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.
“You’re not going to see too many performances like that, certainly not in the postseason,” said Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts of Snell’s performance. “This was pretty special.”
Special is an understatement. Snell became the first MLB pitcher to face the minimum through eight innings of a postseason game since Yankees’ pitcher Don Larsen threw a perfect game against the Dodgers in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series.
But Snell’s performance was almost ruined. 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.
Many were clamoring for Snell to return for the ninth and throw a complete game, certainly Sasaki could record three more outs as he’s done all postseason, right?
Wrong. Sasaki walked two batters, and surrendered a ground-rule double that cut the lead to 2-1. He was replaced by beleaguered reliever Blake Trienen for the final out, but not before more drama dawned the Dodgers bullpen.
Treinen walked the next two betters he faced to load the bases for Brice Turang, who bailed out the Dodgers by swinging at a ball way above the zone for the final out of the game.
“Yeah, I felt I could have come back out for the ninth,” said Snell after the game. “But I trust Dave [Roberts]. He knows what’s best for the team.”
Roberts said he was 50-50 on whether or not he was going to allow Snell to finish the game, but ultimately opted for Sasaki in the ninth.
“It was a tough one for me,” said Roberts about his decision on whether or not to send Snell back to the mound in the bottom of the ninth. “He’s potentially going on regular rest in his next outing, and I was 50-50 on it. Roki [Sasaki] has been throwing the baseball really well. I have a two-run lead. I felt good with Roki there.”
Regardless of the decision in the ninth, Snell’s outing was historic. 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.
“The change-up was the pitch of the night,” continued Roberts. “His [Blake Snell’s] command was great. He [Snell] just has an ability to kind of manipulate the change-up within the change-up. And I thought his command — I thought his delivery, he was just sort of in that zone tonight.”
It was Snell’s 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.
“Sometimes as a hitter when you feel good it doesn’t really matter who you’re facing,” said Freeman of his success in October. “I don’t know what it is. I’m not going to try to find a reason for it.”
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.
“I got to do a better job and stay out of the double play right there,” joked Muncy of his near grand slam. “In all seriousness, he [Frelick] made an incredible play in center field, as for what happened after that, I’m not sure. I’m still confused about what went down.”
What was supposed to go down, was the Dodgers scratching at least one run across. Replays showed Hernández heading towards home plate to tag as soon as the ball hit Frelick’s glove, but inexplicably, he stopped and ran back to third base after the ball hit off the wall and Frelick caught it again. That unnecessary hesitation was enough to cost the Dodgers a run.
“Teo knows the rule. I think right there he had just a little bit of a brain fart,” said Roberts about why Hernández didn’t tag as soon as the ball hit the glove, per MLB rules. “But then he tagged, did it correctly, then saw he didn’t catch it, he went back. That was the mistake. But he owned it. And after that there’s nothing else you can do about it.”
Instead, Snell did something about it. He walked back to the mound for the bottom half of the inning and unflinchingly just continued to dominate. A quick 1-2-3 inning, as if erasing the memory of it himself.
“That was huge,” said Muncy of Snell’s ability to put up a zero after that ridiculous momentum-changing play in the 4th inning. “That changes the momentum there. They made that play and got out of the inning with no runs, and had their best bats up on offense. For him to shut it down 1-2-3 real easy was huge.”
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 ace 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.
