The Brewers and Dodgers kick off the National League Championship Series in less than an hour. Each team made one change to the rosters from their respective Division Series.<\/p>\n
Milwaukee made a move in the bullpen, swapping out\u00a0Nick Mears<\/a> for\u00a0Tobias Myers<\/a>. General manager Matt Arnold told reporters the decision was mostly about adding length to the pitching staff (link via MLB.com\u2019s Adam McCalvy<\/a>). Mears has only once completed two innings in a game this season. All but five of his 63 appearances have been a single inning or less. Myers has been a starter for much of his career and was working a handful of 2-3 inning stints in long relief down the stretch. The Brewers will lean heavily on their relievers, especially in games not started by Freddy Peralta<\/a>, and have\u00a0Aaron Ashby<\/a> kicking off a bullpen game tonight.<\/p>\n Still, it comes as a moderate surprise that the hard-throwing Mears gets left off the roster entirely. Over the course of the season, only\u00a0Trevor Megill<\/a> entered the game in higher-leverage spots on average for skipper Pat Murphy. Mears was third on the team with 16 holds. He\u2019d also pitched three times in the five-game Division Series win over the Cubs, tossing 1 2\/3 scoreless frames while striking out three of seven batters faced. Mears missed a couple weeks in September with back tightness, but Arnold suggested the decision was less a health question and more about the need for multi-inning arms in a seven-game set.<\/p>\n The Dodgers also made a change, adding a 12th pure pitcher after carrying 11 pitchers (not including Shohei Ohtani<\/a>) and 15 position players for their series against the Phillies. Right-hander Ben Casparius<\/a> draws in while the team subs out third catcher\u00a0Dalton Rushing<\/a>. That\u2019s most notable as a positive sign for\u00a0Will Smith<\/a>. The Dodgers were apprehensive about having Smith catch early in the Philly series. The star backstop came off the bench as a pinch-hitter for the first two games as he plays through a finger fracture.<\/p>\n Smith caught the last two games in full and apparently showed enough that the Dodgers no longer feel they need to keep Rushing active behind Smith and Ben Rortvedt<\/a>. The 24-year-old Rushing struck out in a pinch-hit at-bat in his only appearance during the Division Series. Casparius adds a mop-up option to the bullpen after pitching to a 4.64 earned run average across 77 2\/3 innings during the regular season. He pitched very well for the first two months but posted a 6.31 ERA in 27 appearances after June 1.<\/p>\n The full rosters break down as follows:<\/p>\n Brewers<\/p>\n Catchers:\u00a0William Contreras<\/a>,\u00a0Danny Jansen<\/a><\/p>\n Infielders:\u00a0Jake Bauers<\/a>,\u00a0Caleb Durbin<\/a>,\u00a0Andruw Monasterio<\/a>,\u00a0Joey Ortiz<\/a>,\u00a0Brice Turang<\/a>,\u00a0Andrew Vaughn<\/a><\/p>\n Outfielders:\u00a0Jackson Chourio<\/a>,\u00a0Isaac Collins<\/a>,\u00a0Sal Frelick<\/a>,\u00a0Brandon Lockridge<\/a>,\u00a0Blake Perkins<\/a>,\u00a0Christian Yelich<\/a><\/p>\n Right-Handers:\u00a0Grant Anderson<\/a>,\u00a0Trevor Megill<\/a>,\u00a0Jacob Misiorowski<\/a>,\u00a0Tobias Myers<\/a>,\u00a0Chad Patrick<\/a>,\u00a0Freddy Peralta<\/a> (Game 2 starter), Quinn Priester<\/a>,\u00a0Abner Uribe<\/a><\/p>\n Left-Handers:\u00a0Aaron Ashby<\/a> (Game 1 opener),\u00a0Robert Gasser<\/a>,\u00a0Jared Koenig<\/a>,\u00a0Jos\u00e9 Quintana<\/a><\/p>\n Dodgers<\/p>\n Catchers:\u00a0Ben Rortvedt<\/a>,\u00a0Will Smith<\/a><\/p>\n Infielders:\u00a0Mookie Betts<\/a>, Tommy Edman<\/a>,\u00a0Freddie Freeman<\/a>, Hyeseong Kim<\/a>,\u00a0Max Muncy<\/a>,\u00a0Miguel Rojas<\/a><\/p>\n Outfielders:\u00a0Alex Call<\/a>,\u00a0Justin Dean<\/a>, Kik\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a>,\u00a0Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a>,\u00a0Andy Pages<\/a><\/p>\n Two-Way Player:\u00a0Shohei Ohtani<\/a><\/p>\n Right-Handers:\u00a0Ben Casparius<\/a>,\u00a0Tyler Glasnow<\/a>,\u00a0Roki Sasaki<\/a>,\u00a0Emmet Sheehan<\/a>,\u00a0Blake Treinen<\/a>,\u00a0Yoshinobu Yamamoto<\/a> (Game 2 starter)<\/p>\n Left-Handers:\u00a0Anthony Banda<\/a>,\u00a0Jack Dreyer<\/a>,\u00a0Clayton Kershaw<\/a>,\u00a0Blake Snell<\/a> (Game 1 starter),\u00a0Alex Vesia<\/a>,\u00a0Justin Wrobleski<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brewers and Dodgers kick off the National League Championship Series in less than an hour. Each team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2401],"tags":[5,1134,136,10900,843,59,4280,4,4363,2006],"class_list":{"0":"post-378619","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-brewers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-ben-casparius","10":"tag-brewers","11":"tag-dalton-rushing","12":"tag-milwaukee","13":"tag-milwaukee-brewers","14":"tag-milwaukeebrewers","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-nick-mears","17":"tag-tobias-myers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115369814498652287","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}