Dodgers-Brewers NLCS Game 1: Skubal vs. Misiorowski Is the Best Pitching Duel of October

MILWAUKEE

Game 1 of the NLCS is tonight, and it opens with the best pitching duel of October: Tarik Skubal, the two-time Cy Young winner the Dodgers bought at the trade deadline, against Jacob Misiorowski, the 24-year-old Brewers flamethrower who might take the Cy Young away from him this winter. The Dodgers are chasing a third straight championship. The Brewers have spent a full year thinking about the sweep that started it.

Christian Yelich said the quiet part out loud on Saturday. "We've been expecting having to play them in this round since spring training," he said, per the Associated Press. "You kind of just know that's what's going to happen." That is not a quote you give when you're surprised. That's a quote you give when you've been circling a date on the calendar since February.

The arms

Tarik Skubal's path to this start runs through Detroit, where he won two Cy Youngs, and through the August 1 trade that sent him to Los Angeles — the kind of midseason hammer swing only the Dodgers make. Milwaukee, notably, was believed to be in on Skubal at the deadline too, per the AP, and ended up watching the Tigers take the Dodgers' offer instead. Imagine how that room feels tonight, watching him walk out of the visitors' dugout.

He was everything advertised in the NLDS opener against Atlanta: six innings, one run, seven strikeouts, setting the tone for a series the Dodgers won in four. Now he gets the best team in baseball on its own turf.

And standing in his way is the guy who made the "best pitcher in baseball" conversation awkward all summer. Jacob Misiorowski went 16-5 with a 1.80 ERA and 252 strikeouts, and he's the frontrunner for the NL Cy Young — the award Skubal has already won twice. Per Covers' matchup data, Misiorowski has a 1.17 ERA over his last 13 home starts, allowing just 10 runs in that span. He finished in the 100th percentile in strikeout rate, the 99th in expected ERA and the 96th in barrel rate. Those are the kind of numbers that make a $300 million lineup look mortal.

His NLDS start was the shakiest of his season — four innings, two runs, six strikeouts — but the Brewers won the game anyway, which is the whole point of this team. They don't need him to be perfect. They just need him to be him.

How they got here

The Dodgers needed four games to put away Atlanta. They won the opener 5-3 at home, dropped Game 2 3-2, then flew to Georgia and finished the job — Andy Pages' bases-loaded two-run single broke Game 4 open in the seventh, and Max Muncy crushed a ninth-inning insurance homer off Raisel Iglesias to close the 4-1 win. Muncy's blast was his third of the postseason and the 19th playoff homer of his career. Edwin Díaz slammed the door for the save, and the Dodgers are in the NLCS for the third straight year.

Milwaukee, meanwhile, beat San Diego — and dropped Game 3 on the road, which is worth remembering only because it's the closest this team has come to looking vulnerable in weeks. They won a franchise-record 103 games. Best record in baseball. And they handled the Dodgers in the regular season, 4-3, which means exactly nothing in October but will absolutely get mentioned on every pregame show tonight.

The bats to watch: Shohei Ohtani and Muncy for Los Angeles — though the advanced numbers suggest the Dodger lineup hasn't exactly been terrifying; Covers flagged Ohtani's tepid expected numbers so far this postseason. For Milwaukee, it's Yelich, the engine, plus Jackson Chourio, Brice Turang, William Contreras and Andrew Vaughn — a lineup with no obvious hole and no single superstar, which is the most Brewers sentence ever written.

The number

Here's the thing that should stop you scrolling: the Brewers — at home, with the best record in baseball, with the Cy Young frontrunner on the mound, against a team they beat in the season series — are only -112. The Dodgers are -104. The market is telling you these teams are dead even, and the market is rarely this respectful of a home favorite with these credentials unless it believes the road team's ceiling is just that high. Total is 6.5, shaded to the under, which tells you what everyone expects: a genuine October pitchers' duel, the kind where one swing decides it.

Game 2 goes Monday night in Milwaukee with Yoshinobu Yamamoto expected for the Dodgers. Then the series shifts to Dodger Stadium for Games 3 through 5 in the 2-3-2 format. If it goes the distance, Games 6 and 7 come back here starting Friday.

One more subplot worth a line: the AP's NLCS coverage notes that baseball's labor contract expires December 1, and a lockout that could affect the 2027 season is widely expected. Both of these rosters are built to win right now, and "right now" might be the last normal October for a while. That has a way of focusing a clubhouse.

Dave Roberts kept it simple on Saturday: "There are going to be no secrets," he said. "They play a very good brand of baseball." No secrets. Two aces. A rematch a year in the making. First pitch is 5 p.m. PT on FOX — and if you only watch one baseball game this week, the Ticket desk is not sure why it wouldn't be this one.

More October baseball from the newsroom: the Guardians' ALDS Game 5 win and everything else from last night in sports.

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