Brewers Video
Neither the Cubs nor the Brewers has yet announced their starting pitcher for Game 5 of the National League Division Series, which will be played at 7:08 PM Central on Saturday night at Uecker Field in Milwaukee. We can presume, though, that the Brewers’ main two pitching options—the candidates to give them bulk innings—are Game 2 winner Jacob Misiorowski and Game 3 starter Quinn Priester. Jose Quintana might also be in consideration, but the best odds are that Misiorowski and/or Priester will get at least 12 outs in any version of the game where the Brewers win. We can consider them co-starters, in a way. Whichever starts, the other might well appear in relief, but neither is likely to take the game past the sixth inning—and it would be a mild surprise if they weren’t into the bullpen for good by the end of the fifth.
For that matter, it’s possible that neither of the two big righties will actually start the game. That honor might go to one of the lefties who work primarily in short relief for the Crew, in Aaron Ashby and Jared Koenig. That would force the Cubs into a tough decision about their leadoff slugger Michael Busch, at the very least, and if Craig Counsell is unwilling to start a win-or-go-home game with his best hitter on the bench, it would create a good matchup for Milwaukee the first time through. On the other hand, both Ashby and Koenig have already been used quite heavily during this series.
That’s the main thing we should talk about right now, as we look forward to the game and try to guess along with the managers. Who’s fresh in the Brewers pen, and who’s tired? Who’s been overexposed? The latter is a very real and important factor; the more times a hitter sees a given reliever within a playoff series, the more likely they are to perform well against them. In fact, Cubs batters have five plate appearances against Brewers relievers they were seeing for the third time in the series, and they’re 3-for-4 with a walk in those encounters. So, first, here are the six key Brewers relievers, and the number of times they’ve faced each Cubs batter over the first four games of the NLDS.
Pitcher/Batter Busch Hoerner Tucker Suzuki Happ Kelly Crow-Armstrong Swanson Shaw Turner Ballesteros Uribe X X X Megill X X X X X X Ashby XX X XX XX XX XX XXX XXX XXX XX Koenig XX XXX XXX X X X Mears X X X XX X X Patrick X X X XX XX XX
Little of this information will surprise you. Koenig and Ashby have risked overexposure in a major way, and indeed, the Cubs have made them pay. Koenig gave up back-to-back singles to Nico Hoerner and Kyle Tucker in the bottom of the seventh in Game 3, and although Chad Patrick rescued him from that jam, it very nearly led to an insurance run for the home side. In Game 4, Dansby Swanson drew a walk in his third look at Ashby in the series, and Matt Shaw went way, way down and scooped a curveball into center field for an RBI single—the quintessential example of a player benefiting from familiarity with a pitcher.
That distills the dilemma Murphy will face at some points in this game neatly. He needs to pounce on opportunities for good matchups, but avoid repeating some of the ones he’s already created during the series. It’s a slightly different thing to face a pitcher a third time in five games (and eight days) than to face them a third time in four games (and six days), so the skipper need not necessarily shrink from letting Ashby see Tucker or Busch a third time, but it would be preferable to maximize the number of times that a pitcher whose stuff and handedness match up well with a hitter is also facing that hitter for the first or second time in this series.
To that end, let me propose something superficially radical: Abner Uribe should start this game. He’s been sparingly used, coming in only for the very easy closeout of Game 2, and he faced the bottom part of the Cubs order in a 1-2-3 frame. The Brewers should try to get more than three outs from him, anyway. He hasn’t faced any of Chicago’s top five hitters since the last time the teams met in the regular season, in mid-August. The electricity of what is sure to be a rabid crowd and the adrenaline of this do-or-die setting should assuage any concerns about using a late-inning guy in the early innings. As a kicker, the Cubs struggle mightily against high-velocity fastballs, of which Uribe has a doozy, and they’ve hit .087/.276/.087 against him this year. Uribe should work the first two innings.
After Uribe and (let’s say) Misiorowski do their thing, there should only be nine outs left for the Crew to get. At that point, it’s just about picking pockets—finding the right mix of matchup value and freshness/novelty to avoid letting the Cubs do damage against the remaining relievers. Koenig should be slated to face the bottom third of Chicago’s order. He hasn’t seen Kelly yet, but that isn’t a good fit for him. The real value starts with him facing Pete Crow-Armstrong (a lefty-lefty matchup we’re yet to see in this series), and then attacking Swanson and Shaw. Megill, by contrast, could find himself in the danger zone if matched up with Crow-Armstrong. It makes more sense to get him in there against Hoerner, Tucker, Seiya Suzuki and Ian Happ, although all of those except Tucker have seen him already. One key question is how short a leash Megill is on, in terms of pitch count and of whether or not he can sit down and come back on the other side of an inning break, as he nurses a forearm strain that he’s pitching through, more than truly recovered from.
Ashby is a tough one. As great and as ubiquitous as he has been for this team all season, he might have rendered as much service as he can to this team in this series. Ideally, Uribe, Misiorowski/Priester, Koenig and Megill can get the Brewers to 27 outs. Failing that, there are more pockets where Nick Mears might fit in than there are where Ashby feels like a safe inclusion. If, at some midgame juncture, the team needs just one out against a tough righty bat like Suzuki or Hoerner, Grant Anderson might factor into the equation.
The other question, of course, is how tired (or not) each of these pitchers are. In a series with three off days, it’s hard to burn people out, per se, but Ashby also stands out as the one who has borne the heaviest load in the team’s bullpen mix.
MON TUE WED THU FRI TOT Ashby 43 0 0 32 0 75 Koenig 16 0 7 0 0 23 Patrick 11 0 22 4 0 37 Anderson 0 0 30 0 0 30 Uribe 13 0 0 0 0 13 Mears 3 0 14 0 0 17 Megill 9 0 0 12 0 21 Misiorowski 57 0 0 0 0 57 Gasser 0 0 0 46 0 46
Robert Gasser might not even don a pair of spikes Saturday, unless the game stretches into extra innings. Everyone else should be available, but Patrick has done a lot, too. He might be best avoided except in an emergency, unless he can be fitted in against the sequence of Shaw, Busch, Hoerner and Tucker in a spot where there’s some margin for error and a pitcher ready to come in right after Tucker’s at-bat. Koenig and Uribe are the obviously fresh, well-shielded, high-leverage arms. They should give Murphy at least nine outs, as a combo. Since all we’ve seen are protected appearances with low pitch counts from Megill, though, it’s hard to know whether he can be given any more than that.
The Brewers will have the crowd on their side for this game. It will be the game of the decade, for both teams—a hinge point, thrusting the winner forward and making the winter a thorny and depressing eon for the loser. It’s imperative that Murphy have a sound and flexible plan to win the battle, but he does have the arms to do it. A gambit—starting Uribe, and letting him cover some real ground before turning things over to Misiorowski—might be the best way to convert that potential into an actual, much-needed victory.