Brewers (7:08PM ET ESPN) – Brewers breakthrough in the 8th inning to tie and take the lead and close out a 5-3 win in Game 2.  Milwaukee grabbed the momentum with last night’s win and I think the Brewers ride it to a series win in the rubber match when they take on the New York Mets in a decisive Game 3 at American Family Field in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

I think the 8th inning yesterday was the “clock striking 12” on this Mets team.  The Mets were six outs away from advancing but the Brewers blew up Phil Maton and I now see the visitors at a huge disadvantage in Game 3.  By no means is this a bad Mets bullpen but they are at a massive disadvantage now that Maton was blown up and Ryne Stanek has pitched back to back days. The Mets still have a fresh Edwin Diaz but he was shaky in his most recent outing and has conceded a baserunner (with five hits allowed) across his last three road outings.  I much prefer how this sets up for Milwaukee in the late innings as the Brewers were essentially able to rest their relievers most of last week to set the entire bullpen up to pitch back to back days.  Milwaukee also didn’t need leverage arms in Game 1 so the only one that would be asked to pitch a third straight day is Joel Payamps and he’s probably the third option in this Brewers bullpen as far has RHP are concerned. Milwaukee was able to win Game 2 without overextending Trevor Megill or Devin Williams which means both are potentially in line for a multi-inning appearance here.  That was part of my handicap yesterday (which somewhat played as that duo combined for 2.2 innings in yesterday’s game) but in an elimination game I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we saw Megill come out of the bullpen first and Devin Williams come in for the 8th inning (or at some point in the 8th inning) if needed.  For me that’s a sizeable advantage, it’s reflected in the line a tad more than it was yesterday (we have to lay an extra .10 cents to back the Brewers here) but not as much as it should be.  I think the Mets are vulnerable again in a close game on the road here.

I think the starting pitching sets up far better for the Brewers in this one. Yesterday I was hoping to survive with Frankie Montas where as here we get Tobias Myers who has become one of the arms I’m more confident in on this Brewers staff.  Myers also got some needed extended rest too, he’s been limited to four innings in each of his last three appearances and he came out of the bullpen against the Mets over the weekend with excellent velo on his fastball and completely dominated this Mets lineup.  I pretty much circled Myers at that point to back him in the playoffs because I feel like the extra rest helped him out immensely.  Myers was a guy that I expected to have an excellent season at AAA Nashville but was needed far earlier due to injuries and got huge experience at the big league level this year.  Murphy was very smart with Myers workload the past couple weeks and it showed in his relief outing against the Mets last weekend.  Myers hasn’t had to prepare for anything else since, he knew exactly how he wanted to attack Mets hitters and I see no reason to believe he doesn’t do the same here.

On the other side it’s Jose Quintana, he took a loss against the Brewers last week and a big reason for that was Milwaukee’s ability to work counts and run up Quintana’s pitch count.  Quintana had a very impressive nine strikeouts in his start against the Brewers but every hitter was a battle and it took him just 4.1 innings to throw 92 pitches. That’s a massive strength of this Milwaukee team that isn’t being talked about enough, the Brewers take pitches as effectively as any team in the league and should make Quintana work here.  Even if Quintana is really good it’s hard to see him going more than five innings which gets us exposure to some of the Mets depth bullpen arms which is another solid edge for the Brewers.  It was right there for the taking for the Mets last night, they were unable to close out a lead and I ultimately think that cost them this series.   I expect the Brewers to have the upper hand from start to finish here.  Play on Brewers -126 for 4% (or 4 units)