MILWAUKEE – Everyone is busy. We get our news from TikTok, use emojis instead of words, and create a dinner app instead of turning on the stove burners. So if you wanted to understand how the Brewers won 108 games and how they drag the two-time defending champion Dodgers into the NLCS, all you needed was seven minutes and 15 seconds.
Milwaukee first baseman Jake Bauers spent seven minutes and 15 seconds in the batter’s box against Dodgers right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto, one of the best clutch pitchers of this generation, in the third inning of Game 2 of the NLCS on Monday. Bauers refused to leave. He defined Brewers Baseball.
“I think there was a moment during the at-bat where I kind of…I decided he wasn’t going to get me,” Bauers said. “After that, I think it was more of a simple power outage than anything else.”
Bauers won the at-bat with a walk. The Brewers, trailing 2-1 at the time, won the game 7-4.
“It was a game changer,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “That one at-bat turned the whole game around.”
Jake Bauers’ 12-pitch walk against Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the most pitches a batter has seen in a plate appearance against Yamamoto in his career pic.twitter.com/rDCD0IWS9I
— Talking Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) October 12, 2026
Yamamoto, exhausted and exhausted, never made it out of the round. He shuffled off the mound like someone tasked with solving Sunday’s problem. Times crossword while running a marathon. Uncle! Getting just eight outs forced manager Dave Roberts to use seven relievers behind his postseason ace, an idea unfathomable before the game.
The Dodgers are in trouble not only because they have lost twice, but also because of their fatigue. They had a lead with Tarik Skubal on the mound In Game 1 and a lead with Yamamoto on the mound in Game 2 and left Milwaukee trailing two games to none. They have never looked more vulnerable in their playoff run in the last decade than they do now.
Their problems are numerous. Los Angeles can’t hit the power sinkers out of Milwaukee’s bullpen. He’s 2 for 29 (.069) against the Brewers pen.
Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani is a shell of itself because it doesn’t have the bottom half of stability to have a firm front side. He can’t light a bullet. The last time he fired a ball for an extra base hit was August 26. He is reduced to trying to throw the ball towards the opposite court. The Brewers attack him with raised heaters in the zone like he’s a #9 hitter. Ohtani is so compromised that Roberts must consider making him sit for Josue De Paula– a heresy, perhaps, but times are getting desperate.
The Dodgers look old. In two games, they have one extra base hit, no home runs, no stolen bases and one hit in 12 at-bats with runners in scoring position. Their only path to victory is to slug, and they face the team that depresses slug more than any other, especially with Murphy reducing his usage of the bullpen.
On top of all of these issues, Roberts was burned in a rare playoff miscalculation. The game was tied in the sixth inning when reliever Brock Stewart gave Milwaukee a rally. He walked No. 9 hitter David Hamilton, then rejected a putout attempt to advance Hamilton to second. Jackson Chourio moved him to third with a perfect productive takedown for Brewer.
Roberts had left-hander Tanner Scott ready for southpaw Brice Turang. The high-percentage move consisted of Scott facing Turang, walking William Contreras, then facing Bauers, another southpaw. The Dodgers’ path out of this inning was to have Scott face two lefties.
Instead, Roberts left Stewart in the match. Roberts intentionally got Turang to pitch to Contreras, which didn’t make sense because the Dodgers before the Series were identifying the red-hot Contreras as the name to circle in the lineup with the notation “Don’t let him beat us.”
When asked for an explanation, Roberts said, “It was just like trying to ground Contreras. I just felt like if we give up Brice right there and then we have a chance to ground him and get a double play ball… Contreras didn’t hit the ball hard. He threw it to left field, ran, and that’s what they do.”
There is a problem with this way of thinking. After Stewart put Turang down, Turang would steal second base. Max Muncy played counterras deep at third base, away from Hamilton, an elite runner at third who accounted for the tying run. As one Brewer said: “No way they’re going to throw (second place) over there.” » A stolen base would thwart a possible double play.
It didn’t matter. A single throw was enough for Contreras to thwart Roberts’ strategy. Stewart hooked a first-pitch sweeper in the zone. Contreras hit it to left field for a game-clinching single. No, he wasn’t hit hard (76.9 mph), but it was another example of a red-hot Contreras mastering situational strikes.
