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Blake Snell dominates Brewers as Dodgers hang on to steal Game 1 of NLCS in Milwaukee 2-1

By The Citizen on October 13, 2025

For most of Monday night the sellout crowd of 41,737 fans at American Family Field would rise to their feet and wave their yellow towels only to be seated again in silence. The collective breath of Wisconsin caught somewhere between disbelief and awe all night long.

Why? Because of one man: Blake Snell.

For eight sensational innings under a closed roof, as it gently rained outside, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ left-handed ace carved up the best team in baseball with surgical precision. Milwaukee’s bats looked heavy in their hands, their swings late, their confidence eroded with every looping strikeout.

Snell faced the minimum over eight shutout innings and the Dodgers hung on to beat the Brewers, 2-1, to steal Game 1 of the best-of-seven National League Championship Series on Monday night in Milwaukee.

By the time Roki Sasaki ran out of the bullpen for the bottom of the ninth, Snell had faced the minimum—twenty-four hitters, one harmless single erased by a pick-off play, ten strikeouts, no walks.

It wasn’t just dominance. It was poetry in motion, a symphony of sliders and changeups that echoed through a city that had grown used to silencing opposing lineups. But on this night, the silence belonged to the Brewers.

It was his third consecutive playoff masterpiece—a continuation of the run that began against Cincinnati and stretched through Philadelphia. A pitcher who once battled inconsistency has now found postseason immortality, one scoreless inning at a time.

The Dodgers didn’t need much offense to make his brilliance stand up. All it took was one swing from Freddie Freeman—a swing that felt almost inevitable.

In the top of the 6th, with the Brewers cycling through relievers like cards in a magician’s hand, Freeman stepped to the plate against right-hander Chad Patrick, who had just entered the game in place of rookie Quinn Priester. Freeman worked the count full before he crushed a 96 MPH fastball over the middle of the plate.

The crack echoed off the roof—sharp, clean, final. The ball went over the fence, disappearing into a sea of stunned Milwaukee fans next to the Dodgers bullpen.

His first home run of the 2025 postseason. His reminder that October still belongs to him.

But even that moment paled in comparison to what happened two innings earlier—a play that will live in postseason lore for its sheer absurdity.

With the bases loaded and one out, Max Muncy launched what looked like a knockout punch: a towering fly ball to deep center field, destined either for the seats or the gap. Dodgers fans began to rise in anticipation of a grand slam. But Brewers center fielder Sal Frelick had other ideas.

Frelick raced back, eyes locked on the ball as if chasing down fate itself. At the warning track, he leapt—glove extended high—and the ball bounced out of his glove and hit the top of the wall before it miraculously settled back into his glove as he landed back on to the dirt.

Nobody knew what happened.

Frelick fired the ball toward the infield. The relay came to William Contreras at the plate, where Teoscar Hernández was tagging from third. Contreras caught it on the hop for the force out at home. Will Smith, initially froze between second and third, before running back to second base, believing it was a catch. Contreras noticed and sprinted to the third base bag for the third and final out of the inning. A near grand slam was instead a jaw-dropping double play.

It was the kind of play that makes October baseball so merciless—where inches separate triumph from heartbreak, where miracles sometimes wear the wrong uniform.

But Snell never flinched. He walked back to the mound for the bottom half of the inning and just continued to dominate. A quick 1-2-3 inning, as if erasing the memory of it himself.

When it was over—Dodgers 2, Brewers 1—the scoreboard told the story of a duel, but the night belonged to one man. Snell, with his eight scoreless innings and a new postseason career-high 10 strikeouts. He has become the very image of postseason poise, a lefty whose every pitch carries the weight of inevitability.

For the Dodgers, it was their first victory over the Brewers this season in seven tries, but another win in their new October identity: dominant starting pitching, and just enough offense to seal another victory along their title defense journey.

For Milwaukee, it was a rare night at home when their offense couldn’t muster anything against Snell.

The series continues Tuesday night with Game 2, where Yoshinobu Yamamoto takes the ball for Los Angeles against Milwaukee’s Freddy Peralta.

But in Game 1, under the bright lights and the hum of a restless dome, Blake Snell turned Milwaukee into his canvas—and painted a masterpiece.


Source: NBC Los Angeles

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The Citizen
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