Milwaukee Brewers beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 2-1 in Sunday night’s opener of the National League Championship Series, a rematch a year in the making.
The Moment That Decided It
Rookie Luis Lara lined a first-pitch Tarik Skubal changeup up the middle to score Garrett Mitchell, who had drawn a leadoff walk and advanced to second on a Cooper Pratt sacrifice bunt. The run came in the fifth inning, and Milwaukee held the lead the rest of the way. That manufactured run, followed by a clean finish, showed how the Brewers have built their path to the NLCS and served as an early sign that this is not the same team that was swept by the Dodgers last year.
The Star: Milwaukee’s Bullpen
The Brewers’ relief corps was the story of the game. DL Hall, Abner Uribe, Aaron Ashby and Trevor Megill combined to throw 4⅔ scoreless innings and worked out of several tense situations. Ashby deserves special credit after covering two innings and inducing a pair of eighth-inning infield popups from Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani. Uribe also struck out a batter to strand two runners and keep Milwaukee ahead.
The Stat That Defined the Game
Milwaukee turned three double plays. Jacob Misiorowski had early trouble, but the Brewers’ defense bailed him out with 6-4-3 double plays to end both the first and second innings. After Misiorowski exited in the fifth, Hall induced another inning-ending double play to stamp out a potential rally.
What It Means for the Series
This is only the second time since the Dodgers’ championship run began in 2024 that they have lost the opening game of a playoff series. The other came in last year’s World Series, when they bounced back to beat the Blue Jays in Game 2 with Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the mound. Yamamoto starts Game 2 on Monday at 5 p.m. ET, facing a 2-0 series deficit against a team that has proven it can beat Los Angeles.