MILWAUKEE — Blake Snell allowed one baserunner in eight shutout innings before Los Angeles’ bullpen barely held on in the ninth as the Dodgers opened the National League Championship Series with a 2-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday night.
Blake Treinen struck out Brice Turang with the bases loaded to end the game.
The Dodgers led 2-0 when they handed the ball to Roki Sasaki in the ninth after Snell had thrown 103 pitches. Sasaki had worked 5 1/3 scoreless innings while adjusting to a bullpen role in the NL Division Series against Philadelphia, but he wasn’t nearly as sharp Monday.
Isaac Collins drew a one-out walk and Jake Bauers hit a ground-rule double that bounced over the center-field wall. Jackson Chourio hit a sacrifice fly that scored Collins and advanced pinch-runner Brandon Lockridge to third. Christian Yelich walked on a 3-2 pitch low and outside.
That’s when Dodgers manager Dave Roberts removed Sasaki and brought in Treinen.
Yelich stole second to move the potential winning run into scoring position before William Contreras walked on a 3-2 pitch low and outside. After Treinen nearly hit Turang with a pitch — which would have tied the game — Turang struck out swinging at a neck-high 2-2 fastball.
Game 2 in the best-of-seven series is Tuesday night, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitching for Los Angeles and Freddy Peralta starting for Milwaukee in a matchup of All-Stars.
This NLCS is a study in contrasts, with the Brewers playing in MLB’s smallest market while the defending World Series champion Dodgers have the most expensive roster in the game.
Brewers manager Pat Murphy referenced the difference in star power between the two teams by joking during his pregame news conference that “I’m sure that most Dodger players can’t name eight guys on our roster.”
Even so, the Brewers had swept their six regular-season matchups with the Dodgers. All those games came in July, while Snell was on the injured list with shoulder inflammation.
Snell showed Monday how much of a difference he can make. The two-time Cy Young Award winner struck out 10 while walking nobody and allowing only one hit — a leadoff single by Caleb Durbin in the third.
Freddie Freeman broke a scoreless tie with a solo home run in the sixth. Freeman’s drive came after the Brewers thwarted a couple of Los Angeles opportunities, most notably on a bizarre 8-6-2 double play that was inches away from becoming a Max Muncy grand slam.
Freeman connected on a 3-2 pitch from Chad Patrick and delivered a shot so high that it got tantalizingly close to the American Family Field roof before barely clearing the right-field wall for his first homer of this postseason.
Patrick was coming off an outstanding NL Division Series in which he struck out six and allowed no baserunners over 4 2/3 innings against the Chicago Cubs.
The Dodgers added what ended up being an essential insurance run in the ninth when Mookie Betts drew a bases-loaded walk from Abner Uribe on a 3-2 pitch outside.
Milwaukee stayed close because of Los Angeles’ missed opportunities. The most obvious example came in the fourth, when the Brewers produced one of the strangest double plays in postseason history.
The bases were loaded when Muncy sent a drive off Quinn Priester that was headed out of the ballpark before Milwaukee’s Sal Frelick reached his glove over the center-field wall. The ball popped out of Frelick’s glove and hit the top of the fence before he caught it in the air.
Los Angeles’ runners had headed back to their original bases, believing Frelick had made the catch cleanly. Frelick threw to shortstop Joey Ortiz, who threw to catcher William Contreras to force Teoscar Hernández out at home. Contreras then jogged to third to force out Will Smith, too.
Los Angeles also had runners on first and second with one out in the fifth before Betts grounded into a double play. The Dodgers left runners on first and second after Freeman’s homer in the sixth. Freeman hit a one-out double in the eighth but was stranded at third when Tommy Edman struck out swinging against Trevor Megill.