Brewers vs. Padres: Previewing the NLDS Showdown

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The Wild Card round of the playoffs is officially in the books. Now, the real fun begins. The Milwaukee Brewers earned a first-round bye, but their reprieve is all but over. They’ll be taking on the San Diego Padres in the NLDS beginning Saturday, and as rocky as the Padres' regular season was, they’re playing some awfully good baseball right now.

San Diego went 20-6 in September, going from a team that may not even sneak into the postseason to hosting a Wild Card series. They dominated the Chicago Cubs this week, sweeping their way into the NLDS. This series is what postseason baseball is all about: a Brewers team that was the best in baseball during the regular season going up against a red-hot Padres team that has been, arguably, the best team in the league over the last month.

So what should we expect in a best-of-five series between these two squads, and what does Milwaukee need to do to advance to the NLCS?

Let’s start with the first part of that question. I think this has the potential to be a very low-scoring series. A lot of playoff series are low-scoring. Pitching tends to take over once the postseason begins and teams prune their decision trees to remove cancerous limbs (i.e., 5.50 ERAs), and both teams are going to be throwing their best arms out there. The Brewers’ pitching staff allowed the fourth-fewest runs in the league during the regular season. Jacob Misiorowski and Logan Henderson have been a truly elite 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation, while the bullpen posted a collective 3.40 ERA, the third-lowest mark of any team. In theory, that should give Milwaukee a huge advantage in this series. It's not that simple, though.

San Diego’s bullpen is arguably the best in baseball, with Mason Miller and Adrián Morejón headlining a group that boasts underrated depth. As a team, they held the Cubs to one run over two games. Chicago's offense wasn't firing on all cylinders, but still, that's not easy to do. Neither team is going to have an easy time stringing together hits against these pitching staffs, which means every baserunner and every scoring opportunity will matter.

We may see two very different offensive approaches throughout the series. Milwaukee drew the second-most walks in baseball during the regular season, with 668. This is a patient offense that wants to make opposing pitchers work, get into hitter-friendly counts, and eventually capitalize on mistakes. Famously, they swing less often than any other lineup does.

Meanwhile, San Diego had more home runs than walks drawn during the Wild Card round. The Padres will certainly make Milwaukee’s pitching staff work, but they’re also ready to jump on a pitch over the plate. That was a big part of what made them so dangerous against the Cubs, and it’s something the Brewers are going to have to account for. The Crew likes to attack with fastballs; they have to execute properly to avoid having the Padres ambush them.

So what do the Brewers need to do to advance? For starters, they need to win Games 1 and 2. Now, you may be thinking, “Duh.” But with Misiorowski and Henderson lined up to start those games (and with big questions about the rest of the rotation), Milwaukee needs to make good on its home-field advantage. If the Brewers can win both games at home, they’ll put San Diego in a difficult position heading into the rest of the series. If they go into the cauldron of yellow towels and noise that is Petco Park with the series level (or if the Padres lead it), the Brewers will no longer be the favorites.

In any short series, much depends on how well a team converts chances into actual runs. That was a big part of why the Padres were so successful in the Wild Card round. They went 5-for-11 with runners in scoring position against the Cubs, taking advantage of the opportunities they had. They created runs in short sequences, via the homer and extra-base hits, as well as taking extra bases with their speed.

The Brewers will have to match that execution and that capacity for pressing down when their foot is on the opponent's neck. They showed exactly that killer instinct in the games at American Family Field against the Cubs last fall, and they need to do it again. Pass information quickly. Take the extra base. Get bunts down, steal bases, and flip the script on a San Diego team that has felt comfortable and in-controil for weeks now.

This should be a very entertaining series between teams playing extremely good baseball right now. It's going to be high-intensity, high-volatility baseball. The Brewers have to be the ones creating and managing the chaos. It's as hard as it sounds; that's October in a nutshell.