The Brewers just took a 2-0 lead over the Dodgers in the NLCS.. and I genuinely can’t tell if this is the BEST or WORST thing for baseball.
Milwaukee won Game 2, 7-4, after the Dodgers took the lead THREE separate times. William Contreras homered to tie it, drove in the go-ahead run, and the Brewers bullpen retired the final 15 batters. The Dodgers threw Tarik Skubal and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in the first two games and lost BOTH.
Part of me absolutely LOVES this. A small-market team taking it to the back-to-back defending champions and their ridiculously expensive roster. And let’s not pretend Milwaukee is some lucky Cinderella story either. They won 103 games this season. They deserve to be here!
But then I think about the other side.. Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman. Those are the guys who get casual fans watching baseball in October. As much as people hate the Dodgers spending money, there’s a reason everybody pays attention to them.
So what’s actually better for baseball? Having its biggest stars playing on the biggest stage, or watching a team like Milwaukee prove you don’t need the biggest payroll to beat them?
I genuinely don’t know. But the Brewers are TWO wins away from making this a very interesting conversation.
– Benny Yinzer
