Misiorowski, Not the Cy Young Hardware, Sets Game 1

Jacob Misiorowski will start Game 1 of the NLCS against Tarik Skubal on Sunday, Oct. 11 at American Family Field. Milwaukee, which finished 103-59, hosts the 100-62 Dodgers in a rematch of last year’s sweep, with first pitch set for 8 p.m. ET on FOX.

Skubal won the last two American League Cy Young Awards and just beat Atlanta in the NLDS. Misiorowski, 24, just posted the season the hardware is supposed to describe, and he has already punched out this Dodgers club in bunches.

A 1.80 ERA Meets a Rented Cy Young

The Brewers are giving the ball to the pitcher who led the majors in earned-run average. He did it as a pre-arbitration starter on a 103-win team, not as a hired October arm.

MISIOROWSKI IN 2026

• The ERA: A 1.80 ERA and 252 strikeouts over 174.2 innings in 30 starts.
• The traffic: Forty-four walks and 96 hits, with a 0.802 WHIP and a.157 batting average against.
• The value: 6.5 WAR, a 2.17 FIP, 13.0 strikeouts per nine, and a 232 ERA-plus.
• The radar: He reached 105.5 mph against the Cubs during the regular season.

That is a complete game and a shutout in the same line, plus a 16-5 record. He is 6-foot-7, 201 pounds, out of Blue Springs, Mo., and he only debuted on June 12, 2025. A year ago he was a hard-throwing piece who went 5-3 with a 4.36 ERA in 66 innings. This year he is the National League Cy Young front-runner Dave Roberts is already treating as the winner.

The head-to-head file is the part the two-Cy-Young framing leaves out. Across two regular-season starts and a relief outing in last year’s NLCS, Misiorowski has a 1.59 ERA with 27 strikeouts and three walks in 17 innings against Los Angeles. The two starts were both six innings and one run, including a 4-1 win at Dodger Stadium on Aug. 15 (six innings, five hits, one walk, six strikeouts). In last year’s NLCS he took a loss in relief after five innings, one earned run, and nine strikeouts.

October has already nicked him once. In Game 1 of the NLDS against San Diego on Oct. 3 he lasted four innings, 88 pitches, four hits, two earned runs, one walk, and six strikeouts. The Brewers still won 3-2 and later closed that series 3-1. He has not been untouchable in October. He has been better than almost everyone else for six months, and this Dodgers lineup has not solved him.

Game 1 will be a main-event-level matchup.

It's Skubal vs. Miz to start off the NLCS in Milwaukee on Sunday! pic.twitter.com/G4d3MApBHc

— MLB (@MLB) October 10, 2026

The Dodgers Bought This Start in August

Skubal is the other half of the argument, and he did not spend the winter in Los Angeles. Detroit sent him to the Dodgers on Aug. 2 for outfielder Zyhir Hope and right-handers River Ryan and Brady Smith. He is a free agent after this season, represented by Boras Corporation, on a one-year, $32 million deal. The Tigers sold a rental. The Dodgers bought a Game 1.

SKUBAL’S PATH TO SUNDAY

1. June 13, 2026: Detroit activates him from the injured list after elbow surgery cut into the first half.
2. August 2, 2026: The Tigers trade him to Los Angeles for Hope, Ryan, and Smith.
3. October 3, 2026: He starts NLDS Game 1 against Atlanta, six innings, two hits, one run, two walks, seven strikeouts, 94 pitches, in a 5-3 win.
4. October 11, 2026: He starts NLCS Game 1 in Milwaukee, eight days after that outing.

The full-season card is a 2.72 ERA in 158.2 innings, 12-7, 186 strikeouts, 27 walks, and a 0.964 WHIP in 26 starts. Split it at the trade and it still holds: 7-5 and 2.79 in 96.2 innings for Detroit, then 5-2 and 2.61 in 62 innings for the Dodgers, with 70 strikeouts and 13 walks. He is 29, 6-foot-3, 240 pounds, a left-hander from Hayward, Calif., drafted by Detroit in the ninth round in 2018 out of Seattle University.

