At the Crucial Moments of Game 1, Brewers Were Good Enough to Make Up for the Rest

It felt like a rerun of last year's NLCS. Jacob Misiorowski's second playoff start began like his first, as he labored through his first two innings while the Dodgers scored first. Meanwhile, Tarik Skubal was doing what Blake Snell did to the Brewers in last year's Game 1, forcing baseball's most patient offense to swing at more balls than strikes. The Dodgers were in control, and the Brewers were fighting to keep up.

In the middle innings, the momentum began to shift. The Brewers turned one of three inning-ending double plays on Enrique Hernández to avoid further damage in the second, then Misiorowski tossed scoreless third and fourth frames. The latter ended with a dramatic strikeout of Kyle Tucker after a balk undid an inning-ending pickoff. Minutes later, Brice Turang turned around a Skubal sinker on the inside corner for a game-tying home run.

It was a swing more than a week in the making. Turang looked lost during the NLDS, recording just two singles in 16 at-bats. He stayed late after the Brewers' off-day workout on Friday for a session with hitting coach Daniel Vogelbach, searching for the feel that would get him on time and on plane with the baseball.

"I don't do it very often," Turang said. "Some years I don't do it at all. But I just felt like I needed to stay after, get some more swings in, and just kind of talk it out, maybe hear what someone's got to say."

Two days later, he stayed inside a power fastball boring in on his hands with one of the best swings of his career.

"That's what he's working on exactly," Pat Murphy said. "Instead of his hands dropping and cutting across, to just get straight to the baseball."

Turang started doing that in his final two at-bats of the Padres series, shooting the ball to left in both, but it took one more nudge to fully calibrate his swing. Skubal also gave him an inside sinker in his first at-bat, and he fouled it off his ailing left knee that caused him to miss time in August.

"I didn't want to foul a ball off my knee again, so I was like, 'I'm going to stay inside of this one,'" Turang said.

After that, the Brewers started waiting out Skubal in a 26-pitch fifth inning. Garrett Mitchell led off with a walk, advanced to second on Cooper Pratt's sacrifice bunt, then scored on one of Skubal's few mistake pitches of the evening: a first-pitch changeup down the middle that Luis Lara smacked up the middle for his first postseason hit.

"When the leadoff guy gets on sometimes by walking, he's a threat to steal, and sometimes that can alter the way the guy goes about it," Murphy said. "I thought that getting a guy into scoring position, he tried to get ahead with a changeup to Lara, left it where he didn't want to. Other than that, he was dominant."

Misiorowski, meanwhile, only recorded one more out than in his last playoff start, but he kept one of baseball's better lineups at bay without a dominant fastball. Like the Padres, the Dodgers whiffed just five times against his four-seamer, but they also tagged it for three hard-hit balls and four hits.

"It's the same as the last outing I had against the Padres," he said. "I think that was the same goal. Both teams did really well."

One could argue that for most of the night, the Brewers played like the inferior team. They didn't have the best at-bats, and they weren't dominant on the mound. The Dodgers drew more walks, had more baserunners, and had a .243 expected batting average compared to Milwaukee's .182. Skubal outlasted Misiorowski and looked untouchable for more of his outing.

Yet, the Brewers took the series opener, by playing their best in the right moments. They made plays when the Dodgers pushed their backs to the wall, and when Skubal was even slightly vulnerable for a few batters, they took advantage. Turang's swing was the separator, the latest reminder of how impactful home runs can be against great October pitchers who won't throw many hittable pitches. It was also another instance of the Brewers proving what they've said all month: they learned from last year's series and are prepared to handle this matchup. Unlike last season, they've rejected the underdog identity, and it's reflected in their performance.

"Guys are getting more experience, they're learning the game," Turang said. "Even for me, still learning, getting experience. That's a big factor in this. Then not giving up when we are behind in the game and knowing that we can do it, we can make up runs."

Now, the Brewers lead 1-0 in a series that seemed unwinnable a year ago, and their path to a World Series berth is becoming clearer.

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