whatever the heck is going on with Tucker, but the idea that a $60 million player cannot handle the rigors of playing in front of his own fan base is flat-out embarrassing.
“Those things, as they build up, for me, that tells me that you need to watch a baseball game and take some of that frustration and put it to the side,” Roberts said of Tucker, who finished the club’s seven-game homestand without a hit.
Díaz’s problems are less mental. The 32-year-old Puerto Rican missed a large chunk of this season after undergoing surgeries to remove loose bodies in his throwing elbow. Since returning, he has looked like a shell of his old self. On Thursday, he coughed up a two-run lead in the ninth inning by surrendering four straight singles. Roberts was similarly direct in his criticism of Díaz, but he went back to the veteran on Friday. Díaz came good on that trust to pick up the save, though he did load the bases on a HBP and two walks. Whether he can keep his manager’s trust and the closer job remains to be seen.
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3. Rake Bauers is for real
Say hello to the best hitter on baseball’s best team. Jake Bauers was absolutely electric on Sunday, going 4-for-4 with a double and two RBI. That raised the 30-year-old’s season OPS to .883, the seventh-highest mark in the National League. Once a top prospect in the Rays’ system, Bauers bounced around for a few seasons, spending time in Cleveland, Seattle and the Bronx. He was designated for assignment, sent to Triple-A countless times and even traded straight-up for cash considerations.
But the SoCal kid has proven to be something of a late bloomer. All the underlying metrics — hard-hit rate, chase rate, barrel percentage — say that Bauers’ breakout is legitimate. With him alongside a souped-up Jackson Chourio, a healthy Brice Turang, a still-good Andrew Vaughn and a potentially resurgent William Contreras, the Brewers should bring a much-improved offense into any October matchup with the Dodgers.
4. Roki Sasaki cannot be trusted with a playoff start
The mercurial hurler had yet another overstimulating outing on Thursday. Sasaki, and that comically oversized glove, allowed just two earned across six innings. He also issued five free passes while recording just two punchouts. The night included a bout of unhinged wildness in the fourth inning, in which Sasaki walked two straight hitters with the bases loaded.
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That stuff won’t fly in October, when the moments are bigger and the margins smaller. Sasaki has made meaningful progress this season. His velocity has ticked back up. The secondary stuff has rebounded. He doesn’t look in danger of soiling himself on the mound anymore. There’s a path to him fulfilling, at least partially, his enormous potential. But this postseason cannot involve him starting an important ballgame. He’s too volatile, too untrustworthy, too liable to go from world-beater to little leaguer in the blink of an eye.
Thankfully, the Dodgers’ surplus of pitching options means they probably won’t need Sasaki in October. Instead, he seems primed to toss big innings out of the bullpen, a role he filled magnificently last fall.
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Los Angeles’ deadline acquisition of Tarik Skubal had doomers running for the hills. For good reason. The two-time defending champs adding a top-three arm to a top-three rotation is scary stuff. But part of how Skubal ended up on the Dodgers had to do with Milwaukee’s refusal to include young right-handed starter Logan Henderson in any deal. That decision caught some blowback, as critics saw it as yet another example of how Milwaukee’s overly passive approach might be a reason for the team’s postseason underperformance.
Sunday, then, offered a fascinating prospect: Skubal vs. Henderson at Dodger Stadium, the deadline prize against the untouchable prospect. And on this day at least, Henderson proved the Brewers smart. He worked seven brilliant innings, the only blemish being a Max Muncy solo shot. He punched out six, walked just one and generally looked comfortable going toe-to-toe with the two-time defending champs and their two-time defending Cy Young. Skubal, for his part, was just OK. Milwaukee got his pitch count up. The Dodgers’ defense made a key error. Skubal got through six innings after allowing just two runs (one earned) on seven hits, but he took his second loss in three starts at a Dodger.
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