This Brewers season has been one full of hope. A franchise record of 97 wins. Two winning streaks of 11-plus games. Securing baseball’s No. 1 seed. Eliminating the division rival Cubs in the NLDS. Earning a chance to avenge a 2018 NLCS loss to the Dodgers and advance to the World Series for the second time in franchise history and the first time since Ronald Reagan was president.
And now it suddenly feels like someone sucked the air out of the proverbial room (out of AmFam Field?).
Milwaukee came close to tying Game 1 in the bottom of the ninth, but Game 2 was a different story. Jackson Chourio homered on the first pitch of the game from Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but the Brewers’ offense looked lifeless for the rest of the game. Yamamoto threw a complete game, marking the second time in two games in this series that Los Angeles’ starting pitcher threw at least eight innings. No, this isn’t 1975.
Game 1 starter Blake Snell and Yamamoto both brought their best stuff, but for a team that generally shows great plate discipline, the Brewers have had some uncharacteristically bad at-bats in big situations. Milwaukee is now in an 0-2 hole, partly because the Dodgers are a great team, and partly because their offense performed below par during the regular season. Now the series heads to Los Angeles, where Milwaukee must win at least one of its next two games to stay alive.
At the risk of being delusionally optimistic, this series is far from over.
A lot of fuss has been made (including by yours truly) about the enormous wage differences between the Dodgers and Brewers. Much of the doom and gloom I’ve seen among Brewers fans after Game 2 mentions this and states that the Dodgers are simply too talented to beat. How can a small market team beat what is essentially an All-Star team?
This, in my opinion, is a logical fallacy. The Brewers ARE good enough to beat the Dodgers. They may not be talented anymore, but to say the Brewers don’t even have a chance is ridiculous considering how the rest of the season has gone. No one would say that if Brice Turang had been hanging in the batter’s box on the final at-bat of Game 1 (or simply not swinging at a pitch that was nowhere near the strike zone). Baseball is a game of incredibly close margins, and the Brewers were inches away from both a win and a eruption in Game 1. It’s not like Milwaukee is hopelessly overmatched or anything.
Yes, the offense has looked generally lifeless through two games. Do the Brewers need to play better? Yes. I’m confident they won’t win this series if plate discipline and offensive production remain anywhere near this poor quality. Five goals in two games is really bad. But what about the 167 games before that? They swept the Dodgers in the regular season. They have already proven that they can beat them. The Brewers are down 2-0, not because they’re facing a comedy superteam, but because their bats haven’t played up to standard during the regular season.
I also wonder about the mental aspect of playing against mainly The Monstars. For professional hitters, hitting is often more of a mind game than anything else. Christian Yelich and Brice Turang have often looked lost at the board in this series. Yelich had over 100 RBIs in the regular season, but hasn’t had a playoff RBI since 2018. It’s not like any of those guys just forgot how to hit. I’m not saying that mental problems are always easier to solve than physical problems, but sometimes things just click. Look at Andrew Vaughn leaving Chicago. Perhaps a 2-0 loss will light a fire under the Brewers, a team with its fair share of underdogs. The pitching alternated between adequate and excellent; all they need is one or two guys to heat up at the right time.
The Crew have put themselves in a hole, but they wouldn’t be the first team to come back from a 2-0 deficit in the Championship Series. It’s not like it happens all the time either. Earlier today, Paul wrote an article about the four examples of teams that lost the first two games of a seven-game series at home and then won the series. Aside from the Dodgers’ victory in the 2020 NLCS, no one has done that since the 1996 Yankees. If you want to expand the criteria to “teams that lost the first two games of a seven-game series and then won the series,” the only other team would be the 2023 Arizona Diamondbacks, who won the 2023 NLCS in seven games after going down 2-0.
I say, why on earth not? This season has already been improbable in so many ways. PECOTA helped the Brewers finish below .500. Turang had a 10 home run month. Caleb Durbin couldn’t beat Vinny Capra in March, but emerged as a key figure for the Brewers. So did Isaac Collins. I’m from Andrew Vaughn’s hometown and have been his staunchest defender — I even wrote an article arguing that Vaughn could be a long-term piece for this Brewers team before he’d even played a game — but I never in a million years saw the whole King Vaughn thing coming. Nobody did it.
The Brewers have had 11 wins in a row twice this year, so who’s to say they can’t win four in a row? Or four out of five? They got six in a row against the Dodgers in the regular season. If Milwaukee plays at their level, they can beat this team. Still. They have it in them.
Paul is right. The odds are, to put it simply, not great. This article is not based on statistics or historical analysis; none of these things suggest the Brewers will win. This article is based on the idea that sometimes unpredictable – or almost impossible – things happen in sports. The 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers defeated the 73-9 Warriors after a 3-1 loss in the NBA Finals. To Prime Minister Steph Curry. The 2004 Red Sox hadn’t won a championship in nearly 100 years — longer than the Brewers have existed as a franchise — when they came back from a 3-0 deficit to beat the Jeter/A-Rod/Mo Rivera Yankees and went on to win the World Series. Those runs both felt magical, as has much of this Brewers season.
What makes this team different?
So yeah, the Brewers have their backs against the wall. I choose to believe. Call it delusion, call it a bad view, call it Homerism. Crazier things have happened. It’s not over until the fat lady sings, and she’s still on vocal rest. See you tomorrow for match 3.
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