San Diego Padres vs. Milwaukee Brewers: NLDS Preview

The Milwaukee Brewers have won 200 games over the last two regular seasons. They have outscored their opponents by nearly 400 runs. If you wanted to call the Brewers the best team in baseball, it would be hard for anyone but the most passionate Dodgers fans to disagree.

Yet, since the All-Star Game, the San Diego Padres have kept pace.

The Brewers scored 343 runs in the second half. So did the Padres. The Brewers allowed 255 runs in the second half. The Padres gave up 259. Milwaukee had the best record in the majors post-All-Star break, but San Diego finished only one game behind. And when they played each other, the Padres took all three games.

Both clubs stayed hot through the end of the season. Their matching 18-6 records in September were the best in baseball. They each won eight of their last 10 games.

Now, the Brewers are well-rested, thanks to a first-round bye. The Padres, however, got to keep their momentum going with two decisive victories over the Chicago Cubs.

Conventional wisdom suggests the Brewers are still the better team.

During the first half, Milwaukee outplayed San Diego by 11 games. Even when the Friars were at their reddest and hottest down the stretch, the Brew Crew was equally dominant. Ultimately, the Brewers won 103 games. The Padres won 91. Milwaukee’s +214 run differential was more than five times better than San Diego’s +41.

When in doubt, trust the larger sample. Trust the full-season numbers over any smaller split.

At the same time, we have to remember that things change over the course of a long season. The Padres we’re watching right now aren’t the same Padres that stumbled out of the gate. At least, not really.

Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jackson Merrill are the team’s two most important players. They were both stuck in uncharacteristic slumps to start the season. In the second half, they played as well as anyone not named Pete Crow-Armstrong.

You could point to the Padres’ 48-48 record in the first as a sign of their flaws. Or, you could point to the fact that they still played .500 ball even when their best hitters weren’t hitting as proof of just how good this team can be when Tatis and Merrill are doing what they’re supposed to.

On the other side of the ball, consider that San Diego finally has Nick Pivetta back in the rotation. The right-hander spent most of the season on the injured list. From his return in early September through his start against the Cubs on Wednesday, he has given up just four runs in 22 innings of work.

Joe Musgrove is more of a wild card, but he, too, has returned from injury to pitch in the playoffs. His scoreless inning against the Cubs was his first big league outing since 2024.

The Brewers are still the favorite. They have to be. They have home-field advantage, a fully rested rotation, and, most importantly, they have made many writers like me look foolish for underestimating them over the years. I’m not going to make that mistake.

Having said that, I expect the Padres to put up one heck of a fight. Their biggest flaw in the first half was an anemic offense. That’s not a problem with the way Tatis and Merrill are hitting right now.

Their biggest flaw in the second half was starting pitching, but that’s less of a problem in a short postseason series, especially with Pivetta back in the fold. The Padres only need three starters, and they can keep all of them on a short leash.

So, we’re in for one heck of a five-game series. The Brewers are the best team in baseball. Lately, the Padres have looked just as good. Add in the fact that both teams are fighting for their first World Series titles, and you have the recipe for an exhilarating NLDS matchup.

Starting Pitching

The Brewers will have a tremendous advantage in Games 1 and 5 of this series. His name is Jacob Misiorowski.

Misiorowski was utterly dominant in 2026. The only way you could argue that he wasn’t the best pitcher in the majors is if you’re pointing at his workload; he only made 30 starts, while fellow aces Cam Schlittler and Cristopher Sánchez both made 33.

Yet, durability doesn’t matter anymore. If anything, Misiorowski’s lighter regular season workload should only help him fend off fatigue in October.

So, having Misiorowski on the mound would give the Brewers the advantage no matter who they were facing. It only increases their advantage that his first start will most likely be against Walker Buehler or, possibly, Robbie Ray.

Michael King and Nick Pivetta started in the Wild Card round, which means they probably won’t be available until Games 2 and 3 of the NLDS. That lines up the most dominant pitcher in the game to start against one of San Diego’s less-trusted arms in the first game of the series.

The probable pitchers for Game 2 make for more of an even matchup. King was solid for San Diego all season (3.21 ERA, 185 IP), and he earned the victory with seven shutout innings against Chicago in Game 1 of the NLWCS. He is lined up to face the rookie Logan Henderson. Henderson had an excellent year himself (2.47 ERA, 98.1 IP), but he has far less experience than the veteran King.

