Sloppy play, weak offense sink Milwaukee
LOS ANGELES – Nearly five years after Wade Miley’s famed one-batter appearance at Dodger Stadium in the 2018 National League Championship Series, the left-hander stepped onto the mound in Los Angeles once again.
There was no Brandon Woodruff warming up in the bullpen to take over after the first hitter in the bottom of the first this time. The stakes were notably lower than they were on that October afternoon in 2018 for Game 5.
The result for the Milwaukee Brewers, though?
The same: a loss.
The Dodgers, for the second straight night, took advantage of a handful of Brewers mistakes and cruised behind starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw and a meager three-hit performance from Milwaukee’s offense for a 7-1 win Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium.
With the loss and coinciding wins by the Reds and Cubs, the Brewers, who have five hits across two losses to start the series, saw their lead in the division shrink to 21⁄2 games while the scalding Dodgers picked up their 10th win in a row.
A rare 2 catcher’s interferences
The bat of Dodgers designated hitter J.D. Martinez and Brewers catcher William Contreras’ glove grew well-acquainted.
With runners on the corners and one out in the bottom of the first, Martinez swung at a cutter on the inside corner from Miley and nicked the glove of Brewers catcher William Contreras for a catcher’s interference to load the bases.
Miley got the grounder he needed against the next batter, Amed Rosario, but as was a theme for much of the night, the weak contact was located well enough to benefit the Dodgers as the Brewers had no chance at turning a double play and a run scored.
“It’s frustrating but you got to tip your hat to those guys,” Miley said. “I didn’t execute as well as I needed to, for sure, against a lineup like that. But I felt like every ground ball had a GPS hooked to it. I couldn’t get them to hit it at nobody.”
Martinez came up the next inning with the Dodgers leading, 2-1, thanks to Miguel Rojas’ solo homer with two outs. The bases were loaded with two outs for Martinez after Will Smith’s excuse-me infield single.
It appeared as though Martinez’s back foot may have been planted outside the batter’s box, but the Brewers nevertheless had no qualms with where he was standing.
“I’ve just to go make an adjustment,” Contreras said. “Obviously, it happened once. You’ve got to be able to make an adjustment after the first one and look where the hitter’s set up and go from there.”
“It’s a fine line,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell added. “Frankly, we want our catcher as close to the hitter as you can. That helps with receiving. Unfortunately, just the way Martinez swings kind of produced those tonight.”
Miley appeared to get out of the inning thanks to a slick play by Willy Adames at shortstop, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be; Martinez had again caught Contreras’ glove with his swing.
Instead of the inning being over, it was 3-1, Dodgers.
Other miscues hurt Brewers
Right-hander Abner Uribe relieved Miley after the southpaw went five innings allowing four runs, including three earned, on seven hits and two walks. Uribe got the first two outs of the sixth, allowed a single to Mookie Betts and then gave up a fly ball to the warning track to Freddie Freeman.
The ball was playable for center fielder Joey Wiemer, who however got caught in between in a decision of whether to jump, but landed on the base of the wall instead. The miscue – which was initially ruled a double but corrected to an error after the game – directly led to two runs as Betts scored on the play and Freeman then came home on Smith’s ensuing RBI single.
That gave the Dodgers a 6-1 lead, which was extended to 7-1 by Brewers nemesis Chris Taylor’s solo homer off Andrew Chafin in the seventh.
The offense didn’t do much, either
It was a frustrating night for the Brewers offense for multiple reasons.
They weren’t without plenty of hard contact early on against Kershaw, who went five innings in his second start back from the injured list, but aside from Mark Canha’s solo homer leading off the second, none of it led to any runs.
Joey Wiemer flew out to the wall in left to end the second, Adames hit a double in the fourth that missed clearing the fence by all of one foot, then later that inning Sal Frelick smashed a line drive right at Freeman at first for an unassisted double play.
The batted ball with the highest exit velocity on the night for either side belonged to Christian Yelich, who tattooed a frozen rope against Kershaw in the fifth. Of course, Mookie Betts flagged it down in right.
“I thought we did a decent job against Kershaw,” Counsell said. “Had some good swings. Didn’t get a ball to drop to kind of create a big opportunity.”
The end results were ugly for the second straight game. The Dodgers bullpen of Brusdar Graterol, Ryan Brasier and former Brewer Gus Varland, who made his Dodgers debut with two scoreless innings, held the Brewers hitless over the final four innings.
On Tuesday, the Brewers had one hit after the first inning. Wednesday, they were hitless after the fourth.
Milwaukee has as many errors – five – as hits in the series.
“It’s not enough,” Counsell said.
Brewers revisit scene (and matchup) of Game 5 from 2018
The 2018 Brewers were similar in some ways to the current team in that they were built around a strong pitching staff, but the process of how they got those outs differed.
Milwaukee had a cast of excellent pitchers, but it had few proven arms in the rotation to shoulder a heavy load like it does now. Instead, the Brewers weren’t bound by structure or convention in how they deployed their pitchers.
“We just did things a little bit differently,” Brewers pitcher Brandon Woodruff said. “That’s how we had to.”
Never was that more apparent than Game 5, when the Brewers announced Miley as the starter to get the Dodgers to put out a lineup featuring right-handed hitters, then pulled a bait-and-switch with Woodruff coming out after one batter.
“I just never came outside before the game,” Woodruff said. “I was sitting back there in the bullpen by the tunnel that goes back to the clubhouse. I’m sitting back there watching (Miley) warm up. As soon as they exchanged lineup cards, the lineup’s set, they can’t make any changes. As soon as that happened, I started warming up in the bullpen as Wade’s walking in.”
The move, in some ways, it worked. In others, it didn’t.
The Brewers got the platoon advantage they wanted and led through four innings, but Woodruff allowed three runs in the fifth and sixth and the offense couldn’t get all that much going against Kershaw in a 5-2 loss.
The Brewers lost the series in seven games, but there was no question as to whether that team could stack up against the Dodgers, the National League’s perennial powerhouse.
Entering the seventh game of that series, the season series was almost an even split at 7-6 in favor of the Dodgers. Take out a 21-5 blowout at Dodger Stadium in August and the run margin was almost even, too, at a +2 for Milwaukee.
Can Brewers compete with the likes of the Dodgers if they make the playoffs?
The last couple of nights have been ugly, as was much of the series between the teams in Milwaukee in May.
Miley, though, believes the Brewers will be able to line up with the Dodgers, or anyone else, in an October setting.
“It’s such a different animal when you get to the postseason,” he said. “Obviously, they’re really good. We have a good team in here, as well. We just haven’t played as crisp as we need to play.”