Long before the Milwaukee Brewers started stacking October wins, a few of their biggest names were already getting comfortable under the lights at Dodger Stadium.
On Wednesday night, that history came roaring back. Jake Bauers, who once helped Marina High School reach the CIF Southern Section Division 1 championship game at the same ballpark, came up in the seventh inning against Blake Snell and worked an 11-pitch duel before uncorking a go-ahead two-run homer in Milwaukee’s 6-2 win over the Dodgers in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series.
Two pitches later, Garrett Mitchell made the moment feel even more local. The Orange Lutheran alum followed with a solo shot, giving Milwaukee back-to-back home runs from two Orange County products and pushing the lead to 4-2.
That wasn’t the end of the Southern California imprint on the Brewers’ October run. Milwaukee’s 26-man NLCS roster includes seven players who came through CIF Southern Section high schools: Bauers at Marina, Trevor Megill at Marina and Orange Lutheran, JoJo Romero at Oxnard, Joey Ortiz at Pacifica in Garden Grove, Brice Turang at Santiago, Mitchell at Orange Lutheran and Christian Yelich at Westlake.
And several of them have had real weight in the series against Los Angeles.
Bauers’ ties to Dodger Stadium date to 2013, when he was a senior at Marina and helped the Vikings reach the Southern Section Division 1 title game. Harvard-Westlake and future major leaguer Jack Flaherty beat them 1-0.
Bauers still left that season with a huge national profile, hitting .571 with 48 hits, 10 home runs and 26 RBIs, according to MaxPreps, before earning MaxPreps All-America honors. The Padres took him with the 208th pick in the 2013 MLB Draft.
More than a decade later, he walked back into the same stadium and delivered a swing that could help carry Milwaukee to the World Series.
Mitchell’s high school résumé at Orange Lutheran was every bit as polished. Over four varsity seasons, he piled up 85 hits, 69 runs and 40 RBIs in 98 games, batting .318 with a .420 on-base percentage, according to MaxPreps.
He also helped Orange Lutheran win the 2017 National High School Invitational. His homer right after Bauers’ blast made Wednesday’s sequence feel like a Southern California reunion with stakes attached.
Turang, another Southern California standout, has been right in the middle of Milwaukee’s run, too. The Santiago High School product was a four-year varsity starter and MaxPreps’ national freshman of the year in 2015 after batting .475 with 12 doubles, three triples, two home runs, 34 runs and 27 RBIs.
His reported career line included a .433 batting average and 171 hits in 392 at-bats. Milwaukee selected him 21st overall in the 2018 MLB Draft.
Against the Dodgers, he opened the NLCS with a game-tying solo homer in Game 1 and then went 2-for-3 with an RBI in Game 2.
The rest of Milwaukee’s Southern Section group has made its own path to this point.
Yelich, a four-year varsity player at Westlake, hit .451 with a .609 on-base percentage, 37 hits, nine homers, 25 RBIs and 41 runs as a senior, according to MaxPreps, before going No. 23 overall in the 2010 MLB Draft.
Ortiz, who starred at Pacifica, hit .417 with a .714 slugging percentage as a senior but went undrafted out of high school. He went on to New Mexico State before the Orioles selected him in the 2019 draft. In Game 3, he added a two-out RBI single for Milwaukee’s final run.
Romero came through Oxnard, where Nevada’s official bio credits him with a 24-7 career pitching record and 280 strikeouts. He later pitched at Nevada and Yavapai College before the Phillies picked him in the fourth round of the 2016 draft.
Megill’s route included stops at Marina and Orange Lutheran before he graduated through Bixby Charter School. At Marina, MaxPreps lists a 1.35 ERA and 61 strikeouts over 52 innings.
On Wednesday, the 6-foot-8 right-hander finished what his Southern California teammates started. Megill threw the final four outs of Game 3, struck out two and picked up his fourth save of the postseason. Through the outing, he had allowed just one hit over 5 2/3 scoreless postseason innings.
One win from the World Series, the Brewers have an unmistakable Southern California streak running through their October story. Bauers and Mitchell delivered the biggest swings.
Turang has chipped in all series. Ortiz knocked in a run.
Megill shut the door.
And before any of it became October drama, they were just high school players from the CIF Southern Section, chasing the next level on fields all across Southern California.
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