Blake Snell Dominates Brewers as Dodgers Take NLCS Game 1

Say what you want about Blake Snell. You may not find his Only Use Strike Zone in Case of Emergency pitching style fun to watch, but in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series, the Brewers found it even less pleasant to hit against. Snell carved through a Milwaukee lineup that scored 22 runs in the NLDS like a knife through nothing at all, ending his night by retiring 17 straight. He faced the minimum over eight innings in an absolutely dominant performance as the Dodgers beat the Brewers, 2-1, to take a 1-0 lead in the NLCS.

A prolonged bout of shoulder inflammation limited Snell to just 11 starts and 61 1/3 innings this season, but over those 11 starts, he was excellent, running a 2.35 ERA and 2.69 FIP. He’d been even better in the playoffs, earning wins against the Reds and Phillies and allowing just two runs, five hits, and five walks while striking out 18. On Monday night, he made those performances look like warmup outings. Snell went eight innings for just the second time in his entire career, and finished with 10 strikeouts, no walks, and one hit. That one hit was a weak line drive that third baseman Caleb Durbin dumped into center field in the third inning. Durbin then broke for second way too early, allowing Snell to throw over to first and catch him easily at second. “You gotta disrupt it,” said Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy between innings. “You gotta do something. He looks really sharp.” The Brewers didn’t do anything.

It wasn’t surprising to see Snell dealing, but it was surprising to see him not walking anyone. The game plan for the Brewers was simple, if difficult to execute. They had the lowest chase rate and the sixth-highest walk rate in baseball this season. They needed to be patient and force Snell to throw the ball in the zone. The Dodgers wanted the same thing. “I can’t have him nibble,” said Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts before the game. Snell didn’t nibble. He hit the zone 50% of the time, well above his regular season rate of 44%, and only a hair under the major league average of 51%. It was just the third time in the past two seasons that he’d gone without a base on balls. His changeup was particularly devastating, and he threw it 37% of the time, the second-highest rate of his entire career. Between innings, he sat on the bench and flipped through a half-inch three-ring binder that held either scouting reports or notes for an AP chemistry midterm.

For their part, the Brewers pitched well too, but they found themselves in repeated scrapes in the middle innings. Opener Aaron Ashby and bulk reliever Quinn Priester made it through the first three innings with two walks and no hits. It seemed like Priester’s ability to induce groundballs might just flummox a Dodgers team that ran the highest fly ball rate in baseball. Roberts disagreed. “The first couple innings, I liked our at-bats,” he said during an in-game interview. It wasn’t necessarily clear what Roberts liked so much, aside from the fact that the Dodgers had only struck out twice. To that point, they had two walks, no hits, and one hard-hit ball. But he would be proven right quickly enough.

Priester walked Teoscar Hernández on four pitches to lead off the fourth inning, and Freddie Freeman nearly made him pay for it right away, ripping a deep drive into left field. Isaac Collins, who hadn’t played any left field since September 28, made a fantastic leaping catch just before running into the wall. The hard contact was just getting started. Will Smith ripped a single through the middle and Tommy Edman lined a first-pitch single into center field to loading the bases with one out. Max Muncy blasted the hardest ball yet, a 104 mph shot to the very deepest part of the ballpark, and it looked like the Dodgers would strike first.

Sal Frelick, who started just eight games in center field all season, nearly made his own fantastic leaping catch up against the wall. Instead, he did something even better.

The ball bounced out of his glove, off the padded top of the wall, and then back into the glove. Frelick fired the ball back into the infield, where all the runners – unclear whether the ball was a home run or had been caught – were still camped out on their bases. But it wasn’t a catch or a home run. Hernández bolted for home, sliding a fraction of a second too late after a brilliant relay from shortstop Joey Ortiz. It was a force out. Bizarrely, neither of the other runners had moved at all. Edman was still on second and Smith was still on third. Durbin, not wanting to draw the attention of the Dodgers, gently waved Contreras over to third. Contreras jogged toward the base and stepped on the bag. Nobody was quite sure whether he’d just completed a double play. Roberts got on the phone. Frelick had knocked his hat off somewhere in all the kerfuffle, and he just stood there on the warning track with his palms in the air and his eyes wide open, looking left, then right, then back again for someone who could tell him what exactly he had just been a part of:

As he put his hat back on, a camera caught him grinning ear to ear and asking a teammate, “What the f*ck just happened?” After a review, the call on the field was confirmed. It was your classic 404-foot 8-6-2 double play:

