NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: DODGERS VS BREWERS

October 13, 2025

Blake Snell

Freddie Freeman

American Family Field

Los Angeles Dodgers

Postgame 1 Press Conference

Dodgers - 2, Brewers - 1

Q. Blake, this is a weird question to ask a guy who has thrown a no-hitter, but have you ever had an outing where you were as locked in as tonight?

BLAKE SNELL: A no-hitter, yeah. You answered that. I feel like the whole postseason I've been pretty locked in, pretty consistent. Different outings, but, yeah, eight innings, went deeper. The last three I felt really good, really locked in, consistent, similar.

Q. I think only five of your 51 pitches were fastballs. How much does that speak to how good you felt of your change-up tonight?

BLAKE SNELL: I think it's just understanding, like, what they were trying to do. I pitch off of what they're telling me. So I just felt like they were really aggressive to a certain pitch, and it seemed to be that way. So I threw differently.

But the next time I face them, if they're more aggressive to other things, then I'll throw the fastball more. It's just that's what they're giving me.

Q. When you are pitching the way you did tonight, getting a lot of swing and miss with the change-up, do you feel that in your bullpen before you're coming into the game, or does it take a couple of innings to finally get that feel?

BLAKE SNELL: Coming into the game I want all four pitches to feel good, to just have some kind of feel that I'll come out. When I come out to the game it'll be different. This is what I'm seeing, I'll go more change-ups to this hitter or more sliders.

But the whole goal is to feel confident I can strike all four. And then when I get out there, their approach will tell me what I'm going to do.

Q. Freddie, you've been fortunate to play in postseason games. If this wasn't the most dominating pitching performance, what was?

FREDDIE FREEMAN: I can't think of one that was just off the top of my head that was just so good from the start. Sometimes it takes an inning or two for someone to settle in. It was from the get-go.

Just what he can do with the change-up against right-handed hitters, I think that's from 82 to 88, he can throttle it whenever he wants. It's not just one pitch. He's throwing -- it's like three different pitches when you throw three different speeds for hitters.

And then when you think you're going to sit on something, here comes 96 -- it was a masterpiece tonight.

Q. Blake, what does it mean to you to go from early in your career, you've got great stuff, everybody's talking about, well, okay, five innings, 100 pitches, to now you can get seventh, eighth inning every time. Do you feel you could have gone the ninth?

BLAKE SNELL: Yeah, I felt I could have. But I trust Dave. He knows what's best for the team.

Q. As far the growth?

BLAKE SNELL: And I've always been a pitcher that could locate. I've just been labeled a wild pitcher. But I've never felt that's ever been true. But like my last three years have been pretty consistent. And I could throw the ball, do what I want with the ball.

But the narrative's always been he's a wild pitcher, he walks a lot of guys. I laugh at it because I know it's not true. I know that because I'm the one throwing the ball.

Q. Blake, before the game Andrew was talking about the conversations you were having early on in free agency and what it meant to be in October and how that was kind of what was driving you at this point in your career. How much do you remember about those talks with Andrew early on this offseason? And what did you kind of express to him at that time?

BLAKE SNELL: It was clear as day. I remember saying, Freddie, Mookie, Shohei in that lineup. I can't wait to pitch. That's really the start of it. But just seeing what they're able to do and wanting to be a part of it and knowing how important postseason is to them, and that's just something I wanted to be a part of.

Even playing against them, watching, it was just always in the back of my mind, like, I wanted to be a Dodger and play on that team.

To be here now it's a dream come true. I couldn't wish for anything more. I'm just going to do the best I can to help us win a World Series.

Q. Freddie, you have about 25 ABs against Blake in your career. You touched on it a little bit. What is an at-bat like against Blake, especially left on left?

FREDDIE FREEMAN: I think I talk about gray hair a lot. When you face guys like him and Jacob deGrom and those kind of pitchers, you know when you wake up it's going to be a battle that night.

When you face a power pitcher that can locate three-plus pitches, you know it's going to be tough.

That's the thing, like you mentioned earlier, how he pitched tonight is probably not going to be how he pitches the next time. It's hard to scout. It's hard to feel good against someone.

You might have success in one game and it will be completely thrown out the door and you're going to strike out three times. I've done it.

