Michael McLoone-Imagn Images

The Brewers earned a 3-2 victory over the Padres in Game 1 of the NLDS on Saturday. With this year’s presumptive Cy Young winner starting for the Brewers and a former Cy Young winner (and still an above-average starter) going for the Padres, a low-scoring affair was not a surprising outcome. Still, the game script didn’t exactly play out as anticipated. Instead, the contest took on a late-inning feel almost from the beginning, and with both emotions and the leverage index consistently running high, perhaps the best way to tell the story of Game 1 is via reactions sourced from one of the most emotive players in either dugout — Milwaukee outfielder Sal Frelick.

The Frelick shown above was struggling to process an unusual double play that he initiated during last year’s NLCS, but that confused sentiment also applies to the experience of watching Brewers starter Jacob Misiorowski allow three consecutive singles during the second inning on Saturday. In over half of Misiorowski’s 30 starts this season, he allowed three or fewer hits across the entire outing, making three hits over three plate appearances feel fairly baffling. The trouble began with a one-out, infield single off the bat of shortstop Xander Bogaerts. The hit was the culmination of a six-pitch skirmish. Bogaerts took the first four pitches he saw (two four-seamers were called balls, while another four-seamer and a cutter were called strikes). He fouled off a 2-2 fastball, then rolled over a slider for a groundball that forced shortstop Cooper Pratt to range far enough to his right that by the time he made the diving stop, he couldn’t get the throw to first in time to beat Bogaerts to the bag.

Though Misiorowski got the type of batted ball that pitchers are usually pleased with, the whole interaction with Bogaerts highlighted a burgeoning problem for the Milwaukee righty. For the flamethrower’s fastball to function, he needs hitters to swing through it, and relatedly, he needs hitters to be willing to offer at it, even when it’s a touch out of the zone. On the season, his four-seamer averaged a 40.2% whiff rate and a 34.3% chase rate. But on Saturday night, it was generating whiffs only 14.3% of the time and getting hitters to chase just 24.1% of the time. Bogaerts was content to watch three heaters from The Miz and then fouled off the fourth. Since the San Diego batters were often fouling off fastballs in the zone and laying off the pitch when it missed the zone, Misiorowski pivoted to his 96-mph cutter as a pitch he could more reliably throw in the zone for called strikes in order to counter the obnoxiously patient Padres.