Priester had wriggled out of the jam by allowing the Dodgers to hit the ball harder and harder. He returned to start the fifth, a risky proposition after the way the Dodgers pounded him in the fourth. On cue, Enrique Hernández greeted him by ripping a leadoff double into left field. Andy Pages grounded out to third, and although the left-handed Jared Koenig was warming in the bullpen, the Brewers decided to intentionally walk Shohei Ohtani, putting runners on first and second so that Priester could stay in to face the right-handed Mookie Betts. Murphy had said during an in-game interview that the Brewers were hoping to get 85 pitches from Priester, and they needed that length desperately enough to let the right-hander try to work his way out of the jam. Betts nearly made him pay for it, hitting the ball on the screws at 94.1 mph, but right at second baseman Brice Turang, who fielded the ball on a hop and started a 4-6-3 double play. Priester had allowed four hard-hit balls in the fourth and fifth innings, and those four balls had resulted in one double and four outs. That would be the end of his night. By the skin of his teeth, Priester had scattered three hits and three walks over four innings while striking out one. The game was still knotted at zero.

The Dodgers would finally strike in the sixth, when Freeman dropped his bat head on a low fastball from Chad Patrick, lifting a towering fly ball to right field. Jackson Chourio kept drifting back slowly enough that it seemed like maybe, just maybe, the Brewers would have their third shot at making a leaping catch at the wall, but he ran out of space. He stopped at the wall and the ball landed just a few feet beyond him. After leaving five runners on base in the previous two innings, the Dodgers had opened the scoring with a solo home run:

The Dodgers would tack on an enormously useful insurance run off Abner Uribe in the top of the ninth. Uribe had been absolutely nails during both the regular season and the playoffs, but he walked leadoff man Muncy, then allowed Enrique Hernández to poke a weak single into right field. Pages bunted Muncy and Hernández over to second and third, and the Brewers once again intentionally walked Ohtani, bringing Betts to the plate with the bases loaded and one out. With the pressure on, Uribe lost the strike zone, walking Betts and scoring Muncy. The Dodgers led 2-0, but as has often been the case of late, their bullpen made things interesting.

Roki Sasaki, now the official Dodgers closer, issued a one-out walk to Collins. Jake Bauers pinch-hit for Ortiz and ripped a line drive double into center field. This time, a bounce went the Dodgers’ way. The ball went over Pages’ head and bounced off the warning track and over the fence. Had it stayed in the park, Collins would have scored easily. The Brewers had runners on second and third with one out and the top of the lineup at the plate. Chourio ripped a deep drive into center, and both runners tagged up; Collins scored. The Brewers were down to their final out, down 2-1 with the tying run on third in the form of pinch-runner Brandon Lockridge. Sasaki fell behind Christian Yelich, 3-1, nearly sending a pitch to the backstop and allowing Lockridge to tie the game before battling back to make it a full count. He lost the battle, walking Yelich and bringing William Contreras to the plate.

Roberts had seen enough from Sasaki, and brought Blake Treinen into the game. You know things are bad when you turn to Blake Treinen as the solution to wildness. Treinen walked Contreras, who somehow laid off a 3-2 sweeper that ended up just off the outside corner. It was an impressive take, and it brought Turang to the plate with the bases loaded. Treinen got ahead of Turang, then threw a 1-2 sweeper directly at his knees. Turang was unable to master himself quickly enough to stay in there and let the pitch hit him. The 2-2 pitch was a fastball at his eyes, and he couldn’t lay off it. He swung and missed, and the Dodgers had won the game and taken the series lead.

For the Brewers, it was a devastating loss for a multitude of reasons. Their offense was absolutely silenced. With the game so tight, they had no choice but to use the cream of their bullpen in a losing effort. Ashby, Uribe, Koenig, and Trevor Megill will surely be available for Game 2 on Tuesday night, but all will have at least an inning on their arms, and the Dodgers have now had the chance to see them all. The Dodgers are now able to throw Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, and Ohtani at the Brewers, while the Brewers have Freddy Peralta lined up for Game 2 and a lot more mixing and matching in their future after that. It hurts to walk in the winning run after intentionally loading the bases. It hurts even more to come this close to stealing a win with Priester in a bulk role, only to come up short.

In the visitor’s dugout, the Dodgers seem to be rounding into form at just the right moment. Playoff Enrique Hernández is back in full force, going 2-for-4. Freeman and Smith each chipped in two-hit performances of their own, and Ohtani added three walks, two of them intentional. Despite his struggles in Game 1, Sasaki has his found his role and the rest of the bullpen is fresh. The Dodgers got Ohtani back on the mound after Tommy John surgery and withstood injuries to Glasnow and Snell. All three are pitching like aces. The series is far from over, but with home field advantage neutralized and four more first-class starters lined up, Los Angeles is in the driver’s seat.