NL Wild Card Series Game Thread #3: Milwaukee Brewers vs. New York Mets

The winner travels to Philadelphia. The loser goes home.

On Wednesday night, the Brewers staved off elimination in the most dramatic of ways; in case you’ve been living under a rock, late homers by Jackson Chourio (his second game-tying homer of the night, making him just the second player ever to do that in a postseason game, joining some guy named George) and Garrett Mitchell propelled Milwaukee to a thrilling comeback win. That tied the series at one, setting up a winner-take-all matchup tonight for the right to advance to the NL Division Series, where the Philadelphia Phillies await the winner.

To get it done today, the Brewers will need to overcome an old nemesis, Jose Quintana. His name has been etched into team lore as a Brewer killer. It’s true that for many years, Quintana seemed to know something about the Brewers’ lineup that no one else did: from 2012-18, Quintana made 11 starts against Milwaukee and went 6-2 with a 1.62 ERA, a stretch which included a shutout and another game where he pitched eight scoreless innings in a 1-0, 10-inning victory.

Fortunately for Brewer fans, that version of Quintana—the Brewer killer—hasn’t really been around lately, despite what the television announcers would have you think. In 12 games (11 starts) since the end of the 2018 season, Quintana is just 3-5 with a 4.68 ERA against Milwaukee. He doesn’t have a winning decision against the Brewers since September 2019, and his teams have lost five of the last six games in which he has pitched against the Brewers.

And yet, Quintana is still going pretty strong, despite being 35 years old: he threw 170 ¹⁄₃ innings this season, his most in a season since 2019, and posted a respectable 3.75 ERA (which did outpace his 4.56 FIP by quite a bit). And it is still true that Milwaukee had relative struggles against left-handed pitching this season: they batted .245/.326/.387 (.713 OPS) as a team versus lefties and .250/.326/.409 (.735 OPS) against righties.

The Mets should also have Edwin Díaz ready to do basically whatever is asked of him; after throwing a whole bunch of pitches on Sunday and Monday, he did not pitch in either of the first two games of this series. I would almost be surprised to see Díaz for fewer than two innings if the Mets have a late lead. Additionally, David Peterson—who threw seven one-hit, shutout innings against the Brewers on Sunday—has not pitched since, and you would imagine that if Quintana shows any signs of early trouble, Peterson will be ready to piggyback. Peterson led Mets starters in ERA this season, and it would be a bit of a surprise not to see him at all.

Tobias Myers will get the start for Milwaukee. Who had money on Myers, postseason starter, in spring training this year? Though Myers did falter a bit toward the end of the season, he looked sharp in his last start on Sept. 28 against this very team: New York mustered only one hit and no walks as Myers struck out five in four shutout innings. Whether that outing is more an indication that Myers has the Mets’ numbers or an extra chance for the Mets to get a look at Myers remains to be seen, but the Brewers bullpen is in pretty good shape: Aaron Civale and DL Hall should both be available for multiple innings out of the bullpen, if necessary, and you would think that Devin Williams, who threw only 10 pitches in his save yesterday, might even be available for more than three outs if the situation calls for it.

The question of whether we’d see one of last night’s heroes, Garrett Mitchell, in the starting lineup today has been answered: he will again begin the game on the bench versus the lefty. He will surely be in the cards as soon as a right-hander enters for the Mets. The players in the lineup are the same as yesterday, but there has been a little bit of shuffling: Brice Turang, who is 5-for-8 with three doubles in the series, has moved up to second, with Blake Perkins dropping down to seventh.

First pitch is at 6:08 p.m. CT on ESPN, and you can hear it on the Brewers Radio Network if you want a more partisan broadcast.