The early-season matchups between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers have featured two of baseball’s hottest hitters in Cody Bellinger and reigning National League MVP Christian Yelich.
Both have shined through the first three games of the series at Miller Park. Bellinger hit a home run on Thursday, and Yelich has gone deep in each of the contests. Included in that was hitting two solo home runs of Hyun-Jin Ryu in Saturday’s win.
With the Dodgers trailing 2-0 in the eighth inning and first base open after Lorenzo Cain’s bloop double, they opted to intentionally walk Yelich. Caleb Ferguson was entrusted to retire Ryan Braun, but missed his spot with a fastball and surrendered a three-run home run.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was the subject of some criticism for the decision, but an attempt to avoid Yelich doing more damage certainly was understandable. It’s a viewpoint Braun shared, though he also couldn’t recall having a batter intentionally walked ahead of him, per Ken Gurnick of MLB.com:
“If you look at my career numbers, I’ve been obviously pretty good against lefties,” said Braun. “This year, I’ve been bad against everybody, and Yeli has been impossibly good. The combination of those two things, it obviously made a lot of sense for them to do what they did. But I don’t remember that ever happening before.”
Braun boasts the ninth-best on-base plus slugging percentage against southpaws in MLB history. However, he entered play with just three hits in his last 35 at-bats and was 0-for-3 prior to connecting on the home run.
While Braun’s home run was a bit of a backbreaker, the Dodgers still would have had their six-game winning streak snapped simply by Yelich’s pair of solo home runs as they were shut out in the 5-0 loss.
