Three at-bats that tilted the NLCS in the Dodgers’ favor

LOS ANGELES — The National League Championship Series has been a hard fought, low-scoring battle. Both the Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers have totaled 16 runs through five games. With runs at a premium, every individual play and matchup is heightened.

Here are three at-bats this week at Dodger Stadium that helped swing the series advantage to the Dodgers, who lead Milwaukee three games to two.

Game 4: Yelich vs. Hill
5th inning: Brewers 1, Dodgers 1

The tying run just scored, and Domingo Santana was in scoring position with two outs after a triple. Up came Christian Yelich, who entered October as the hottest hitter on the planet. The Brewers outfielder came within an eyelash of winning the triple crown, and slugged .770 since the All-Star break.

This was do-or-die time for Hill, who fell behind in the count 3-0. Sixty percent of the time this season for Yelich — 18 out of 30 — a 3-0 count ended with a walk.

Hill threw a curve took for a called strike. Yelich looked like he didn’t expect that, and with good reason. Hill faced a 3-0 count 17 times during the regular season and threw a curveball just once in that situation.

Another curve from Hill was taken for strike two, then Yelich swung through a third to strike out. This was the final pitch that finished off Yelich:

How rare was the sequence of three straight curves after a 3-0 count?

“That was a huge at-bat. Christian’s probably the MVP of the NL,” Hill said. “I knew I was going to be curveball heavy tonight. In that moment, in that situation I was able to strike it, and change the shape of it a few times in that at-bat.”

The strikeout of Yelich helped preserve the 1-1 tie, which held for nearly eight more innings, when the Dodgers won in walk-off fashion.

Game 5: Aguilar vs. Kershaw
3rd inning: Brewers 1, Dodgers 0

In the first two innings of Game 1, Clayton Kershaw held the Brewers in check, only to see things unravel with two runs in the third and three more in the fourth, the latter without Kershaw recording an out. In Game 5 that situation was looming again, when the Brewers struck first with a run against Kershaw in the third inning, and loaded the bases with two outs for Jesus Aguilar.

Kershaw got ahead in the count 0-2 but Aguilar managed to foul off four more pitches before ultimately succumbing on a slider low and in.

The damage was limited for Kershaw, who threw 32 pitches in the third inning alone. He threw just 44 pitches the rest of the game, retiring his final 13 batters faced beginning with Aguilar.

“In the playoffs you probably don’t get many chances to work out of jams because you’re going to get taken out of the game because the magnitude of the game is so large,” Kershaw said. “Once I was able to work out of that, really just tried to focus on getting the next guy, next guy, next guy. And it happened to work out today.”

Game 5: Barnes vs. Woodruff
5th inning: Brewers 1, Dodgers 0

The Dodgers still trailed 1-0 in the fifth inning of Game 5, when Austin Barnes batted with one out and Chris Taylor on third base. Kershaw retired seven in a row at that point and was only at 75 pitches through five innings, but Yasiel Puig was on deck to hit for him if the Dodgers still trailed.

“If the runner is on third, Puig is probably going to get that at-bat and my day is over,” Kershaw explained. “I understand the situation, obviously I understand we have to score.”

At this point the Dodgers were just 6-for-38 (.158) with runners in scoring position in the series, and as mentioned on the FS1 broadcast that with a runner on third and less than two outs the Dodgers during the NLCS plated just one of seven runners (the MLB average in 2018 was 49.6 percent).

Brandon Woodruff has been excellent this potseason for the Brewers, and prior to the Barnes at-bat in Game 5 had 9⅓ scoreless innings with 13 strikeouts this postseason, allowing only two measly hits.

But Barnes was able to break through, driving a slider up the middle for a game-tying single. Kershaw was allowed to stay in the game, and the Dodgers’ offense took it from there, tacking on runs in the next two innings to put the game away.

“I thought that was probably the at-bat of the game,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “[Woodruff] made some great pitches to Hernandez and gets a strikeout. And it feels like there’s a path to get through the inning there. Really, for Barnes, he was just rewarded with contact.”

In a close NLCS there were many plays or at-bats that loomed large. But these three stood out as to why the Dodgers now have a 3-2 series advantage, just one win away from a repeat trip to the World Series.