The October résumé is why Roberts handed him the opener on the road. In seven career postseason starts he is 3-1 with a 1.97 ERA, 45.2 innings, 63 strikeouts, and a 0.723 WHIP. The two Cy Young seasons were 18-4 with a 2.39 ERA and 228 strikeouts in 192 innings in 2024, then 13-6 with a 2.21 ERA and 241 strikeouts in 195.1 innings in 2025.

He has already seen this clubhouse’s opponent once in a Dodger uniform. On Aug. 16 against Milwaukee he went six innings, seven hits, two runs (one earned), two walks, and seven strikeouts in a 2-6 loss. That is a quality start, not a demolition. It is also the only 2026 meeting that is fully on the log, and it came a night after Misiorowski had just beaten Los Angeles.

American Family Field Still Has Last October

The building remembers a sweep. Last year’s NLCS, the Dodgers took four straight, outscored Milwaukee 15-4, and held the Brewers to a.384 OPS. Milwaukee had home-field advantage then too. The regular-season series that year had gone the other way; Los Angeles still ended it in four.

This year’s regular-season series went Milwaukee’s way, 4-3, including three of four in Los Angeles in August. The 2026 Brewers won 103 games, three more than the Dodgers, and they are the No. 1 seed. They beat San Diego 3-1 in the NLDS and snapped a long postseason road losing streak in the clincher. Last World Series trip for this franchise was 1982, which is 44 years of waiting.

Ryan Spilborghs, the MLB Network Radio host, put a number on how the value is spread: 17 Brewers posted 1.5-plus WAR this season, against 11 Dodgers. That is the opposite of a one-star October club. It is also why the old small-market script sounds stale in this series.

They have the best record in baseball, if I remember right. They have that for a reason. They’ve got home-field advantage. So we’ve got to play our best baseball. They’re certainly not afraid of us. They’ve got the guy that’s going to win the Cy Young in the National League starting Game 1. So we got our work cut out.

Dave Roberts, Dodgers manager, before NLCS Game 1

Roberts rejected the David-and-Goliath frame outright. The Dodgers are still the club that has knocked Milwaukee out of October three times in eight seasons, and they still want a third straight title. The Brewers are the club that just won the most games in the sport and no longer wants to hear about payroll.

Who Owns This Dodgers Lineup?

In 56 at-bats against Misiorowski, Dodgers hitters have nine hits and 21 strikeouts, a.161 average. Shohei Ohtani has a homer in that sample. Freddie Freeman is 0-for-7 with four strikeouts. Mookie Betts is 1-for-8. The velocity is the problem Max Muncy named: everything arrives fast, with long extension from a 6-foot-7 release, and seeing it once does not shrink it.

THE TWO GAME 1 STARTERS

Skubal’s career October is deeper. Misiorowski’s file against these bats is meaner. Both last worked on Oct. 3, so the rest is even. The park is Milwaukee’s, the roof is open on a clear afternoon, and the four-seamer that made Misiorowski’s season will have a full building behind it.

Skubal called that command-at-velocity “very impressive.” Misiorowski declined the ace-vs-ace framing the way he does when he draws Paul Skenes. “I’m not really looking at them. I’m looking at the lineup more than him,” he said. “For me personally, it doesn’t really mean that much to face a guy like that. Obviously it’s cool. The dude’s insane.” He is trying to beat Ohtani, Betts, Freeman, Kyle Tucker, and Teoscar Hernández, not the left-hander on the other bench.

Yamamoto Gets Monday, Then the Series Shifts

Yoshinobu Yamamoto, last year’s World Series MVP, starts Game 2 on Monday, Oct. 12 at 5 p.m. ET, still at American Family Field. In NLDS Game 3 he struck out 10 over seven innings and allowed one run, four hits, and one walk. Blake Snell, the other two-time Cy Young winner in this rotation, started Game 2 of the NLDS and the Braves won 3-2 to tie that series 1-1 before Los Angeles closed it 3-1. Tyler Glasnow is the fourth starter on the NLCS pitching list. Roberts has not needed to name Game 3 yet.

