Six players to watch in National League Championship Series

Only one playoff team managed to post a winning percentage of 1.000 against the Los Angeles Dodgers this season.

That would be the Milwaukee Brewers, who went 6-0 against L.A. en route to finishing with the best record in the majors, outscoring the Dodgers 31-16. All those wins came when the Brewers were in the middle of an 11-game winning streak that moved them into first place in the National League Central Division — never to relinquish the lead.

The last team to sweep the Dodgers in a season series of five or more games was the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, who would go on to win the World Series. The 1994 Atlanta Braves also accomplished the feat, but alas there was no World Series that season due to the players strike.

The Dodgers will have a different look in this series. Blake Snell and Shohei Ohtani were not available to pitch in any of those six losses; and Roki Sasaki was a month or so away from a revelatory mechanical overhaul that saved his season.

Smartly, Brewers manager Pat Murphy spent Sunday’s media availability giving the Dodgers their flowers. Flowers? More like an entire greenhouse.

Mookie Betts doesn’t get the credit he deserves. “Transitioning back to the infield and playing shortstop on America’s team … it would be like Steph Curry playing forward.” Freddie Freeman? “He’s like my favourite person, player, in the game.” Shohei Ohtani? “One of the all-time greats in — I don’t know how many years he’s played but he’s one of the all-time greats.” Teoscar Hernandez? “One of the great dudes in the game. And he’s just performing in the clutch.

“We’re not overconfident, that’s for sure. The Dodgers are a powerhouse, what can you say? You don’t see many commercials in the United States, Canada, Japan … anywhere across the world that don’t have Dodgers in it.”

Murphy, of course, has given the baseball world the phrase “Average Joes” to describe his team, whose $121.6-million payroll is 17th in the majors. The Dodgers have the highest, at $313 million.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts noted his team is in a “different position” than when the Brewers swept them in the regular season. But he expects Milwaukee to be the same: contact-heavy, speedy and aggressive. “The main thing is you have to get the lead. When you have a lead, their aggressiveness is more tempered. When the wind’s at their back, they’re very aggressive.”

Here are six players to watch in the best-of-seven NL Championship Series:

Jackson Chourio, LF, Brewers

A right hamstring strain that cost Chourio 29 games in August helped facilitate a move from centre field to left, but he’s kept hitting — just finishing a year that saw him become the youngest player in MLB history with multiple 20-homer, 20-stolen-base seasons. And, for the second year, he has put up impressive post-season numbers, slashing .389/.421/.667 against the Cubs with two doubles and a homer. In two playoff series over the past two years, he’s hit .414. The Brewers do love themselves some contact — among playoff teams, only the Blue Jays and San Diego Padres struck out less often, and the Brewers scored the third-most runs during the regular season, behind only the New York Yankees and Dodgers. But every now and then it helps to have someone put a ball over the fence.

Teoscar Hernandez, RF, Dodgers

We all miss Teo, of course, even though he continues to giveth and taketh in the Dodgers' NLDS win over the Phillies — an example of the latter being his glaring slowness in chasing down a J.T. Realmuto triple in Game 1, bringing in two runs. Teoscar being Teoscar, he then slugged a three-run homer to give the Dodgers the lead in a game they’d eventually win. It was the fifth go-ahead homer with the Dodgers trailing in the seventh inning or later in a post-season game. Hernandez has driven in nine of the Dodgers' 31 runs this post-season. The Brewers' offensive DNA contains lots and lots of contact, which could mean balls in play and decisions that need to be made. Expect Hernandez — who was called out by Roberts earlier this season and told to “play with more edge” — to figure in a couple of seminal offensive and defensive moments in this series.

Jacob Misiorowski/Chad Patrick/Robert Gasser, RPs, Brewers

I mean, you could pick the entire Brewers bullpen because chances are good they’ll be running multiple bullpen games. That’s going to put these three rookie arms into play, with Misiorowski — coming off a dominant LDS, where he used his secondary stuff masterfully along with his velocity — in line for a start. Gasser, a left-hander, was hit around a bit by the Cubs but he’s been stretched out to go multiple innings if necessary. He’ll see some of those Dodgers lefty bats.

Shohei Ohtani, P-DH, Dodgers

I mean, you know you’re something when despite being 1-for-17 with nine strikeouts, a manager intentionally walks you to load the bases in the seventh inning of his team's do-or-die game … to get to Mookie freaking Betts! That’s what Phillies manager Rob Thomson did to Ohtani, who finished the NL Division Series 1-for-18 and continued to post puzzling post-season offensive numbers, feast-or-famining his way to a .205 average in the playoffs with five home runs and one double in 88 at-bats. The Phillies prevented Ohtani from getting his arms out over the plate by jamming him with fastballs and running out lefty starters who mixed in change-ups and breaking balls on the outer side of the plate. The NLDS was our first glimpse of two-way Ohtani in the post-season, which saw him strike out nine in Game 1, throw all seven pitches and get 23 whiffs on 48 swings and leave, losing 3-2 in a game the Dodgers would rally to win. But he also struck out four times, three of them called, continuing a trend of poor offensive performance in games in which he’s pitched. “It hasn’t been good when he’s pitched,” Roberts said during the series. “We’ve got to think through this and come up with a better game plan.” The plan, as it turns out? “He’ll pitch at some point. We just don’t know which day,” Roberts later added. Ohtani usually gets extra rest between starts, so Roberts has plenty to think about. Cautionary tale: Ohtani has been really good in the LCS before.

Roki Sasaki, RP, Dodgers

Eh, so that was what all the fuss was about. We said Sasaki would be one to watch in the NLDS and we were right, and we’ll go one step further: he could become the first pitcher since Jon Lester in 2016 to be named NLCS most valuable player. Sasaki has faced 17 batters this post-season, allowing one hit, striking out five, walking none and retiring nine in a row with the score tied 1-1 in the Dodgers' series clincher. In the 15 relief innings thrown by someone other than Sasaki, the opposition has managed 13 runs, so there will be understandable temptation for Rogers to over-utilize Sasaki if these are close games. The Dodgers have made a habit of shredding arms in recent seasons, but ESPN’s Jeff Passan wrote a fascinating article on a mechanical overhaul that Sasaki underwent in August to flip the script after a season of diminished velocities and stuff, created mostly by a right-shoulder injury.

Andrew Vaughn, 1B, Brewers

It isn’t only the Blue Jays who live and die by the whole 26-against-one thing. The Brewers' “whole is greater than the sum of its parts” schtick was enough to carry them to the majors' best record, and the acquisition of Vaughn in June was low-key one of the most significant in-season deals made by any team. Vaughn had an .869 OPS, nine homers in 64 games and has formed a nice platoon with lefty-hitting Jake Bauers. The Dodgers will run out more right-handed pitching than the Cubs did in the NLDS but Murphy has said he likes Vaughn’s bat enough that he’d contemplate having them both in the lineup, with Bauers in the outfield.

Jeff Blair’s pick: Dodgers def. Brewers, 4-2