Brewers still underdogs against Dodgers — but with new attitude

MILWAUKEE – At this stage of the playoffs last year, Brewers manager Pat Murphy joked that he was certain the Dodgers couldn’t name eight players on his roster. 

The false humility backfired.

Murphy’s words cast a spell on the Brewers, who went from being the winningest team in baseball to a collection of obscure laborers as unremarkable as the podunk town in which they play.

The Dodgers swept the Brewers in four games and went on to win the World Series.

With his team once again set to take on the Dodgers with a place in the World Series at stake, Murphy has returned to the National League Championship Series with a new tenor and more less conciliatory message.

“We want to kick their butts,” Murphy said.

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A two-time manager of the year, the 67-year-old Murphy maintains a hokey demeanor that plays well in an unsophisticated market. 

Murphy started his news conference as he often does, asking reporters with whom he was unfamiliar to stand and introduced themselves. He playfully asked Japanese reporters if they could help him land a job in Nippon Professional Baseball.

But before Murphy was the manager of the Brewers, or even the coach at Arizona State or Notre Dame, Murphy was an amateur boxer who moved to Miami with designs of fighting professionally.

The day before Game 1, the fighter in him emerged. 

Murphy said he regretted how he characterized his team last year.

“I”m sorry I played that underdog card,” Murphy said. “I probably shouldn’t have played that, used that as an excuse for why we didn’t play well.

“I don’t care who the underdog is. I don’t care who the favorite is. It’s about getting in the ring and fighting it out.”

There were more boxing metaphors.

“I think any time there’s familiarity it could help,” Murphy said. “You fight a guy once and you fight him the second time, you should have a better idea. Everything’s different. The guy is a little different that you’re fighting the second time, even though it’s the same person. They’ve got a different strategy, maybe different personnel.”

The Brewers once again finished the regular season with the best record in baseball, this time by winning a franchise-record 103 games. 

But questions remain over how their unconventional offense translates in the playoffs. The Brewers had baseball’s highest batting average in the regular season. They also had the second-fewest home runs. They also don’t have much of a rotation after their first two starters, Jacob Misiorowski and Logan Henderson.

Asked how the Brewers’ fastball-reliant pitching staff would deal with a Dodgers’ lineup with a penchant for hitting fastballs, Murphy replied, “You’ve got to execute because executing pitches is what it’s about. That stops offense. We’re still going to pitch to our strengths. It’s like any other fight. Styles matter, but we can only do what we can do. I can’t all of a sudden become a counterpuncher if I’m Mike Tyson, and they can’t be Muhammad Ali if all year they fought like George Foreman.”

For the Brewers to have a chance in this series, they will almost certainly have to win Game 1 in which Misiorowski will be their starter. The prohibitive favorite to win the NL Cy Young Award, Misiorowski beat the Dodgers in Los Angeles on Aug. 15, limiting them to one run over six innings and striking out six. But pitching opposite Misiorowski will be Tarik Skubal.

From there, the Dodgers will have an enormous edge in starting pitching. Yoshinobu Yamamoto will start Game 2, after which Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow are expected to follow, in that order. The more games are played, the more the Brewers’ bullpen figures to tire.

The Brewers know what they’re up against. But they’re also projecting a different energy this year, and they’re counting on that to assist them in overcoming the band of superstars from the entertainment capital of the world. 

“Look, if you want to play who’s favored in this series, it’s probably not us, but it doesn’t matter,” Brewers designated hitter Christian Yelich. “It’s the same thing in spring training when we’re the team that’s never picked to win the division or be the postseason team. It doesn’t matter who people say is favored or not favored because you have to go play the games.”