William Contreras puts the Brewers in front!
He has 3 RBIs tonight 💪 pic.twitter.com/IHA682RpfR
– MLB (@MLB) October 12, 2026
He also struck from the first point with a double sawn swing And tied the game in the fifth with a moonshot with empty bases and heels for a homer. The Dodgers were beaten by the one guy they didn’t want to let beat them, an opportunity the Brewers loved receiving.
“The way he’s swinging it right now? Sure,” Milwaukee hitting coach Dan Vogelbach said. “I mean, these guys love the moment. And William loves the moment as much as you can love the moment. So when he gets the opportunity, you always feel like he’s going to come out on top.”
Contreras won the match, but it was Bauers who changed it. Two years ago, Bauers was almost certain to quit baseball. It wasn’t fun anymore. He had bounced around seven organizations in 10 years and had just hit .199 for Milwaukee in a part-time role. His wife, Lauren, would return to teaching while Bauers would stay home with their child. Everything was ready until Lauren announced that she was pregnant. The need for health coverage motivated Bauers to stay in baseball with the Brewers.
Bauers re-signed a minor league contract and made the team. After hitting .235 in a part-time role, he changed his offseason training program last winter to emphasize balance and body control rather than strength. The changes helped him lose the drift in his swing and rotate around his core. A career .365 hitter, he broke out with a .484 slugging percentage.
“He’s impressed me all year, to be honest,” Vogelbach says, “by not speeding up in big moments and being confident that he doesn’t need to cheat on anything, and he’s backing off, but he’s not trying to do too much… He just believes in himself. He’s confident in himself and he’s never speeded up, which is really, really cool to see.”
Yamamoto tried everything to make Bauers leave. He threw five different types of pitches: splitter (four of them), four-seamer (three), curveball (three), cutter (one) and sinker (one). At one point, with the help of his shelter, Yamamoto shut down the game due to an apparent issue with Pitchcom to get a needed break.
“I was like, ‘Come on, really? “, says Bauers. “You’re kidding me.”
With the count complete, Bauers fouled six consecutive pitches from five different types of pitches.
“Honestly, I wasn’t trying to cover everything,” Bauers said. “I was just trying to fight until I got one that I felt I could handle. And I was just trying to mess up, mess up, mess up, and either I’ll get one or it’ll come with me.”
On the 12th pitch, an exhausted Yamamoto threw a curveball into the dirt. Yamamoto had thrown 149 complete pitches this year. Only 18 of them were curveballs. One of them was a ball to Bauers in August for the fourth ball. It was the first time all year Yamamoto bounced a complete curveball. He was exhausted.
“It was awesome,” Bauers said. “Anytime you can crush a guy like that, it’s not going to end up being a bad thing.”
The Brewers are 5-1 in the postseason with every win coming out of the bullpen and four of them rallying after falling behind.
“I think that’s (the) approach,” Bauers said when asked how they could make the returns seem routine. “I think it’s all about a team approach. We might not knock you out of the game every night, but we’re going to make it difficult. I think that’s the goal: to make things difficult. When one through nine buys into that, special things can happen.”
There was another moment that Vogelbach appreciated as one that also defines Milwaukee team baseball. It happened in the eighth inning as the Brewers were clinging to a one-run lead. Hamilton was on top after leading off with a single. He took off on a steal attempt on the first pitch. Chourio saw him running and took a fastball up the middle to allow it.
“In fact, Jack may be the best fastball hitter in the major leagues,” Vogelbach said. “And he takes it and lets it fly, and then he puts it back (with a ground ball) and then the inning continues, right?”
The Brewers scored two more runs. It was the first time in 54 innings that the Brewers and their playoff opponent were separated by more than two runs.
“Tonight there was so much team baseball, like little things that win a game,” Vogelbach said. “It’s like these guys just trust the guy behind them, and they fully believe in each other, and they’re not intimidated.”
The Brewers were clearly the better team. They put more runners on base (30-19), beat the Dodgers (19-9) and dominated them (2-0). They truncated the outings of Skubal (five innings) and Yamamoto (2 2/3) to their career lows in 20 combined postseason starts. If this all seems too much to absorb, don’t worry. Figuring out why the Brewers are in big trouble with the Dodgers only takes seven minutes and 15 seconds of your time.
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