What you need to know about the Dodgers vs. Brewers matchup – Dodgers Digest

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Despite the Dodgers taking the NLDS from the Phillies in what on paper looks like a comfortable 3-1 series win, each game except for the Phillies’ lone victory in Game 3 was decided by a margin of two or fewer. The margins are often slim this time of year, and after a hard-fought series, the Dodgers will head to Milwaukee on Monday to open the National League Championship Series against the Brewers. Milwaukee won their matchup against the Cubs, with Chicago putting up a valiant effort and forcing a Game 5 despite losing the first two games of the series. With the Dodgers wrapping up their series on Thursday, they’ll have three full days off prior to first pitch on Monday, while Milwaukee will have had just one. The Phillies had the second best record in baseball at 96-66, trailing only the aforementioned Brewers who secured the top overall seed at 97-65. En route to their league-leading record, they swept the Dodgers on two separate occasions, taking all six games from Los Angeles this season. This was during the peak of the Dodgers’ summer woes as they went 2-10 in the first half of July, while the Brewers were peaking and in the midst of an eleven-game winning streak. Chad made a post about his NLCS roster predictions yesterday, most notably with one position player coming off the roster in favor of another pitcher for the seven game series with fewer days off.

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The Lineups

Here’s how the two offenses fared during the regular season.

Dodgers Offense

The Dodgers’ offense was very good as a whole during the regular season, but was definitely prone to slumps and streaks which in part led to the third seed in the NL. It’s not difficult to recognize that a large majority of the offense struggled to really get much going against the Phillies, who admittedly had a very difficult trio of southpaw starting pitchers. We’ll cover the bullpen and rotation of Milwaukee later, but suffice it to say that the offense won’t have to face a similar 1-2 punch of Cristopher Sanchez and Jesus Luzardo in the Championship Series. Andy Pages and Shohei Ohtani had the two worst offensive performances in the Division Series, with Ohtani taking the cake as Pages walked-off Game 4, even if it were a broken-bat comebacker to the pitcher.

Ohtani was 1-for-18 with an RBI single, with nine strikeouts to just two walks over four games, while Pages was 1-for-15 with a double. Pages has struggled in all six games this postseason, now just 1-for-24, and will among others need to get things going if the Dodgers plan on getting past the Brewers. Freddie Freeman struggled against the lefties as well, with just three hits and one walk over four games against the Phillies. Will Smith also struggled, going just 2-for-13 in his return from a hand fracture. He added a key two-run single in Game 2, but struggled to find his footing outside of that moment. The Dodgers advanced with very poor performances from key contributors, but with less daunting matchups ahead for Ohtani and Freeman, things should in theory be a bit easier. The offense will need to perform better than they did against the Phillies, but they won’t face three starters that’ll place in the Top-10 in Cy Young voting like they did in the Division Series.

Brewers Offense

The Brewers scored 16 runs over the first two games in the NLDS, but managed to plate just six runs over their final three games. Looking at their full season numbers, they seem to be a merely great offense and not an elite run producer like the Blue Jays, Dodgers, Phillies, and Yankees, but they really started piecing things together in the second half, as they were fourth in wRC+ (118), fifth in OPS (.776), and second in batting average (.272). The most notable increase was in their slugging, which jumped up to .431 among the best teams in the league, combined with their league-leading on-base percentage (.345).

The Brewers work counts and get on-base, they’ll gladly take free passes, and ultimately put balls in play better than nearly every other team in baseball. This iteration of the Brewers in particular however, has added slugging which creates some real danger in an offense that has lacked thump in recent years. Their second-half slugging was led by noted power bats in Brice Turang (.916 OPS), Jake Bauers (.889), Andruw Monasterio (.861), and Andrew Vaughn (.826), just your classic big name superstars.

Most notably, the only regulars that were below-average at getting on-base in the second half were Blake Perkins and Joey Ortiz, both of whom are borderline elite defensive players at center field and shortstop. Everyone else on the NLDS roster had an on-base percentage north of .335 in the second half, which is absurd for ten separate players. The Dodgers had just six, in Miguel Rojas, Mookie Betts, Smith, Freeman, Max Muncy, and Ohtani. Milwaukee’s strength isn’t necessarily in one superstar, but an entire roster full of guys who are tough at-bats, put the ball in play, create pressure, and force mistakes. Additionally, they’re fifth in Outs Above Average this year at +28, had the second most stolen bases at 164, and were the best baserunning team as a whole when factoring in extra-bases taken via Statcast.

Vaughn was one of three Brewers that had a fantastic NLDS series, with an OPS of 1.126 including two home runs, with Jackson Chourio hitting .389 with a 1.088 OPS, and William Contreras adding two homers of his own for a .983 OPS. They had just one player with an OPS below .500 in Ortiz (.421), while all of Smith (.421), Ohtani (.206), and Pages (.133) were at that mark or below.

Milwaukee does everything very well, they don’t beat themselves, and make you fight for every win.