Milwaukee’s next card is Logan Henderson in Game 2, with Robert Gasser in the Game 3 plan. The Brewers kept the same 26-man group they used against San Diego. They are betting the same staff that won 103 can cover a best-of-seven without a late add.

NLCS CALENDAR

• Game 1: Sunday, Oct. 11, Dodgers at Brewers, 8 p.m. ET, American Family Field, FOX.
• Game 2: Monday, Oct. 12, Dodgers at Brewers, 5 p.m. ET, American Family Field, FOX/FS1.
• Game 3: Wednesday, Oct. 14, Brewers at Dodgers, 8 p.m. ET, Dodger Stadium, FS1.
• Game 4: Thursday, Oct. 15, Brewers at Dodgers, 9 p.m. ET, Dodger Stadium, FS1.

If the series lasts, Game 5 is Friday, Oct. 16 in Los Angeles at 9 p.m. ET, then Games 6 and 7 return to Milwaukee on Oct. 18 and 19. The World Series is scheduled to open Oct. 23, with the NLCS winner hosting Games 1 and 2.

A 13th Pitcher Costs Hyeseong Kim His Spot

The Dodgers submitted a 26-man roster for the NLCS on Sunday with 13 pitchers and 13 position players, one more arm than they carried against Atlanta. Justin Wrobleski, a first-time All-Star this year, is the extra left-hander. Hyeseong Kim is off the roster after a pinch-running appearance and two innings at second base in NLDS Game 4.

Roberts wanted length more than another specialist. “I think that length, having a guy that can go two or three, is something where you essentially protect downside on the pitching,” he said Saturday in Milwaukee. “As far as handedness, they’re pretty balanced. So that really doesn’t come into play.”

Miguel Rojas, 37, is on the roster after leaving NLDS Game 3 with lower back pain and missing Game 4. Imaging showed mostly prior issues. He took a cortisone shot, worked out Friday at Dodger Stadium and Saturday at American Family Field, and survived the cut. He hit a tying homer in the ninth inning of Game 7 of last year’s World Series in Toronto. He has said he is leaning toward retiring when this run ends. For this series he is a bench bat against left-handers and a late infield option, not a everyday lock.

The position group still has Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Max Muncy, Tommy Edman, Kiké Hernández, Will Smith, Andy Pages, Kyle Tucker, Teoscar Hernández, Josue De Paula, Hunter Feduccia, and Shohei Ohtani. The pitching group around Skubal, Yamamoto, Snell, and Glasnow includes Edwin Díaz, Roki Sasaki, Tanner Scott, Alex Vesia, Evan Phillips, Brock Stewart, Edgardo Henriquez, Kris Bubic, and Wrobleski.

Murphy Put the Underdog Line Away

Pat Murphy, the two-time NL Manager of the Year, spent last year’s NLCS telling anyone who would listen that Dodgers players probably could not name eight Brewers. He has taken that line back. “I’m sorry I played that underdog card,” he said before the workouts in Milwaukee. “I don’t care who the underdog is. I don’t care who the favorite is. It’s about getting in the ring and fighting it out.” He also said, of the same Dodgers, “They’re just tremendous guys… but, we want to kick their butts,” and, after the Padres series, “We’re gonna be more ready than we were last time, I believe.”

Ohtani is the open wound on the other side. He went 2-for-13 in the NLDS against Atlanta with no extra-base hits and four strikeouts, and Roberts dropped him to fifth in the order, a spot Ohtani had not occupied since joining the club. He was shut down from pitching in a second half full of knee and biceps trouble. A year ago against this same Brewers team, in NLCS Game 4, he hit three home runs and struck out 10 as a pitcher in the same game. Los Angeles does not need that exact night. It needs the version that can do damage against a 1.80 ERA fastball it has barely touched.

The roof at American Family Field is open. Skubal takes the ball first for a Dodgers club that paid three prospects for this start. Misiorowski takes it for a Brewers club that just spent six months looking like the best team in the league, and that already owns a 1.59 ERA against the lineup in the other dugout. First pitch is 8 p.m. ET.