Brewers are sitting pretty after NLCS Game 3 win - and it's no longer a surprise

Gabe Lacques | Paste BN

LOS ANGELES – At this point, it really doesn’t matter to the Milwaukee Brewers that they typically don’t know who their starting pitcher will be until mere hours before the next playoff game.

They can only shrug when traditionalists wonder why they yank a pitcher while he’s throwing a shutout, or why they give their closer the ball, ninth inning, crucial game, even after he let them down so badly in two previous outings.

These Brewers, after shutting out the Los Angeles Dodgers 4-0 in Game 3 of this National League Championship Series, are just two victories from their first World Series since 1982.

And if it seems crazy that they’re doing it by employing what to an outsider might appear to be a seat-of-their-pants pitching plan, well, consider the cast of characters that keyed this near-perfect exhibition of playoff baseball Monday night at Dodger Stadium.

Shortstop Orlando Arcia put the game away with his third home run this postseason, equaling his regular season output during a year in which he was twice sent to the minor leagues – the second time sporting a .197 batting average in July.

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Reliever Corey Knebel, who inherited a 2-0 lead and the heart of the Dodgers’ order in the sixth inning, was banished to Class AAA on Aug. 23, tumbling from the closer role all the way to Colorado Springs to get himself right.

In Game 3, he struck out Manny Machado, Cody Bellinger, Yasiel Puig and Yasmani Grandal, carrying the Brewers into the eighth inning.

And then there’s starter Jhoulys Chacin, Milwaukee’s nominal ace who just three years ago wondered if shoulder and back problems would shelve his career at age 27. He bedeviled the Dodgers with his assortment of sliders and off-speed stuff, striking out six, allowing five baserunners and recording 16 outs that enable the Brewers to go for the kill in Games 4 and 5 with a well-rested bullpen.

They lead this NLCS, 2-1, a state of affairs that has startled the Dodgers and the baseball world.

The Brewers won’t admit they’re surprised, of course. There’s no point to competing if there’s an absence of belief that the ultimate prize is attainable.

At the same time, winning Game 3 – and the manner they did so – makes that goal come into focus even more.

“We’ve all kind of felt we’ve made it this far, we’re not going to stop, we’re not going to cave in,” says Knebel. “We’ve got one thing on our mind, and that’s…”

He paused for a moment.

“That’s to win ballgames. We’ve just got to keep doing it.”

Nope, he was not yet ready to say “pennant” or “World Series” or “championship.”

So, we’ll say it for him: All those goals feel a lot more plausible after Monday night.

The Brewers are looking an awful lot like what the bracketologists call “a tough out” in the NCAA tournament. No, there’s nothing flashy about how they rack up victories. And their often-by-design truncated starting pitching outings don’t seem sustainable through October’s gulag.

Games 3, 4 and 5 were supposed to crack that foundation, coming on consecutive days and on the road, no less. Yet here they are, up 2-1 and with their most important player, lefty reliever Josh Hader, available for Game 4 and possibly Game 5.

He threw just eight pitches in Game 4 – striking out pinch-hitters David Freese and Matt Kemp to end the eighth inning - because manager Craig Counsell got greedy.

He could have let Hader handle the ninth and end all hope for the Dodgers.

Instead, he summoned de facto closer Jeremy Jeffress, who was coming off poor outings in Games 1 and 2, the latter including a go-ahead home run to Justin Turner.

Jeffress made that decision look dubious when he loaded the bases with one out on a pair of singles and a walk.

He rallied with strikeouts of Yasmani Grandal and Brian Dozier to end it. And so Counsell didn’t just keep Hader fresh – he might have invigorated an All-Star reliever, too.

“He’s done that each and every time something bad has happened to me,” says Jeffress. “To do it in a spot right now, in the postseason, says a lot about Counsell and the confidence he has in each and every player on his team.

“To give me another chance like this, I’m very grateful.”

There’s a half-dozen or so Brewers who could say the same thing in the big picture, be it Arcia or Chacin or 38-year-old catcher Erik Kratz, who continued his folk-hero October with a single that preceded Arcia’s home run.

Or Gio Gonzalez, who will get his second start of the series in Game 4, six weeks after he was dumped by the Washington Nationals. The Dodgers have for days had lefties Rich Hill and Clayton Kershaw lined up for Games 4 and 5.

The Brewers? Consider that Knebel had to ask a reporter who was starting Game 4, the decision revealed only moments earlier by Counsell.

Such is life on a team chock full of surprises. Perhaps the rest of us shouldn’t be so shocked if they keep this up.

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