By Jack Harris, Los Angeles Occasions
MILWAUKEE — The explanation the Milwaukee Brewers are right here within the Nationwide League Championship Sequence is due to performs just like the one which ended the fourth inning Monday evening.
An odd, one-in-a-million, 400-foot double-play wherein one Brewers fielder made a spectacular defensive effort, and one other by no means misplaced consciousness of a wacky scenario — highlighting the sound fundamentals that made them baseball’s winningest staff this season.
The explanation the Dodgers are right here, nevertheless, is due to the best way they will reply to adversity identical to that — settling the panic with their dominant beginning pitching, rallying on the plate with their star-studded lineup and suffocating an opponent with a document payroll’s value of expertise.
In a 2-1 Recreation 1 win of the NLCS at American Household Subject, that was in the end what made the distinction.
The night’s most memorable second may need been that fourth-inning cluster, when the Dodgers had the bases loaded with one out, solely to return up empty when Max Muncy had a possible grand slam robbed (however, crucially, not caught cleanly) and two Dodgers runners have been retired on forceouts at residence and third.
However, an important contributions have been what got here after that, with Freddie Freeman’s residence run within the sixth inning giving the Dodgers the lead, and Blake Snell’s scoreless eight-inning grasp class on the mound making certain they wouldn’t relinquish it.
By the tip, the previous Giants left-hander Snell had change into the true story.
Already this postseason, the staff’s $182 million offseason signing had gotten off to a powerful begin in October, going no less than six innings in every of his first two outings whereas permitting simply two whole runs.
However on Monday, the two-time Cy Younger Award winner ascended to a unique stage.
Over eight innings of pure annihilation, Snell confronted the minimal variety of batters, erasing his solely baserunner (which got here on a flare single from Caleb Durbin to steer off the third) by selecting him off later within the inning. He struck out 10 batters, setting a postseason profession excessive. He wanted simply 103 pitches, with 69 going for strikes. And of these, 22 have been on swing-and-misses, tied for probably the most any pitcher has generated off the contact-minded Brewers this season.
Since José Lima’s NL Division Sequence shutout in 2004, Clayton Kershaw had been the one different Dodgers starter with a scoreless eight-inning begin within the postseason.
Each little bit of Snell’s excellence was required, too — thanks, firstly, to the Dodgers’ squandered alternative within the prime of the fourth.
The inning had began nicely, with the lineup lastly awakening. Teoscar Hernández led with a stroll. One-out singles from Will Smith and former Stanford star Tommy Edman loaded the bases.
That introduced Muncy to the plate, the place the slugger received an elevated cutter from Brewers bulk man Quinn Priester, and clobbered a towering fly-ball to middle discipline.
What adopted, nevertheless, was a catastrophe. One each self-inflicted by the Dodgers’ lack of expertise, and created by the Brewers skill to do the little issues so nicely.
As Muncy’s ball soared to the wall, Brewers middle fielder Sal Frelick jumped, received a glove on it, after which — no less than it appeared initially — caught it on a bobble. At third base, Hernández tagged up as soon as, then once more after seeing Frelick’s bobble, earlier than lastly breaking for residence plate because the Brewers relayed the ball in.
What nobody on the Dodgers observed within the second: Left discipline umpire Chad Fairchild waving his arms within the outfield, signaling (appropriately, as replay would later present) that the ball had bounced off the highest of the wall amid Frelick’s bobble. That meant, as an alternative of a sacrifice fly scenario, a power play was on for the protection.
Thus, when catcher William Contreras caught the throw residence simply forward of Hernández’s slide, he was out even with no tag. And because the different Dodgers’ baserunners stood immobile on base — nonetheless pondering Frelick had cleanly made the catch — the ever-aware Contreras ran over to 3rd himself and stepped on the bag, forcing out Smith after he had didn’t advance from second.
The play can be reviewed, however the name would stand.
Extra frustration adopted for the Dodgers, who received a leadoff double from Kiké Hernández within the fifth solely to finish the inning with one other (albeit extra conventional) double-play grounder from Mookie Betts.
And for a quick second, the Dodgers gave the impression to be falling into the Brewers’ entice: Fighting their proficient pitching workers, pissed off by their stellar protection, and one mistake away from shedding to a staff with inferior expertise however impeccable resolve.
Snell, nevertheless, by no means let that occur.
After which, with one out within the sixth, the Dodgers lastly jumped forward, when Freeman launched a high-arching drive to proper that simply saved carrying for his first residence run of the playoffs.
After that, the Dodgers made the slim lead stand.
Snell retired his last 17 batters with out hardly permitting even any laborious contact. The Dodgers tacked on an insurance coverage run when Betts drew a bases-loaded stroll within the prime of the ninth.
And, regardless of a supremely uncomfortable ninth inning wherein Roki Sasaki allowed one run and Blake Treinen loaded the bases with two outs, the Dodgers held on — making the fourth-inning double-play not more than a footnote as they took a 1-0 lead within the collection.
Initially Revealed: October 13, 2025 at 8:42 PM PDT
