Brewers Made Their Own Luck Against Freddy Peralta in Game 3, Until They Didn't Have To

To some extent, the Brewers' approach to winning a World Series relies on luck. When two good teams meet in a short October series, the best or most talented roster doesn't always win. A hard-hit ball can bounce the wrong way, while a broken-bat bloop falls in no-man's land. A star player can go cold for a few games as a lesser-known one gets hot. Non-reviewable calls can swing games and even series.

With that in mind, the Brewers optimize their teams for the regular season above all else. The idea is that if a team makes the playoffs every year, the stars will eventually align for a World Series championship. That means the Brewers don't load up on big names or build the flashiest roster. Instead, they focus on depth and sustainability, even if it means trading away key players on expiring contracts for controllable talent instead of re-signing them. They don't tie themselves to a competitive window that will eventually expire. Even if the Brewers are never the favorite on paper, they still have a chance to win it all every year.

That's the correct strategy, but it's dangerous if taken too far. Attributing all postseason results to chance prevents clubs from identifying and addressing real shortcomings. While no formula guarantees October success, doing certain things well positions teams to win. Teams that hit more home runs rely less on balls in play finding holes for hits. Athletic teams that play great defense don't need balls hit right at fielders to record outs.

Before the NLDS, Brewers president of baseball operations and general manager Matt Arnold acknowledged that the front office believes in playoff randomness, but also believes teams can mitigate it by building the right roster and doing the right things on the field.

"I do think there's a good amount of randomness," Arnold said. "But also, there's an old quote, 'Luck is a residue of design.' So I feel like we're spending a lot of minutes trying to create our own luck and create our own processes to make sure that we're putting ourselves in a position to have success. So I certainly think you can control some of it, but also, it's baseball, and anything can happen."

The Brewers caught a few breaks to reach the World Series; Ty France's redirected flyout off American Family Field's roof in the NLDS will forever be controversial in San Diego. But for the most part, they blazed their way here with excellent offense and excellent pitching. Over and over, they wore down great pitchers with long plate appearances, then punished the resulting mistakes over the heart of the plate.

"I think if you try to swing a lot against aces, you're in trouble," assistant hitting coach Daniel Vogelbach said. "They got really good stuff, so you just really have to zone them in."

It was a different story on Monday night, against Freddy Peralta in Game 3 of the World Series. The Brewers waited out their former ace—the most recent big name they traded away before free agency to maintain their open-ended window—drawing three walks and chasing just 26% of pitches outside the strike zone. But unlike other starters, Peralta didn't cave. Every time the Brewers backed him into a corner, he threw high-quality strikes. Peralta threw some pitches over the heart of the plate, but he never left any right down the middle.

Without damage pitches, the Brewers hit only four hard-hit balls (exit velocity of at least 95 MPH) out of 15 batted balls against Peralta. Trying to barrel fastballs around the edges of the zone almost always hurts more than it helps. They needed to think small.

"Barreling balls is great, but staying inside and staying through balls will get you hits," Vogelbach said. "If you start cheating to the fastball, trying to barrel it, you're going to be in trouble."

They also needed some good sequencing. They got it in the third inning from Christian Yelich and William Contreras, who got jammed on inside fastballs but looped them to the opposite field for run-scoring singles. Yelich stayed inside the ball enough to hit it on a line, but it left his bat at just 71.3 mph.

"He beat me with it a little bit," Yelich said. "I just kind of got lucky."

Yelich again made his own luck half an hour later on the bases, setting up a fifth-inning breakthrough. With two outs and runners on first and second, William Contreras hit a hard ground ball that took third baseman Junior Caminero back and to his left. The awkward positioning forced him to spin and redirect his body to make a throw.

Caminero had plenty of time to make a play at first. Contreras is a slow runner out of the right-handed batter's box, and he wasn't even halfway down the line when Caminero reached a throwing position. Instead, he took the shorter throw to second, where Yelich was initially called out but ruled safe upon review.

"Once I kind of saw him go in the hole and spin, I had a feeling that maybe that was going to be coming that way, but I didn't really know where it was going to be," Yelich said.

It was a mistake by Caminero, but Yelich made it costly by getting a head start off first base. Ryan Vilade wasn't holding him on with two runners on base and was playing farther off the base for the right-handed Contreras. Reading the positioning, Yelich took an extra step off first and got a great secondary lead.

"You're kind of walking that thin line and trying to make sure that you can extend as far as you can without getting back-picked after the pitch," Yelich said. "You're kind of lengthening your primary [lead] there in case that happens, where there's a ball in the hole or some sort of play happens where you could potentially beat the throw to second base."

"We work on those things in spring," Sal Frelick said. "[Yelich is] the guy that's running the meeting saying, 'This is important.' It's his 14th season. He's been an All-Star, Silver Slugger, MVP, and nobody cares about baserunning more than him."

That extra step turned an inning-ending groundout into a bases-loading single.

"The first baseman, with the right-handed hitter, played way off," Pat Murphy said. "Yeli took advantage of that, got as far out as he could, safe at second. That's a game changer right there. That gives you another pitch, and that's sometimes all you need."

The floodgates opened from there. The overturn chased Peralta from the game, as Kevin Cash went to Cam Booser for a string of lefties in the second half of the order. Unlike Peralta, Booser made several mistakes. The Brewers no longer needed to create their own luck.

Brice Turang and Garrett Mitchell smashed hard ground-ball singles. Cooper Pratt and Frelick smoked doubles down the left-field line. After another pitching change, David Hamilton and Jackson Chourio drove in two more runs against Cole Sulser. Just like that, the Brewers led 10-0. They became the first team in World Series history to score eight runs with two outs in a single inning.

From there, they cruised to their most comfortable postseason victory. Now the Brewers are one win away from their first World Series championship. Their vision is about to come to fruition. Their approach will finally be rewarded.

"We're going to treat it like a Game 7," Frelick said. "We obviously know that one more win can get us a nice trophy, but it's really just win every pitch, every inning, every at-bat, and that's what got us here."

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