The 2026 Brewers Have Seen Tarik Skubal Twice, But This Time Will Be Different

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As games against Tarik Skubal go, the Brewers did well in 2026. They faced him twice, and though he got 18 outs in each appearance, the Crew also collected seven hits in each. They scored six runs, although one was unearned and another came home after he'd departed the game. It wasn't like they had his number and knocked him out of the box early—that only happened to Skubal once all year, really—but Milwaukee put up a good fight against him.

It's always dangerous to extrapolate from previous experience when predicting the future, and that goes extra for baseball. Overindex on matchup history, and you can convince yourself that something very meaningful affected a recent batch of outcomes, when really, what occurred fell within the normal range that all players (and teams) experience. On the other hand, though, there's something to learn from everything you do and everything that happens to you. Let's run down a few things we can (and can't) learn from the two starts Skubal made against the Brewers this season, as the team gets ready to face him again.

The Batting Order of Theseus

Of all the things to know about those games and how they relate to this one, the most important is this: On April 23, Brandon Lockridge, Luis Matos, Blake Perkins and Luis Rengifo were in the lineup. On August 16, Lockridge and Jonathan Ornelas both started. That's a good reminder of several things, not least of which is that no team enters a playoff series as the same club they were all season. There is no "club they were all season". You never step into the same river or onto the same diamond twice. Change is a constant in life, but even more of one in baseball.

For that matter, it's unlikely that the at-bats David Hamilton had against Skubal in April will matter much, either, for reasons we'll discuss more in a bit. Both times Skubal started against Milwaukee in the regular season, Gary Sánchez was in the middle of the lineup, and Christian Yelich and Garrett Mitchell were on the bench. Will that be true here in October? It's not guaranteed. The top-line results above, then, probably aren't as important as what we can glean from actually watching the games. Therefore, I went back to watch every pitch Skubal threw in those games.

Get His Feet Moving

There are a whole lot of pitchers who land in a more off-balance or unathletic position than Skubal. He's ready to field his position when he finishes delivering the ball—at least in theory. In practice, he's had some notable gaffes when forced to scramble after slow rollers and bunts over the years. Knowing that, the Brewers showed bunt (whether or not they even offered, let alone touched it or got it down) seven times in April and three times in August. Of all those bluffs and real attempts, only one (by Contreras, pulled back, in April) was by one of the players likely to start Sunday night. They were almost all effective, though, either at throwing Skubal off slightly and inducing a ball in a count when he clearly wanted to throw a strike; inviting him to throw a hittable pitch immediately afterward; or creating chaos by actually getting the bunt down.

In the sixth inning of the game in Detroit in April, Hamilton had a bunt single, and Lockridge followed immediately with a sacrifice bunt that he showed late, which turned into a single when no Tigers player got to first base in time to get him. First baseman Spencer Torkelson had come in to field the ball; Skubal didn't break directly enough to cover the bag. The Tigers' corner infielders are much younger and faster than the Dodgers', too. Though neither Freddie Freeman nor Max Muncy is any slouch defensively, the best way for an offense to test each is to lay down a bunt or two. Freeman and Muncy are a combined 73 years old, and they run like it. Skubal isn't quick off the mound, though he lands in position to handle anything hit sharply back to him. Brice Turang, Luis Lara, Sal Frelick and Garrett Mitchell should at least show bunt a few times.

How Aggressive is Too Aggressive?

As most Brewers fans already know, no team in the league swings less often than the Brewers. That's situation-dependent, of course, but not entirely so. On the first pitch of at-bats, the league swings about 30% of the time, on average. The Brewers were second-least aggressive on the first pitch this year, offering just 28.2% of the time. Against pitchers whom they expect to fill up the zone and whom they know to have swing-and-miss stuff, though, the team changes tack. In 51 plate appearances against Skubal, they swung at the first pitch 24 times.

Early swings against strike-throwing strikeout pitchers are good. They mitigate the chances of striking out, and indeed, the Brewers only fanned 12 times in those 51 plate appearances. That's not pretty (23.5% strikeout rate), but Skubal would typically punch out 15 or 16 batters in the same number of at-bats. It seemed that they had a good idea of how he would attack them, too. When he tried to get ahead with an out-of-zone changeup or a slider, they laid off. Their swings early were concentrated on his fastball. When right-handed batters got into deep counts, they started sitting on his changeup, with some success. Lefties stayed locked in on the heater. That's a good overall plan.

Slightly less aggressiveness might be in order this time, though—not much, but slightly less. In August, the team worked Skubal hard and got his pitch count elevated early. He made it through six innings only because Dave Roberts was willing to push him. The hook will come slightly quicker Sunday night, so if they can get him to 80 pitches after four innings, they'll have a good chance of getting to hit against the Dodgers' middle relievers before the night is out. Besides, the approach they took this regular season was clearly (although slightly) overcooked. Most of their swings didn't produce balls in play, anyway. They'd have done just as well for themselves in those individual at-bats by taking the pitch, and they wouldn't have risked a quick out.

It's Not the Same Joey Ortiz

The really good news for Milwaukee is the player who looked worst against Skubal in both games. William Contreras had good swings against him. So did Turang, and Jackson Chourio. Pratt still hasn't seen him live, because he was on the injured list when the August start happened, but Andrew Vaughn and Jake Bauers both swung well in that game at Dodger Stadium. The one guy who looked utterly stumped, despite what seems to have been a solid gameplan, was Joey Ortiz.

Unlike Contreras and Chourio, Ortiz seemed utterly unable to read the changeup. He chased that pitch repeatedly, and he got bullied by Skubal's fastball when the lefty sped him back up. Ortiz had a terrific resurgance after Pratt was called up and the team moved him to third base, but he looked as bad in August as he did in April, when it came to Skubal.

By contrast, Hamilton had a hard-hit ball and the aforementioned bunt single back in April. Looking only at these games, you could make a case for starting Hamilton over Ortiz. However, underlying data tells us that Ortiz made a bigger change at the tail end of the year than the ones he made in the middle, and it should render him better able to handle Skubal this time.

Ortiz's contact point moved about 5 inches farther in front of his body in September than it had been throughout the season. His attack angle (the vertical angle at which the barrel is traveling at contact, relative to the ground) shot up, and his attack direction swung sharply to the pull side. Ortiz is wired way, way better to hit Skubal right now than he was two months ago.

On the whole, perhaps one can argue that the Brewers are less well-equipped, at least to get to Skubal the way they did in each of those previous outings. Perkins had a key double in the April game. The two bunts were pivotal, as was a misplayed grounder in the game in August. This team became more conventional as the season wore on, and while that might make them better-prepared for the playoffs as a whole, it did sap some of the quirky magic their offense ran on for the previous year or two. On balance, though, you'd rather have this Brewers team facing Skubal than any previous version, from April, August or any other time. Whether they all start or not, this will be the first time Chourio, Vaughn, Sánchez and Pratt are all available to play in the same game against the southpaw. Ortiz made meaningful improvements, and the power that Bauers, Contreras and Turang are capable of makes the lineup dangerous.

They scored enough to make Skubal's teams work and to get him out of the game before Out No. 19 both times they saw him this year. To win Game 1, they need to do that again. They're unlikely to do it the same way, but they have avenues to that level of success open before them.