MILWAUKEE — Brice Turang tied the game with a fourth-inning homer off Dodgers lefty Tarik Skubal and had a hand in three double plays as Milwaukee beat Los Angeles 2-1 at American Family Field on Sunday in Game 1 of the NLCS, flipping the script from last year's sweep.
Turang fouled a ball off his kneecap in his first at-bat against Skubal, then returned in the fourth looking to stay inside the baseball and keep it off his knee. He got a 2-0 sinker on the inside edge and sent it over the left-center-field wall to tie the game at 1-1. "I wasn't trying to hit a homer," Turang said. "I was trying to hit a nice line drive back up the middle." It was his second career postseason homer and just his seventh against a left-hander in the regular season or postseason. "I'm gonna tip my hat on a pitch like that," Skubal said.
The swing followed late-night work Friday after Turang went 2-for-16 in the Division Series against the Padres. He stayed at the park for extra swings with hitting coach Daniel Vogelbach, focused on cleaning up his bat path and driving the ball toward center field. "That's what he was working on, exactly," manager Pat Murphy said Sunday. "Instead of his hands dropping and cutting across, to just get straight to the baseball." Vogelbach described Turang as a perfectionist who wants someone with him while he finds his feel again, and Jake Bauers said Turang knows his swing and is willing to put the work in. "He kept his hands tight, and just put a barrel on it," Bauers said. "He's not that big when you look at him, but the whip he can generate is second to none."
Turang's glove had already kept Los Angeles in check. He opened the game by ranging behind second base to backhand Mookie Betts' grounder and throwing across his body for the out, then took Cooper Pratt's feed on Will Smith's grounder to complete an inning-ending double play in the first. With the bases loaded and one run already in during a taxing second inning for starter Jacob Misiorowski, he turned Kiké Hernández's grounder with Pratt for another inning-ending double play to keep the deficit at 1-0. After DL Hall replaced Misiorowski with Betts on first via a walk in the fifth, Turang moved left for Freddie Freeman's grounder, spun and fired to Pratt at second for the third double play of the night. Murphy called the defensive game "incredible."
Milwaukee took the lead in the bottom of the fifth on Luis Lara's RBI single and made two runs stand behind its bullpen and defense, with Turang adding a sacrifice bunt later. "He does everything," Pratt said. "He defends, he hits, he runs, he knows the game, he's a baseball rat, he wants to win, he's a complete player." Turang went 1-for-15 in last year's NLCS, which Los Angeles swept in four games. The extra cage work brought him back to his roots. "Kind of grew up hitting all the time for late hours of the night," Turang said. "So sometimes it brings me back to being a kid a little bit and enjoying just going in there and hitting in the cage." The opener followed Misiorowski grinding into the fifth in Milwaukee's 2-1 win as the Brewers set an early tone in the rematch.