MILWAUKEE — The National League Championship Series begins Sunday. The series could have been decided on August 1.
That was the day the Dodgers traded for Tarik Skubal. The Milwaukee Brewers really wanted him, but they refused to include a promising young pitcher in the deal.
So on Sunday, the scenario the Brewers most hoped to avoid came true: Instead of starting for them in Game 1 of the NLCS, Skubal started against them.
If the Dodgers win the Series, the winter in Milwaukee could be cold and long, with fans tortured by visions of Skubal and presumptive Cy Young winner Jacob Misiorowski starting four games in the Series.
“Obviously it wouldn’t be much fun to come out here and face Miz and then Skubal,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said.
Instead, the Dodgers could get four starts with Skubal and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
“Every night when you face these guys, you know you’re going to face a Cy Young caliber pitcher,” Brewers captain Christian Yelich said. “That’s why they were so good as a team.”
In the alternate reality, the Dodgers start Yamamoto — perhaps the best big-game pitcher in the world — followed by Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and maybe Emmet Sheehan. Snell and Glasnow each played last October, but each walked five times in the start of their division series and failed to complete five innings.
In reality, the Brewers are expected to follow Misiorowski with rookie Logan Henderson, who they wouldn’t take in the Skubal trade. It’s no easy task for the Dodgers: Henderson has posted a 2.47 ERA in 18 games this season, better than Yamamoto (2.53) and Skubal (2.72).
If Henderson can outshine the bigger names, the Brewers could do well. But if the Brewers fall behind in the series, they could face falling behind former Dodger Dustin May and rookie Robert Gasser.
Unsurprisingly, Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold had little to say about his team facing Skubal in Game 1 rather than trading for him — and keeping him away from the Dodgers.
“Every team was looking to acquire good players on deadline,” Arnold said, “and ultimately they landed a really good one in Tarik Skubal.”
Misiorowski said, “This guy is crazy. I just hope these guys can do their job and handle business with him and let me do my thing and try to take care of that aspect.”
It’s entirely rational that the Brewers decided that six years with Henderson would be more successful and certainly more profitable than two months with Skubal, who is eligible for free agency and is likely to receive the largest contract ever given to a pitcher (the current record: Yamamoto’s $325 million deal with the Dodgers).
It’s also unfortunate in the sense that the Brewers are not plucky underdogs, but the team that won the most games in the Netherlands this year and last year.
“We were expecting to have to play them in this round since spring training,” Yelich said.
Flags fly forever. The Brewers, founded in 1969, have never won the World Series. If you don’t go all-in in a season in which you won a franchise-record 103 games, when will you?
“I’m grateful for the opportunity to compete with the Dodgers, because they’ve obviously proven themselves to be a dominant baseball organization,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “You can complain or explain or say it’s this or that, but the opportunity to get in the ring and do that is pretty special.
“This is how you would want this storybook to end: When you write the final words of the Milwaukee Brewers’ championship, you would want it to go through the Los Angeles Dodgers. That’s how it has to be if this is an incredible story, for lack of a better adjective.”
The Brewers should be offended by the premise behind the owners’ push for a salary cap. Owners say small-market teams cannot compete effectively or consistently without such a team. The Brewers – the team that plays in baseball’s smallest market – have won a division championship for four straight years, and five of six.
“No one here is worried about it right now,” Arnold said. “We’re striving to win, and I think we’ve done that for a while. Regardless of the economic situation, the guys there believe in it, and so do I.”
The owners argued that the system needed to be reformed because a small-market team had not won a World Series in 11 years. Do the Brewers consider their streak of success a failure?
“I wouldn’t,” Arnold said. “I would look at it as an opportunity to go and win it this year.”
Overall – what this all means for Major League Baseball – this series makes no difference. The owners are determined to demand a salary cap whether the underdog Brewers win or the big, bad Dodgers win.
In the local context, the Brewers must ask themselves what each manager or coach is doing: Have we put our players in the best position to win?
If the Brewers win this series, good for them. If they don’t, they will have their answer on August 1st.
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