MILWAUKEE — The Milwaukee Brewers are making the types of mistakes at the plate that they avoided while producing the best regular-season record in the major leagues.
No wonder they’re leaving home facing a 2-0 deficit against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the best-of-seven National League Championship Series.
“We’ve just got to play better,” Brewers designated hitter Christian Yelich said. “It’s not an ideal start to the series, by any means. Just have to continue to battle and find a way to get the offense going. I’ve got to be better. We’ve got to be better. It’s just facts.”
The Brewers ranked second in the majors in on-base percentage (.332) and third in runs (806) and batting average (.258) while posting a franchise-best 97-65 regular-season record.
But they’ve totaled just five hits through the first two games of this series and mustered only one run in each of them.
The Brewers got just two hits in a 2-1 Game 1 loss, as two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell allowed one hit and no walks over eight shutout innings for Los Angeles. They managed three hits in Game 2 and fell 5-1 as Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched the first postseason complete game in eight years.
During the regular season, the Brewers had the best chase rate in the majors, meaning they swung at the lowest percentage of pitches outside the strike zone. But their inability to work counts the last two night allowed Los Angeles’ starters to go deep into the games and prevented the Brewers from getting many shots at the Dodgers’ vulnerable bullpen.
“Both those pitchers were as dominant as two pitchers have been,” Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy said. “We chased way more than we’ve chased all year. We’ve been the best in baseball at not chasing. These pitchers brought out the worst in us.”
The most notable example came when Blake Treinen struck out Brice Turang swinging at a neck-high fastball with the bases loaded to end Game 1.
But the chasing was prevalent again, allowing Yamamoto to pitch a complete game for the first time since entering the majors last season on a 12-year, $325 million contract.
Jackson Chourio homered on Yamamoto’s first pitch to continue his impressive postseason. The 21-year-old already has four career postseason homers to tie a Brewers record he now shares with Orlando Arcia and Prince Fielder.
But the Brewers accomplished little else. Their only other hits were two-out singles by Turang in the third inning and Sal Frelick in the fourth.
The lack of punch was particularly frustrating because the Brewers had knocked Yamamoto out in the first inning of a 9-1 victory over the Dodgers the one time they faced him in the regular season. Yamamoto gave up five runs — three earned — and got only two outs in that July 7 game.
This time, the Brewers had no answers for him.
“He wasn’t missing over the middle of the plate,” Turang said. “We hit some balls hard but they were standing right there. Sometimes it’s part of the game. He hit his spots.”
Milwaukee’s struggles are up and down the lineup thus far in the series.
Yelich, a three-time All-Star and the 2018 NL MVP, is 0 for 13 in his last four games. Two-time All-Star William Contreras and Andrew Vaughn each homered twice in the NL Division Series against the Chicago Cubs, but both are hitless so far in this series.
“We’ve got to take batter at-bats,” Chourio said through an interpreter. “That’s where it begins. But you have to credit those guys. But we haven’t had so much luck go our way. We have to stick with our plan and stick with process and hopefully change things around.”
The Brewers remain confident they can turn this series around. They won all six regular-season matchups with the Dodgers, all in July. The Dodgers are playing much better now than they were then, but the Brewers realize they can show much more discipline at the plate than they’ve displayed the last two nights.
“You guys might have us counted out,” Murphy said. “And I understand that — 90% of the teams that have been in this situation don’t win the series. But this team has been counted out a lot this year. And I think there’s some fight left in them.”
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