The National League Championship Series comes back into action tonight with a shift to Los Angeles. The Brewers have a commanding lead over the Dodgers in this one, winning both of the first two games, but if the home team continues to win, the Dodgers could head back to Milwaukee up 3-2 on their opponent. What will happen tonight as Los Angeles looks to make this a series against pesky Milwaukee.
The Milwaukee Brewers are putting on a clinic right now. There are a few things that are very impressive about the Brewers in this series. The first thing that I like is that they are winning in a multitude of ways. Game 1 saw them hit a game-tying homer, then they drew a walk, bunted their runner to second, and then hit a single to take the lead. Game 2 was a lot of station-to-station baseball, but they did get a major home run from William Contreras at a key moment. Another impressive thing about Milwaukee has been their ability to come back. The Dodgers have scored first in both games, but the Brewers haven’t rolled over and died.
As impressive as their offense has been, their pitching staff has been even better. Their starters have been reliable, but their bullpen has been even better. Tonight, they send out Robert Gasser to the mound. Gasser has made one start in the postseason; he went four innings and allowed three hits and one walk. He allowed a solo homer, and the Brewers won the game 3-1 over the Padres. This could be a good game for the Dodgers as they faced Gasser twice this season and won both games. They are also hitting .312 against him.
The Los Angeles Dodgers need a win. Teams that go down 0-2 in a best-of-seven series have about a 15% chance to win the series. There have only been six teams to ever do it, but three of them have done so in the past six seasons. The Dodgers aren’t playing bad baseball. In Game 1, they might’ve been the better offense, but they couldn’t get the hit when they needed it. Game 2 was mostly the fault of their bullpen. However, it isn’t a good sign for them that they lost games with both Tarik Skubal and Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the mound.
The Dodgers have one of the deepest starting rotations in baseball history. That’s more opinion than fact, but they essentially can throw an ace in any game. Tonight’s ace is Blake Snell, who makes his second start of the postseason. In Snell’s game against the Braves, he went 3.2 innings, allowed three hits, and one earned run. He struck out five hitters, but he also walked five. He walked 16 hitters over 42.2 innings in the regular season, so this game was an outlier. He didn’t face the Brewers this season, but he has held them to a .172 batting average over their careers against him. Take out Gary Sanchez from the lineup, and they are 4-for-41 against him (.095 average).
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I do think the Dodgers get the win tonight, but I’m not willing to wager -172 on it. Instead, I think this is a game where we get some success from the Dodgers offense. I doubt Gasser gets more than three innings of work, but eventually this Brewers bullpen has to falter a bit. I just don’t think it will be a high-scoring game tonight. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Shohei Ohtani break out either. Give me the over 3.5 runs for the Dodgers tonight.
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