Garrett Mitchell reached over the wall and took away Manny Machado's deep drive in the eighth inning Wednesday, a catch that preserved a 3-1 Brewers win over the San Diego Padres and sent Milwaukee to the National League Championship Series. The ball had traveled 406 feet at 106.7 mph, and for the Brewers it ended the game before San Diego could turn one swing into a tying homer.
Mitchell said he was just trying to get back to the ball. It was the sort of play that looks like a leap in real time and only later gets the numbers attached to it, because this one carried more than one out. It snapped a 12-game postseason road losing streak and put the Brewers into a round they reached by surviving every inning of a tense Game 4 in San Diego.
The win was built before Mitchell ever drifted back toward the wall. Robert Gasser gave Milwaukee four quality innings, then Aaron Ashby, Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill combined for five no-hit innings to close it out. The Brewers also went the first six innings without a strikeout, which made the finish look even less likely to be decided by power than by position, pitching and one perfectly timed read in center field.
That is what made the eighth inning so sharp. San Diego still had a chance to change the night with one swing, and Machado sent it deep enough that the outcome felt suspended for a moment. Mitchell got there anyway. Christian Yelich, watching one of baseball's most proven hitters come up short, said Machado has hit about 400 homers in this league. Matt Arnold called the catch a vanishing act, the kind of thing a center fielder does only when his first step is right and the route is perfect.
The play also fit the strange edge of postseason history. Home run robberies have been tracked since 2004, and this one was described as the first time a player had been robbed of a potential game-tying or go-ahead homer in the eighth inning or later of a playoff game. That makes the catch more than a highlight. It is the kind of out that changes how a series ends and how a team talks about its own defense the next morning.
The Brewers reached the National League Championship Series with a roster that won 103 regular-season games behind a dominant bullpen, strong defense, situational offense and a rotation led by Jacob Misiorowski and Logan Henderson. Their reward is a meeting with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS, and Yelich said before the matchup was set that anyone coming into October figures it will take getting through L.A. The Brewers know that now. They also know their path there runs through a catch that turned a possible tying homer into the final proof that Wednesday belonged to Milwaukee.
