The Brewers walked into Game 1 of the NLCS and refused to play the role anybody had written for them.
This was supposed to be the night Tarik Skubal took center stage for the Dodgers, the deadline prize they paid up for with October in mind. Instead, Milwaukee kept chipping away, stayed on script in its own way, and turned a meeting between two headline arms into a 2-1 Brewers win that put them ahead 1-0 in the series.
Skubal looked every bit like the dominant version early. He punched out six over the first three innings, and Andrew Vaughn’s double was the only real damage through his first 10 batters.
But the Brewers didn’t chase the moment; they chased the pitcher. That difference mattered.
Brice Turang cracked the game open in the fourth. After Skubal got ahead 2-0, Turang turned around a 96 mph sinker on the inner half and sent it over the left-center-field fence to tie it at 1-1.
William Contreras struck out, Jake Bauers followed with a single to right, and Vaughn then grounded into an inning-ending double play. The warning lights were flashing, even if the scoreboard was still even.
Milwaukee then did what Milwaukee does. Garrett Mitchell drew a leadoff walk in the fifth, Cooper Pratt dropped down a sacrifice bunt to move him to second, and rookie Luis Lara lined a single up the middle to bring Mitchell home.
That was the only run the Brewers needed, but they kept pressing. After Joey Ortiz grounded out, Jackson Chourio reached on an infield single and Turang worked a five-pitch walk to load the bases.
Contreras battled through seven pitches before flying out, and by then Skubal’s night was essentially over.
He departed after 81 pitches, having allowed two runs, and didn’t come back when the Dodgers returned to the field. Milwaukee had never needed to overwhelm him with power. It just kept forcing him to work, kept traffic on the bases, and made him answer one uncomfortable at-bat after another.
That’s the Brewers’ identity in a nutshell. They led MLB in walk rate at 10.6% and batting average at .258 this season, finished third in the NL with 37 sacrifice bunts, and ranked eighth in contact percentage at 78.1%.
They didn’t abandon any of that against a pitcher built to blow hitters away with a fastball-changeup combo. They leaned harder into it.
Skubal had been in a run of strong form, including six innings of one-run ball on two hits with seven strikeouts in Game 1 of the NLDS against the Braves. Entering Sunday night, he had gone into the sixth in eight of his last nine starts and allowed just one run over his previous 13 innings. That’s what made Milwaukee’s approach look so sharp, and so stubbornly effective.
Even with Jacob Misiorowski only lasting 4 ⅓ innings, the Brewers found a way. Their bullpen covered the rest with 4 ⅔ scoreless innings, and the 24-year-old starter’s 94 pitches to record 13 outs never ended up costing them.
Milwaukee didn’t need a perfect night from its own ace to steal Game 1. It just needed to keep being itself. Against the pitcher Los Angeles built its October hopes around, that was enough.
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