With Aaron Ashby First in Line, Lefty Openers Should Be the Norm for Brewers in NLCS

It's not a surprise that Aaron Ashby will take the ball to start Game 1 of the NLCS. It would have been surprising if the Brewers had done anything else. Freddy Peralta has more than earned the right to be deployed as a traditional starter, but in every game of this series not started by Peralta (as Games 2 and 6 will be), manager Pat Murphy is likely to lean on a left-handed opener ahead of any right-handed bulk arm he might intend to use. 

In fact, it was a bit of a shock not to see either DL Hall or Rob Zastryzny appear on the team's roster for this round, as announced earlier Monday. Instead, the Crew will proceed with four lefties active: Ashby, Jared Koenig, Robert Gasser and Jose Quintana.

To counter the plot of Ashby starting Game 1, Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts is batting Teoscar Hernández third, behind Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts and in front of Freddie Freeman and Will Smith. Roberts also has Tommy Edman up in the sixth spot, to deter Murphy from sticking with Ashby long enough to get out Max Muncy, who will bat seventh.

These are the cat-and-mouse maneuvers the managers will engage in throughout the series, because Murphy will want to throw lefties at Ohtani, Muncy and Freeman whenever he can, but still attack four key Dodgers hitters with right-handed hurlers as much as possible. Those four are Teoscar Hernández, Enrique Hernández, Edman and Andy Pages. Roberts can largely control that and thwart the attempt to claim matchup superiority at the front ends of games, but Murphy gets two types of compensation when Roberts juggles his order that way:

1. It becomes incrementally more likely that, for instance, Muncy is left in the on-deck circle while a righty like Abner Uribe retires a right-handed batter (or weak-hitting switch-hitter, like Edman) to finish a game; and
2. Whatever righty Murphy goes to behind a lefty lead-out man can be more easily shielded from a second or third encounter with the likes of Ohtani, Freeman and Muncy, as the situation dictates.

On Monday night, that righty is most likely to be Quinn Priester, and the likelihood is that Murphy will do something like this:

• Ashby pitches to the first seven batters, through Muncy's spot
• Priester comes on to face eighth and ninth batters, Kiké Hernández and Pages, then faces the entire lineup once through.
• Depending on the game state, Murphy then goes to his pen again to start the third turn of the Dodgers order, or sticks with Priester for six more batters and removes him in favor of a lefty before Muncy comes to bat.

If the Brewers have the lead in the middle of the game, Murphy can get aggressive and lift Priester earlier. If they're even or behind, he's more likely to stick with Priester for an extra handful of batters and avoid early overuse or overexposure for his key relief arms.

The Dodgers lineup is, of course, a fantastic and dangerous one. They make it hard to work through the card without hitting big trouble. Here are the wRC+ marks (where 100 is average and higher is better) for each Dodgers batter against both righties and lefties since the start of 2024.

You want the lefty against the top of this order because of how lethal Ohtani is against righties, with Freeman also devastatingly productive against them. Neither Betts nor Smith has enough of a platoon split to punish that strategy, though as you can see, Hernández can do that. By contrast, in the bottom half of the order are three guys who can be exploited by a good righty.

Slotting in Muncy seventh both discourages having the lefty opener stick around and protects the duo of Hernández and Pages. (Call is listed here as the 10th man, but obviously, he will play only if the Brewers figure to actually use a lefty for the lion's share of the game.) Murphy will have to either pounce on places where those two come up with one out already and go to a righty for a short appearance, or pay the tax for getting a right-on-right matchup with them by having a righty face either Muncy or Ohtani.

Still, on balance, that's a good deal for the Brewers. In Game 1, it'll be Ashby giving way to (probably) Priester. In Game 3, it could be Quintana on a longer (but still quite short, really) leash, with Tobias Myers behind him. Gasser might be an option to open Game 4, ahead of (say) Jacob Misiorowski—or that gig could go to Ashby, again.

There's no easy way to mow down the Dodgers. To beat this team, the Brewers will have to thread a needle or two. With the pregame back-and-forth ahead of Game 1, though, we're already seeing how that can be done.