As for Game 3, Pivetta should get the start for San Diego. How deep he goes will depend on how heavily Craig Stammen needs to use his bullpen in the first two games of the series.

The Brewers have several options to oppose Pivetta (Dustin May, Robert Gasser, Shane Drohan), but no clear choice. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if Pat Murphy opts for more of a bullpen game approach, using each of his back-end starters for a couple of innings of work.

I won’t even try to predict Game 4 this far out, but it’s worth noting that both teams will need four starters for this series, presuming no one starts on short rest. Off days between Games 2 and 3 and Games 4 and 5 mean we could see a Misiorowski-King faceoff in Game 5, but each team will need to use a unique starter for Games 1 through 4.

Bullpens

The Padres have the best reliever in the sport at their disposal. Mason Miller outdid himself in his first full season with San Diego, pitching to a 1.67 ERA with 38 saves.

It will be interesting to see how Stammen deploys Miller in this series. The righty never entered a game before the eighth inning this season, and he did the vast majority of his work in the ninth. Will Stammen break that pattern if the top of Milwaukee’s lineup is due up in the seventh inning of a close game?

On the one hand, Stammen might feel pretty comfortable using Miller earlier in a game with the knowledge that San Diego’s second-best reliever, Adrian Morejon, would be the closer on almost any other team. On the other hand, Stammen might also feel comfortable saving Miller for the ninth because he can give the ball to Morejon first.

If Wednesday’s clincher against the Cubs is any indication, Stammen will take the latter route. Morejon pitched the seventh and eighth – retiring the likes of Pete Crow-Armstrong, Alex Bregman, and Seiya Suzuki – before Miller earned the save in the ninth.

Morejon recorded more than three outs in 25 of his 76 appearances this year, while Miller did so in nine of his 66 games. If the Padres can make it to the seventh inning with a lead, their odds of winning will shoot up. And with a supporting cast that includes Bradgley Rodriguez, Jason Adam, and Yuki Matsui, this bullpen is much more than a two-man show.

San Diego has the advantage here, but before Padres fans go getting too excited, I should tell you that the Brewers have a pretty great bullpen themselves. Their relievers’ 3.40 ERA was the lowest in the National League this season, while their 3.58 xERA ranked second behind only the Padres.

Trevor Megill and Abner Uribe are no Miller and Morejon, but they’re still an imposing one-two punch. Aaron Ashby is a multi-inning stud who has proven he can handle high-leverage responsibilities. Then Milwaukee has several starters whose stuff could play up in shorter spurts, including May, Gasser, Drohan, and Kyle Harrison.

While the Padres will have the edge in the late innings, the Brewers might be better positioned to use a quick hook on their starters and keep the Padres’ hitters on their toes with frequent pitching changes.

Position Players

When he’s hot – and he’s scorching right now – Tatis is easily the best offensive player on either of these teams. Merrill has also been hotter than anyone in Milwaukee over the last couple of months.

However, the Brewers have a deeper group of reliable hitters. Brice Turang, Jake Bauers, and Jackson Chourio are all well-above-average hitters, while Garrett Mitchell, William Contreras, and part-time players like Andrew Vaughn and Gary Sánchez had very solid seasons themselves.

Newly-minted captain Christian Yelich just finished the worst regular season of his career, but with so many run producers ahead of him in the lineup, the Brewers don’t need nearly as much from Yelich as the Padres need from their own aging veterans, Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts.

Ultimately, I’d say the Padres’ lineup has a higher ceiling, while the Brewers’ hitters have a higher floor.

As for the gloves, different defensive metrics will paint a different picture. Both teams finished the regular season with 19 outs above average (OAA). However, Statcast’s fielding run value (FRV) liked the Padres a lot more. San Diego finished with better numbers in almost every area not measured by OAA.

To further complicate matters, defensive runs saved (DRS) and Baseball Prospectus’s deserved runs prevented (DRP) both liked Milwaukee’s defense significantly more. Regardless of which metrics you prefer, there’s no question defense will be important in this series; the Brewers and Padres had the two highest BABIPs in the league over the second half of the season.

Prediction

I think these two teams are evenly matched enough for this series to go the distance. And if it does go to five games, I can’t bet against the Brewers with Misiorowski on the mound. I also think it’s more likely that Miller and Morejon will be gassed if this series reaches Game 5. That tips the scales even further in Milwaukee’s favor.

Brewers in five.