The Brewers didn’t just survive Game 4 against the Padres. They wore San Diego down, made enough clean plays when it mattered, and punched their ticket to a second straight NLCS with a 3-1 win that felt, for long stretches, like a game and a series waiting to snap in Milwaukee’s favor.
The decisive push came in the sixth inning, when the Brewers turned a 2-1 edge into something sturdier. Jake Bauers started it with a single, Cooper Pratt followed with an automatic double, and Sal Frelick brought Bauers home with a sacrifice fly. That gave Milwaukee a two-run cushion, and in this series, that kind of lead carried real weight.
Bauers was central to that swing in momentum. After a rough series overall, he delivered a much sharper Game 4, drawing walks in his first two plate appearances and helping keep the inning alive.
He also erased one of Pratt’s early mistakes by handling a bad throw. Pratt had a shaky start, with more than one errant throw and some uneasy at-bats, but he still finished the series with important offensive contributions and answered in the middle innings Wednesday.
Frelick, who played a major role in the team’s Game 2 comeback with a hard-earned walk, strong baserunning and a strong arm, finished the final scoring rally with a batted ball that did just enough. It was a fitting end to a game and a series that the Brewers had to grind through.
Robert Gasser gave Milwaukee four innings on the mound and kept the game from getting away despite some sloppy defense behind him. Joey Ortiz let Manny Machado reach on a bunt single by being late charging and throwing, and later in the first inning he passed on a throw to first that could have ended the inning on a 5-3 double play. Those kinds of mistakes showed up throughout the game and across the series, but Gasser kept them from snowballing.
Aaron Ashby was just as sharp in relief. He followed Gasser with three nearly spotless innings, with his power sinker and high-spin curveball working well.
Once Ashby settled in, the game slowed down for Milwaukee. The Brewers scored, stretched the lead, and didn’t have to spend the night scrambling to escape trouble.
Still, the Padres made them sweat again in the eighth. Abner Uribe walked Fernando Tatis Jr. to open the inning, then recovered to strike out Jackson Merrill.
Machado came up next and smoked a sinker on the inner half, sending a ball that looked dangerous off the bat. Garrett Mitchell tracked it down near the wall just to the right of straightaway center at Petco Park, went up with both hands, and made the catch while dealing with fans reaching over the fence.
One foul pop-up later, helped by good communication between Brice Turang and Bauers, the Brewers were three outs away. Six outs after that, they were celebrating.
Mitchell was all over Game 4. He opened the fifth with a leadoff triple and scored what went in the books as the winning run.
After looking overmatched for much of the first three games, he came through in a big way when Milwaukee needed it most. His catch is the kind that will live in Brewers playoff memory, and it came from a player whose place on the roster was once far less certain.
Mitchell’s injury history left his future in doubt late last season, and the Brewers even had a conversation before tendering him a contract at the November deadline. His talent has never been the issue.
Staying on the field has been. Now he’s more than doubled his career playing time in a season and has become a playoff hero again.
This was the kind of series that leaves everybody drained. Across the four games, fewer than 20% of the 300 plate appearances came with either team leading by two runs, and neither side ever built a bigger advantage than that.
Before Frelick’s sacrifice fly in the sixth on Wednesday, there had been only 30 plate appearances in the entire series with a two-run cushion, most of them clustered in the first three innings of Game 1. Every inning felt contested.
Every mistake mattered.
In the end, though, the series will be remembered for the moments Milwaukee turned into victories: Jackson Chourio’s walkoff single in Game 2, Chourio and William Contreras going deep to win Game 1, and Mitchell’s heroics in Game 4. It also carries a bigger meaning.
The Brewers had not beaten a team outside the NL Central in a playoff series since 2018, and they had not won a road playoff game since then either. With those hurdles cleared, they head into the NLCS against the Dodgers feeling like a more complete challenger to the two-time defending champions.
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