Two games that I think play out the same way: tight, low-scoring, and run by managers who treat every inning like the last. In Milwaukee, Jacob Misiorowski should hold down the hot Padres bats, but San Diego plans to hand the game to one of the best bullpens in baseball early, which makes a big Brewers margin hard to build. At Jamsil, LG and KIA are fighting over third place, and the opener of their series already looked like a playoff game.
Start with the NLDS opener. Misiorowski has been close to untouchable: 16-5, a 1.80 ERA and 252 strikeouts. That is exactly why this game should stay small. San Diego is going with Robbie Ray, but nobody expects him to go deep. Behind him sit Mason Miller, Adrian Morejon and Bradgley Rodriguez, all rested after the Padres needed only two games to sweep the Cubs.
These two teams have done this before. In May, Misiorowski threw seven scoreless innings against San Diego, and the Padres still won 3-1. In August, the Padres swept a series in San Diego, and two of those wins came after the Milwaukee bullpen couldn't hold a late lead. The Brewers have also been off for close to a week, and their bats were quiet over their last 10 games: a .246 average with 104 strikeouts. San Diego's lineup, with Tatis, Bogaerts, Merrill and France, finished the season hot.
Over in Seoul, KIA cut the gap to two games by winning the opener 5-4 on a ninth-inning squeeze bunt. That game said a lot about this series. There were sacrifice flies, bunts and pinch-runners, plus quick hooks for the starters. LG even used a starter, Son Ju-young, out of the bullpen. Before the game, KIA's manager said he didn't expect many runs and that the bullpens would decide it.
The numbers back that up. Their two late-September meetings ended 2-0 and 5-1. Over the last 10 games, each team has averaged under four runs a game, and both have mostly stayed in single-digit totals. Jamsil is a big park, and with a sellout crowd and playoff seeding at stake, both sides are playing for one run at a time rather than big innings.