Brewers Pitching

Freddy Peralta has been Milwaukee’s ace ever since Corbin Burnes was traded to the Orioles, and he’s coming off his best year since 2021. With a 2.70 ERA and a 17-6 record over 176.2 innings, he’ll end up near the top-five in Cy Young voting, and would be the ace for plenty of teams. After him, they’ve had quite a seamless blend of starting pitching and long relief, with the right-handed flamethrower Jacob Misiorowski seemingly serving as the number two despite just pitching bulk innings out of the bullpen. Peralta made two starts in the Division Series totaling 9.2 innings, Misiorowski logged seven innings over two outings, and each of Chad Patrick and Aaron Ashby logged 4.2 innings. Quinn Priester started Game 3 but didn’t make it out of the first inning, which essentially makes their rotation – Peralta, Misiorowski (in a bulk role), with Priester and Patrick in theory as the third and fourth starters. The Brewers logged just 17.1 of their innings in the NLDS by traditional starting pitchers and Misiorowski, compared to the remaining 25.2 innings all covered by the bullpen or multi-inning relievers. These two teams couldn’t be further apart in pitching composition and how they hope to get through a game.

Abner Uribe was fantastic this year, with a 1.67 ERA in 75.1 innings, while Ashby (2.16), Trevor Megill (2.49), and Jared Koenig (2.86) were all great. Aside from Roki Sasaki currently, they’d likely all be the top relief option in the Dodgers’ bullpen. Alex Vesia is great, but he’s a bit homer prone with 9 home runs allowed in 59.2 IP, while Milwaukee’s top three of Ashby, Megill, and Uribe have given up just 10 in 187 combined innings. All of Uribe, Misiorowski, and their closer Megill are oftentimes hitting triple-digits with their fastballs, while Aaron Ashby and Koenig both sit in the upper-90’s. The latter two are both lefties that give left-handed batters real issues, and will almost assuredly be seeing high-leverage innings against the top of the order.

They’re a stellar group, so they just have to execute and hope that the rotation and offense keep it close until late in the game where they have a significant advantage. It’ll be very tough task to put up any runs against this relief staff, so if the Dodgers are trailing late in the game it’s trouble.

Dodgers Pitching

The Dodgers logged just four innings across four games from their traditional relievers, with Sasaki, Emmet Sheehan, Clayton Kershaw, and even Tyler Glasnow in a relief role, to avoid going to the actual relievers as much as possible. Vesia threw a total of two innings (albeit very high-leverage ones), while Anthony Banda and Blake Treinen each threw one.

By Win Probability Added (WPA), Sasaki was the Dodgers’ most valuable player from the NLDS with his two saves and three scoreless innings in Game 4. It’s almost difficult to explain how important he was to this team against the Phillies, and it’s likely they lose that series if Dave Roberts had to go to his traditional relievers. Chad mentioned more of the relief options that the team could turn to for this series, but it’s very likely they add one more right-handed reliever in addition to Justin Wrobleski replacing Tanner Scott.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto struggled in his Game 3 outing, allowing three earned runs in four innings, but the rest of the rotation excelled against the high-octane Phillies. Glasnow delivered six clutch scoreless innings in Game 4, while Blake Snell dominated over six scoreless in Game 2, and Shohei Ohtani added a quality start in Game 1. The issue with facing this version of the Dodgers, is that you’ll have to beat or match their starters over the course of a seven-game series. Snell now has two wins in two starts, with a 1.38 ERA over 13.0 innings, a 0.77 WHIP, a .116 batting average allowed, and 18 strikeouts to five walks. He’s been exactly the ace that Dodgers envisioned this offseason when inking him to a five-year deal. He looks dominant on the mound in the postseason in a way very few do, with his postseason ERA down to 2.92 over 61.2 innings pitched. Regardless of how they align the rotation, the Dodgers will have an ace on the mound that can dominate deep into the game to help hide the bullpen deficiencies…and they’ll have to.

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The Brewers were the top team in baseball this year, while the Dodgers are arguably the most talented in a traditional sense when you look at the names on the roster. Both offenses can run up the scoreboard, the Brewers with likely a higher floor and the Dodgers a higher ceiling. The Dodgers have the clear starting pitching advantage, while the Brewers have the clear bullpen advantage. The Dodger bats have to be sharp early against some of the “weaker” pitching they’ll face, as when the later innings come the Brewers have high-leverage relievers galore. Meanwhile, the Dodgers starters have to be sharp in order to limit bullpen innings and exposure. The Dodgers definitely have had it tough with the additional Wild Card round, an extremely tough Phillies squad, and now the top seed in all of baseball. It should be an excellent series that could go either way.

The schedule should all the games be necessary, is as follows.

Game 1: Monday, October 13 in MilwaukeeGame 2: Tuesday, October 14 in MilwaukeeGame 3: Thursday, October 16 in Los AngelesGame 4: Friday, October 17 in Los AngelesGame 5: Saturday, October 18 in Los AngelesGame 6: Monday, October 20 in MilwaukeeGame 7: Tuesday, October 21 in Milwaukee