The San Diego Padres have won a playoff series, but they'll have their hands full with the Brewers.
The San Diego Padres got their revenge against the Chicago Cubs in the Wild Card round with a quick 2-0 sweep, but now they face a very different sort of challenge. They’ll travel to Wisconsin to play the Milwaukee Brewers in the first game of the NLDS on Saturday night, and the Brewers will be a very different beast indeed.
The Padres beat the Cubs with a blitz of offense in the first game, and they jumped out to an early lead and were able to pull away in the fourth inning of the second game on a pinch-hit home run by Gavin Sheets to get a 4-1 win.
Getting behind early to San Diego at Petco Park is a formula for losing, and the Cubs’ stars didn’t show up, nor did they pitch particularly well. The Padres were able to use their devastating bullpen in the second game, and they’ll be looking to do that again in the opener of this series.
But this will be in Milwaukee, and the Brewers are the best fundamental team in baseball. They’re a complete game in all facets of the game, and the Brewers are where they are, which is home, because they posted the best record in baseball this season.
The big variable in this game will be Milwaukee starter Jacob Misiorowski. The Brewers have monitored Misiorowski carefully through the second half of the season, holding most of his starts to around five innings, to prepare him for this exact moment.
He didn’t give up a run in his final three starts, and the last time a team scored more than a run against Misiorowski happened back at the beginning of September when the Cubs got five off him.
Can the Padres get a lead against Misiorowski? It’s a tough task, but that’s the pivot point in this game. The 24-year old right-hander is set up to start twice in the five-game set, and a loss in the opener would set up the Padres for a serious uphill climb in the short series.
The Padres will send left-hander Robbie Ray to the mound, and on paper he’s nowhere near Misiorowski’s equal. Ray pitched to an ERA of 5.02 for San Diego after being acquired at the trade deadline, and Craig Stammen will have a very quick hook if Ray struggles.
Two things to look for here: (1) Can Ray throw strikes consistently? (2) Will the Padres stars hit? The latter happened against the Cubs, and the former will be especially crucial in this game.
