NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: DODGERS VS BREWERS

October 15, 2025

Pat Murphy

Dodger Stadium

Milwaukee Brewers

Workout Day Press Conference

Q. What are your Game 3 and 4 pitching plans?

PAT MURPHY: That I can share? None. Zero.

No, obviously we've got guys that -- pitching plans. It's under construction right now, talking about it. Obviously anyone that follows us knows that we've got Quintana, Misiorowski for some bulk. With a day off, all our relievers should be good.

We'll navigate from there. We probably will this afternoon. As soon as we make it concrete, we'll probably get the word out to you. We're not trying to hide anything from anybody. There's no strategy. Everybody knows what we've got left.

Q. You had said, I think, on the day going into this series that in a seven-gamer, if you're not careful, you could find yourself in Game 4 and in a tough pitching situation. Based on the way you navigated 1 and 2, do you feel good going into these three in a row for the first time in this postseason?

PAT MURPHY: I think we've pitched pretty well. If you told me that the Dodgers would score seven runs in two games, I would say that the series is going pretty good.

So I think from a pitching standpoint, we're pretty good. Nobody got overexposed. You don't want to give them too many looks at the same guy, but that's the spot we're in. We've had some bad injuries at the wrong time, and just the way things have worked out, losing Woody, losing Henderson, losing Shelby Miller, those are three guys that were in the plans.

We feel comfortable trading Civale and trading Cortez because we had enough depth. Now you get into the postseason and you have a few more big injuries. Now you're like, Ugghh. But it is what it is. Other people step up and you never know how that is going to help you going forward.

I feel we're in a good spot.

Q. Murph with the note of encouragement I guess you call it to the players --

PAT MURPHY: How did you find out about that?

Q. The players had it.

PAT MURPHY: And they told you about it?

Q. Yeah. The question is how do you find the right note to send to them, the right message, the right medium down 2-0?

PAT MURPHY: Did you read it? Well, if you read it -- it's encouraging and it's from the heart. It's like, you speak to them and sometimes your words -- your voice, they've heard it so much for the last nine months.

Sometimes it's better to not use your voice and just jot down a little something simple that they can read in 30 seconds. Yeah, it's from the heart. It's like, hey, greatness is formed from stuff like this.

This is more of an opportunity than anybody knows. If I was to tell this group after 0-4 start with the worst run differential in baseball history, if I was to tell them, hey, you're four games from the World Series, you'd take it.

Whatever that mountain is, we'll take it. Now let's get to work. Whatever has happened in the past has happened in the past. Let's roll. This is the best group to go through it with because they've had a special fiber all year long, so I'm pretty confident.

Q. We asked about Yelich after the game last night. Is it an off-day for him just in the stretch that he's in? Do you feel like that's coming at a helpful time to get a mental or a physical --

PAT MURPHY: I don't think any of that matters. Yelly has faced the same pitching that our other guys have faced. Those guys have been incredible. Just tip your hat to them; they've been incredible.

The Phillies didn't hit them. They're one of the better hitting teams in baseball. I don't know the numbers but I think they're one of the better hitting teams in baseball.

Some of the greatest hitting in our game struggled against this pitching staff. They're in a good spot. The Dodgers are in a good spot. We all know that. They're playing great and they've got healthy pitching back. Heck, somebody said Snell makes more money than our entire pitching staff. That's for a reason, because he's great. What he demonstrated the other night was the high end of his game. That's unbelievable. That's great. We can't do anything about it.

But to put it on Yelly like Yelly is struggling, he hasn't got a lot of hits in the last three or four games. If this was mid-season nobody would say a word. But now we're chirping about it like there's something wrong with Yelich.

He'll respond. He always does. People doubted him after -- you were one of them probably. I don't read the stuff, but if I did I would go right to your stuff first, I promise. That was a little facetious, wasn't it, or sarcastic I guess is the right word.

Going right to your stuff, you're crushing Yelich that, hey, he lost it, he couldn't ever get it back. Were you? I don't know for sure, but were you? But 2020, 2021, you were crushing him. You weren't?

Okay, whenever you were crushing him, because I know you were, he's responded with 29 homers and 100 plus RBIs. He'll respond again; there's no question in my mind.

Q. You guys came up short the last two games, but Ohtani is still relatively quiet. You guys are handling him well. What do you think of the matchup and what you guys are doing well?

PAT MURPHY: I kind of feel the same way about Ohtani as Yelich, and I don't know the number comparison, I don't look at that stuff, but he's dangerous, and we pitch him as tough and as careful as we can pitch him, and we bring a matchup in anytime we can.

For a four-game stretch or a five-game stretch, whatever he's struggled for, that's not enough to say, oh, this guy is a in a bad place, because those guys are so good that they can flip it on, and boom, things can result-wise change like that.

Ohtani I know had one line drive caught yesterday and got another hit. I don't know, we walk him 100 times, so it's like -- I don't look at him as struggling at all. I just don't. I don't look at those type of numbers.

I know if Sanchez is pitching left on left and throwing the two-seamer in, throwing that slider away, it's tough for everybody. He's going to be especially careful -- if you don't care if you walk him, you've got to be especially careful of Ohtani.

I think Yelich is in a similar boat. Obviously not the same hitter, but he's in a similar boat. They're saying, okay, I'll face whoever next. You know what I mean? Makes it tougher. He wants to produce because he wants to help the team.

It's that cycle that happens, and then you don't get the results and then you guys start writing about it like there's something wrong with him and there's some simple solution.

You get results by staying on your process, and if you stay on your process, you'll get the results.

Q. Austin, everybody hears your dad talking all the time, so based on your inside knowledge of the Brewers, what do they have to do to get out of this 2-0 deficit they're facing?

AUSTIN MURPHY: Just stick with it and keep battling through it. I think they can do it. Yeah, I believe they can do it.

Q. What makes you believe?

AUSTIN MURPHY: Well, the guys respond back really good. Started the season 0-4. Those games were not good. But then they responded with the best record in baseball. So I believe they can do it.

Q. Murph, with Quinn Priester's pitch count what it was in the first game, would you consider bringing him back for Game 4?

PAT MURPHY: Could. It's all hands on deck. I'll tell you this, that we've got to make sure -- we've got enough people to cover the nine plus innings for tomorrow, and everybody is in play the next day and everybody is in play the next day except the guys that go bulk. That's how we're having to do it.

So yes. To answer your question, yes.

Q. I can't imagine with you at the helm that this team would ever be tight at all, but because you have some guys that are young and inexperienced in situations like this, do you have to pull certain guys aside and just say, play your game, be yourself, do what you do all year, or is it a pretty loose group?

PAT MURPHY: Yeah, these guys are in Major League Baseball. Think about what it takes to become a major league player. To say they're a 1 percenter, that's not fair. They're better than a 1 percenter. Most times they have the capacity.

But like all human beings, we lose confidence or we start to doubt. But they have enough people around them -- maybe I'll say that to a few guys in my own way.

But keeping it light, at the same time, knowing exactly where the target is. Exactly where the target is. Knowing exactly what your process is and how you have to carry that out.

Even if you've got a guy like Yamamoto who's split looks like his heater, goes down and then his heater looks like yeah, it might be a heater and then it goes up -- it's a tough detail. I don't think we give that enough credit, how great those two guys pitched, and it's put us in a hole, a hole that people say it's unlikely to come out of.

Now this was an unlikely team to be in first play and lead the major leagues in wins, so I trust that. There's a lot of reason to doubt. There's a lot of daunting scenarios out there. But it's not time to think, complain or explain. It's time to go.