Henderson's Two Throwing Errors Gift the Dodgers Two Runs in NLCS Game 2

Update, October 12: Milwaukee won Game 2, 7-4, to take a 2-0 lead in the NLCS. The errors in this article gifted Los Angeles two of its four runs; the other two came on sacrifice flies, and a first-inning Henderson wild pitch set up the first of them, so the Dodgers scored every run they got without a run-scoring hit, Reuters reports. William Contreras answered almost single-handedly, and the Brewers’ bullpen retired the last 15 Dodgers in order.

A championship series can turn on a throw that is not a pitch. Milwaukee starter Logan Henderson made two of them on Monday, one in the third inning and one in the fifth, and each gifted the Los Angeles Dodgers a run in NLCS Game 2 at American Family Field. The first put Los Angeles ahead 2-1, USA Today reports. The second tied the game 3-3 and ended his afternoon, FOX Sports reports. Milwaukee had won the opener 2-1. Game 2 was decided by the smallest throws on the field.

What happened in the wild third inning?

Almost everything, in about ten minutes. Tommy Edman led off with a single, and Mookie Betts followed with a grounder to short that could have been a double play but deflected off the heel of Cooper Pratt’s glove into shallow left, USA Today reports. Freddie Freeman then drove a ball 106.1 mph toward right field, and Sal Frelick, a Gold Glove winner in 2024, leaped and reached behind him to pull it down. Edman tagged to third. With Betts a steal threat at first, Henderson tried a pickoff, spiked it in front of Jake Bauers, and watched it roll into foul territory while Edman walked home. The inning had contained a near double play, a near extra-base hit and a run scored without a ball leaving the infield grass on the scoring play.

Why was the pickoff the one throw Henderson could not afford?

Because of what it defended against. A pickoff with a runner on third and one out is a low-reward gamble: the out at first changes little, while any error scores the runner from third automatically. Henderson was not beaten by a steal or a balk. He created the scoring play himself, against a Dodgers team that had spent Game 1 being held to one run by Milwaukee’s pitching. In a series where Milwaukee’s ace spent his off day trading a signed jersey for his own one-of-one card, the margins were supposed to come from the mound. For two innings on Monday, they came from the dirt in front of first base instead.

What did Milwaukee do immediately after the error?

The loudest possible answer: they chased the Dodgers’ ace. In the bottom of the third, Milwaukee turned 2-1 down into 3-2 up against Yoshinobu Yamamoto, in a 35-pitch inning built on small ball, USA Today’s live coverage reports. David Hamilton singled and stole second, Jake Bauers worked a 12-pitch walk, and Christian Yelich, the captain whose benching framed Game 1, singled in two runs. Yamamoto was relieved in the inning. That rally had been extended before Bauers ever batted by the two ABS challenges Dodgers catcher Will Smith declined on Brice Turang, each on a pitch that would have been a called third strike. Henderson’s error had been answered within the half-inning, which is what made the fifth inning sting more.

What happened in the fifth inning?

The same mistake in a different uniform of a play. Kyle Tucker doubled, and when Henderson moved to field a sacrifice bunt, his throw went astray and Tucker scored to tie the game 3-3, FOX Sports reports. Henderson’s start ended soon after, and Dustin May, a pitcher the Dodgers know well from his years in Los Angeles before his route to Milwaukee via Boston and St. Louis, entered for the Brewers, Heavy reports. Los Angeles then retook the lead in the same inning on a Freeman sacrifice fly, a run Milwaukee challenged at the plate and lost, FOX Sports reports. Two Henderson throwing errors, two Dodgers runs, and a lead built by chasing Yamamoto was gone.

Why does this keep happening to Milwaukee’s defence?

That is the question the home coverage is asking. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s live report noted that defence has been a recurring problem for the Brewers this postseason, and that Monday’s third inning added a pair of miscues to the list, one of them a play its writer thought should have been scored an error on Pratt as well. The pattern matters because Milwaukee’s whole October model is run prevention behind contact pitching: a final-strike walk-off in the division series and a 2-1 opener win are games with no room for free runs. A team built that way can survive a quiet bat. It cannot survive its pitcher scoring runs for the other side, the way a dropped pop in the other league’s series gifted the Dodgers a run earlier this month.

How did the Brewers climb out of the hole their pitcher dug?

On Contreras’s bat and the bullpen’s arm, in that order. Contreras had already tied the game once with a first-inning single; he tied it again at 4-4 with a fifth-inning home run off Kris Bubic and put Milwaukee ahead for good with a sixth-inning RBI single, finishing with three hits and three RBIs, Reuters reports. theScore notes he is only the fourth player ever with three tying or go-ahead RBI hits in a single playoff game. Behind him, Dustin May, JoJo Romero, Abner Uribe and Aaron Ashby retired all 15 batters they faced across five scoreless innings, and Milwaukee’s relievers have now allowed one earned run in 28 2/3 innings this postseason, theScore reports.

The Dodgers’ side of the ledger is the stranger one. Yamamoto’s 2 2/3 innings were the shortest postseason start of his career, theScore reports, and his lineup produced three hits all night. Every Los Angeles run arrived by donation or by fly ball: a wild pitch and a sacrifice fly in the first, the pickoff error in the third, the bunt error and another sacrifice fly in the fifth. Shohei Ohtani went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. A 2-0 series lead built this way is partly Milwaukee’s resilience and partly a warning: Henderson’s line, four runs and two earned in four innings, is not a start the Brewers can order again in Los Angeles.

What happens next for Henderson and the Brewers?

Game 3 followed on Wednesday at Dodger Stadium, and Milwaukee won it 6-2 behind Robert Gasser’s five scoreless innings to lead the series 3-0. The Dodgers’ lineup question got the harder answer: Ohtani batted sixth, reached base three times, and Los Angeles still fell to the brink of elimination. Los Angeles also spent the week in a different argument entirely, as Dale Murphy and Dodgers outfielder Alex Call asked for the risque ads to come off the playoff broadcasts. The post-game answers on the throws are still to come: Henderson and manager Pat Murphy will be asked about both errors, about whether the pickoff was called from the dugout, and about the fifth-inning bunt play, and this article will be updated in place with what they say. The rotation question follows: whether Henderson takes a normal turn later in the series, on the shortest leash a starter can have in October, or whether Milwaukee shortens its staff around Misiorowski. What Monday settled is narrower. The Brewers are good enough to survive their pitcher throwing two runs to the other side. They would rather not have to prove it a second time. The series itself is now settled: Milwaukee completed the sweep in Game 4 on Thursday, and Murphy summed it up by calling his Brewers gamers rather than Hall of Famers. The sweep produced one more argument after the trophy presentation, started from Boston: Willson Contreras used three Instagram stories to call his brother William the real NLCS MVP over Jake Bauers, then deleted two of them.