MILWAUKEE — After rallying to halt their streak of postseason futility, the Milwaukee Brewers will be looking to secure their first playoff series win in six years when they face the New York Mets on Thursday in the deciding game of the National League wild-card series.
The NL Central champion Brewers, who had lost their last 20 playoff games when trailing entering the seventh inning, rallied for a 5-3 victory Wednesday night to even the best-of-three series at a game apiece.
Garrett Mitchell lined a two-run homer in the eighth inning for the go-ahead runs and rookie Jackson Chourio homered twice as Milwaukee snapped a six-game playoff losing streak.
Rookie right-hander Tobias Myers (9-6, 3.00 ERA) starts for third-seeded Milwaukee. He will be opposed by left-hander Jose Quintana (10-10, 3.75).
The Brewers, in the postseason for the sixth time in seven seasons, has lost five consecutive playoff series since sweeping Colorado in the National League Division Series in 2018. The Brewers then lost the NL Championship Series in seven games to the Dodgers.
The Mets’ postseason series drought is even longer than the Brewers. New York has not won a playoff series since a four-game sweep of the Cubs in the 2015 NLCS.
The Brewers were 5-1 against the Mets during the regular season, including winning two of three in the teams’ final series last weekend in Milwaukee.
Chourio, 20, is the second-youngest player in major league history to homer twice in a postseason game, behind only Atlanta’s Andruw Jones (19 years, 190 days in Game 1 of the 1996 World Series).
“I think I still feel the adrenaline there,” Chourio said postgame through an interpreter. “It was a very special moment for me, and it’s one I’m going to look back on and remember for the rest of my life.”
Mitchell, who missed the first 84 games of the season after fracturing a finger, entered the game as pinch runner in the sixth and was thrown out trying to steal. He remained in the game as the designated hitter and homered on the first pitch he saw from Phil Maton in the eighth.
“I just show up every day ready to compete and do whatever I’ve got to do and help the team in whatever ways are possible,” Mitchell said. “I mean, I don’t even know what else to say. I’m just happy to be here. I’m grateful, thankful. Come back out here and do it again tomorrow.”
While the Brewers rallied behind the long ball, the Mets have not homered in the series’ first two games.
“When you’re facing an elite pitching staff, it’s not going to be easy to hit balls out of the ballpark,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “We’ve done a good job of going the other way, take what the game is giving us, putting the ball in play. Today we didn’t do that.”
Myers will look to continue a solid stretch to end the regular season, when he went 3-1 with a 3.03 ERA in his last six appearances, including five starts. In his final outing, he came out of the bullpen after one inning and tossed four innings of one-hit ball in a 6-0 win over the Mets on Saturday.
That was his first career matchup with New York.
Quintana started that game for the Mets, allowing two runs on five hits in 4 1/3 innings, the only runs he yielded in four September starts. He fanned nine Brewers and walked two.
The former All-Star went 4-1 with a 0.74 ERA in his last six regular-season starts. He is 0-1 with a 3.86 ERA in five career postseason appearances, including four starts.
Quintana is 9-7 with a 2.98 ERA in 23 career games vs. Milwaukee, including 22 starts, but has not beaten the Brewers in six appearances over the past five seasons.
–Jim Hoehn, Field Level Media
