Brewers are giving SF Giants a blueprint on how to thwart the Dodgers in NLCS

As the SF Giants pick their wounds following an embarrassing 65-97 season, the Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Dodgers meet for the second straight season in the NLCS. Milwaukee took Game 1 on Sunday night and San Francisco would do well to pay attention to the way the Brewers play.

The Brewers won Game 1 thanks to great pitching as they limited the dangerous Dodgers lineup to just one run and they scratched out just enough on offense to get the victory 2-1.

Brice Turang hit a solo homer off Tarik Skubal and then the Brewers employed some small ball to get their second run of the game. In the bottom of the fifth they got a leadoff walk, then a sacrifice bunt moved the runner over to second and a single drove him in.

The analytics community is not a fan of giving up outs via bunts, but in October baseball when every run matters it’s doing the little things right that can often make the difference. That’s a big reason why the Giants won three World Series titles in five years: they did the little things right and didn’t make very many mistakes.

Giants need to look at what Brewers do well and try to emulate it

The Giants can replicate the things that the Brewers do well. They even tried to a little bit in 2026 even if it obviously didn't work out. Milwaukee’s offense was not over-reliant on power as they had the best team batting average in the majors and also had the second-highest walk rate in the majors. San Francisco tried for a similar contact-heavy approach but they didn’t have the walk rate to pair it with as the Giants actually had the worst walk rate of any MLB team.

So how can they remedy that in 2027? Well, it’s easy to say take more pitches but part of the reason the Giants drew so few walks especially early in the season is because opposing pitchers weren’t afraid of them. No one was hitting so pitchers were pounding the zone and the Giants weren’t able to do anything about it.

Milwaukee was also sound defensively as they were a top-10 team in fielding percentage while the Giants were one of the worst teams in the league when it came to fielding which does not come as a surprise.

Both of those things have to change next year but obviously the biggest issue to address is the pitching staff. Milwaukee had the second-best team ERA in MLB at 3.54 while San Francisco came in at 4.33. The Giants know that they need to address that deficiency in the offseason so if they can add some pitching, get better at drawing walks, and clean up their defense maybe they can look more like a Brewers team that has a shot to end LA’s hopes for a three-peat. 

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