Milwaukee announced its NLCS roster and changed nothing. The same 26 players who beat San Diego get the Dodgers: 13 pitchers, 13 hitters, six infielders, five outfielders, two catchers. Pat Murphy liked what he had and did not blink.
The roster was never the hard part. Murphy’s real decision is the order he throws these arms in once Jacob Misiorowski is done.
Games 2 Through 4 Are the Series
Logan Henderson gets Game 2. He went 11-3 with a 2.47 ERA and 110 strikeouts in 98 1/3 innings this year, and across 24 major league starts counting the postseason he has never allowed more than three runs. His best outing of 2026 was a career-high seven innings on Aug. 16, against Tarik Skubal. In his first career playoff start he gave San Diego two runs, one earned, over five innings.
Robert Gasser lines up for Game 3. He carried a 1.67 ERA through his final six regular-season outings and gave Milwaukee four innings in the NLDS clincher, leaving with a 2-1 lead. The warning sign is specific: he has a 5.91 ERA in two career starts against the Dodgers.
Game 4 is open. Dustin May, acquired from St. Louis at the deadline, is the nominal option, but his NLDS Game 3 start ended early after he missed the zone with five straight pitches, and he may be more useful out of the bullpen here. Kyle Harrison is the alternative, and the case for him is that the Dodgers lineup leans left-handed.
The Comparison Is Brutal and Also Irrelevant
Los Angeles answers with Skubal in Game 1 and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 2. Yamamoto went 14-9 with a 2.53 ERA and 182 strikeouts in 185 innings, then threw seven innings of one-run ball with 10 strikeouts in NLDS Game 3. Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow are the expected Games 3 and 4 starters, though neither has been announced, and both failed to go deep in their Division Series outings.
On paper that is a mismatch. In practice Milwaukee’s starters are not being asked to win games by themselves. Murphy pulled his starters aggressively in the middle innings all year, and the Brewers have Aaron Ashby and DL Hall stretched to multiple innings, Abner Uribe for the hardest spots, and Trevor Megill at the end. Chad Patrick and Shane Drohan never pitched in the NLDS and can cover bulk innings in a seven-game series.
What It Means
Milwaukee’s staff is rested after three days off, which is the quiet benefit of closing out San Diego in four. The Brewers can realistically get through Games 2, 3 and 4 asking a combined 15 innings from their starters and 12 from a bullpen that was not taxed.
That plan works if Henderson handles his first start against a lineup of this quality. He is the youngest, least proven arm in the sequence and he is pitching the most important non-Misiorowski game of Milwaukee’s season. Everything about the Brewers’ roster says Murphy trusts him. Game 2 tells us whether that was right.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.