He knows what he's doing on the mound. I am so happy that we are sitting next to each other now and doing press conferences together and not having to be apart and walking by each other and talking about how he beat us again because he did it a lot.

He's amazing. There's a reason he's a two-time Cy Young Award winner. He's on the big stage now, and he's just doing what he's always done.

Q. Freddie, this probably goes without saying to a certain extent, but how this game got late, how important was it just to get this one and escape here with a win and sort of establish yourselves now as the favorite in this series?

FREDDIE FREEMAN: We knew coming into the series they play great defense, they pitch, they get the big hits when they need to. That's just who the Brewers are. It's going to be a tough series from the beginning.

And you saw it tonight. Every ball we seem to hit they caught it. They pitched great. We knew from the get-go it was going to be a battle.

When you get one for Blake, you're feeling good. But you always want to get more. We had some opportunities, we didn't get it.

That run in the top of the ninth was huge, obviously 20-20 hindsight. But getting on the road in an environment and taking the first one, it's huge. You can't understate that at all. Just kind of how we did it in Philly. To get the first one, and you turn it over to Yoshi tomorrow and we're obviously feeling pretty good. Hopefully we can score some more runs tomorrow.

Q. To follow up on how excited you were to be on a team that gets to the postseason, a lot of guys will say players really make their marks of greatness in the postseason. Do you subscribe to that?

BLAKE SNELL: Yeah.

Q. And why?

BLAKE SNELL: It's every situation's a pressure situation. The deeper you go into the postseason, the more that doubt will creep in, or he was good against this team but not -- like there's always going to be someone to say, oh, there's always a way to find a flaw in something. And it will be said.

Postseason, if you dominate and you do great, no one can say anything. And that's probably the best feeling is you get to prove yourself right, or you get to go out there and you fail. But at least you get to learn and grow and see who you are and how do you get better from it.

Q. Freddie, it's not just Blake. You've had good starting pitching through the postseason. You have guys going six, seven innings pretty much every outing. How comforting is it to know you don't have to do what the Brewers did tonight and throw six different guys out there?

FREDDIE FREEMAN: People that cover us every day, I think we've been saying it for about a month now going into the postseason, our starting pitching is what has made us play better going into October.

We always were talking about how we're playing our best baseball leading up to this postseason. And it started with our pitching staff. There was a stretch there it felt like six, seven no-hit innings and every single guy was doing that.

As an offense, you have those guys taking the ball every day and doing that and giving us a chance to win, as an offense, you just want to do everything you can to support them.

You do feel confident when you're not scoring runs at the beginning of the game because you know our starting pitcher is going to keep us in that. You know with our offense, we're going to find a way and scrap and do anything we can.

I mean it was a little different tonight, but these are the games you need to win, the close ones in the postseason, because you're not going to have these massive, like, blowouts. Usually you'll find one here or there, but you will have close games.

And our starting pitching for the last, you guys would know more, seven, eight weeks, has been -- I don't know if you can write enough words in your stories about our starting pitching. It really has been amazing. They seem to feed off each other. And as an offense we're just doing everything we can to support them.

Q. Pat Murphy joked about the fact that you've been a Brewer killer for a while. He wishes you would oversleep tomorrow. I know there's not much stock you can take in who you play where you play because it's not fully just about the ballpark, or it's usually just a moment and it changes. But what is it about, whether it be playing here, playing that team that gets you up maybe a little more?

FREDDIE FREEMAN: Obviously I've played a long time and faced these guys a lot. There is no rhyme or reason to it. It could literally be I just feel good about my swing during the course of the regular season and those three to four days that we play the Brewers. Sometimes as a hitter when you feel good it doesn't really matter who you're facing.

Sometimes, when you're feeling bad, it doesn't matter who is on the mound, you've got no chance. I don't know what it is. I'm not going to try to find a reason for it.

But I like environments where it's not 25 degrees outside and your hands are cold. I always seem to like enclosed stadiums. But I can't give you a reason.

But Murph and I are very close. I don't think I'm going to oversleep tomorrow. (Laughter).

Q. You told TV that you kind of noticed some of the Brewers lean certain ways and stuff like that when they're on the base paths against you. What did you see specifically on the play where you picked off Durbin?

BLAKE SNELL: I can't tell you. (Laughter). I saw enough to know I need to pick.