Milwaukee Brewers starting pitcher Brandon Woodruff is no stranger to accomplishing the unthinkable in Major League Baseball’s post-season. In game-one of the 2018 National League championship series, Woodruff, in his first ever post-season at-bat, blasted a 407-foot home run in the third inning off future hall of fame pitcher, Clayton Kershaw. The Brewers would go on to win by a score of 6-5.
“I had one good swing,” Woodruff tells WTMJ’s Wisconsin’s Afternoon News. “If you look at the other plate appearances, they didn’t go my way, but I’ll take that one swing.”
Woodruff (3-5, 3.05 ERA) and Kershaw (6-2, 2.16 ERA) are the likely game-2 starters in the Brewers and Dodgers best-of-three playoff series in Los Angeles. Game-1 will be played Wednesday night (9:08pm CT first pitch), and the Dodgers are considered overwhelming favorites.
“We know that we’re in the playoffs and anything can happen. We know that we’re already counted out. We can play free, be ourselves, and hopefully click at the right time.”
No team in baseball collected more regular season wins than the Dodgers.
No team in baseball scored more regular season runs than the Dodgers.
The Dodgers won 10 of it’s last 12 games.
The Brewers dropped 4 of it’s last 6 regular season games and enter the post-season with a franchise-low regular season team batting average of .223. Still, Woodruff remains optimistic.
“With a shortened series like this against the Dodgers, I think that sets up pretty good for us. You never know what’s going to happen. We like being counted out. I think that’s when we play our best baseball.”
As it pertains to baseball, truer words have never been spoken. After all, who would have bet on Woodruff’s heroics at the plate against the Dodgers in 2018? Sometimes all you need is one swing.
