Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski labors into 5th inning of NLCS opener against Dodgers

MILWAUKEE (AP) — It was a really challenging night for Milwaukee Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski.

The front-runner for the NL Cy Young Award worked into the fifth inning before Milwaukee's bullpen closed out a 2-1 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL Championship Series opener on Sunday. Four Brewers relievers combined for 4 2/3 innings of two-hit ball.

Los Angeles fouled off 21 of Misiorowski's 94 pitches by the time his final batter, Mookie Betts, reached on a one-out walk. The 24-year-old allowed one run and five hits.

“I didn’t think I had my best stuff,” Misiorowski said. “Obviously good enough to make it work. Props to my defense behind me and all the support they gave me. Their approach was really good.”

The 6-foot-7 right-hander threw 44 pitches at 100 mph or higher, reaching 104 mph on his initial offering to Freddie Freeman in the first. The Dodgers swung at 27 of his 62 fastballs, fouling off 16 and missing just five.

“I thought we did a great job versus Misiorowski to get him out when we did, to get the pitch count up,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “He obviously made a couple pitches to get two double plays to kind of limit damage, which were huge obviously.”

Misiorowski went 16-5 with a major league-low 1.80 ERA in 30 starts this season while averaging 100.6 mph with his four-seam fastball. He also led the majors with 252 strikeouts in 174 2/3 innings.

He struck out five and walked three in his second start this postseason. He tossed four innings of two-run ball in Milwaukee's 3-2 win over San Diego in Game 1 of their NL Division Series on Oct. 3, reaching triple digits on 52 of 88 pitches.

“It’s the same as the last outing I had against the Padres,” he said. “I think that was the same goal. Both teams did really well.”

Misiorowski was helped by three inning-ending double plays against Los Angeles, including Kiké Hernández's bouncer to shortstop with the bases loaded in the second.

DL Hall replaced Misiorowski and got Freeman to ground into a double play, delighting the towel-waving crowd of 42,617.

Brewers manager Pat Murphy said he thought Misiorowski was great, and pointed out that the pitcher is well past his workload from last year, which included his first 66 regular-season innings in the majors.

“The kid’s bound to be a little bit tired, you know what I mean?” Murphy said. “You can’t expect him to understand what this is all about going this far and having to pitch this much this year with the pressure he’s had on him. Again, he gave us 13 outs. I thought he was really good.”

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