MILWAUKEE - The Brewers spent much of Game 4 working through the same kind of tension that had defined the whole series, but they finally created some daylight in the sixth inning and never let the Padres fully close the gap. Jake Bauers singled to open the frame, Cooper Pratt followed with an automatic double, and Sal Frelick capped the rally with a sacrifice fly that brought Bauers home and pushed Milwaukee ahead by two.
That margin proved to be plenty in a series where every run felt heavy. It also fit the Brewers’ night: Bauers, after a rough series, gave them exactly what they needed with two walks in his first two plate appearances and a much steadier overall performance.
He even helped erase an early throwing error by Pratt. Pratt, who had already made more than one bad throw and was struggling at the plate, came through with the double that helped start the decisive rally.
Frelick, whose walk and baserunning helped fuel the Game 2 comeback, finished the final scoring push with a batted ball that was just enough to get the job done.
The Brewers’ pitching gave that lead room to breathe. Robert Gasser worked four innings and kept moving through trouble despite shaky defense behind him.
Joey Ortiz was slow charging on a Manny Machado bunt single and then passed up a throw on a potential inning-ending 5-3 double play, but Gasser kept the damage from piling up. Aaron Ashby followed and was even sharper, covering three nearly spotless innings with his power sinker and high-spin curveball both working.
Once Ashby took over, the game settled into Milwaukee’s control.
It still almost slipped away in the eighth. Abner Uribe opened the inning by walking Fernando Tatis Jr., then recovered to strike out Jackson Merrill.
Machado came up next and got a sinker on the inner half, turning it into a deep drive that threatened to erase Milwaukee’s edge. Garrett Mitchell had other ideas.
Playing deep, he tracked the ball to the wall just right of straightaway center at Petco Park, went up with both hands, and made the catch while absorbing contact from fans reaching over the fence. One harmless foul pop-up later, thanks to Brice Turang and Bauers communicating well on an in-between ball, the Brewers were back in the dugout and six outs from advancing.
Mitchell’s catch was only part of his night. He also delivered a leadoff triple in the fifth and scored what was officially the winning run.
After looking overmatched in the first three games, he was all over Game 4. For a player whose future was in doubt because of chronic injury issues, it was a huge moment.
The Brewers tendered him a contract at the November deadline after weighing whether to do so, and now he’s back in the middle of a playoff run after more than doubling his career playing time this season.
The whole series was tight from start to finish. Of the 300 plate appearances across the four games, fewer than 20% came with either team leading by two runs, and no one ever led by more than that.
Before Frelick’s sacrifice fly in the sixth on Wednesday, there had been only 30 plate appearances in the series with a two-run cushion, most of them in the first three innings of Game 1. Every inning felt like it could swing the other way.
Milwaukee made plenty of mistakes along the way, and so did San Diego. There were bad at-bats, missed chances, and plays that never quite got made cleanly. But the series will be remembered more for the moments that landed: Jackson Chourio’s walkoff single in Game 2, Chourio and William Contreras homering to win Game 1, and Mitchell’s heroics in Game 4.
It also gave the Brewers something bigger. They hadn’t beaten a team outside the NL Central in a playoff series since 2018, and they hadn’t won a road playoff game since then either.
Now they’ve cleared both hurdles and moved on to the NLCS against the Dodgers, who finished off the team from outside Atlanta Wednesday night. Milwaukee heads into that matchup looking like a more complete challenger to the two-time defending champions, with a chance to finally chase its first National League pennant.
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