Brewers edge Cubs to make first NLCS since 2018
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Jesse Rogers
MILWAUKEE — Perhaps some divine intervention had a hand in the Brewers advancing to the National League Championship Series for the first time since 2018 after they defeated the Cubs in Game 5 of the NL Division Series on Saturday night. More than once, general manager Matt Arnold said he looked “to the heavens” for some inspiration from Brewers icon Bob Uecker, who passed away last offseason.
“I kept saying, ‘Bob, we need you,'” Arnold said in the Brewers’ champagne-soaked clubhouse following the tense 3-1 win. “We know he’s with us.”
Arnold’s prayers were answered as Milwaukee hit three solo home runs while perfectly navigating its own bullpen game — just as the Cubs were attempting to do — holding Chicago to a solo home run. Midseason pickup Andrew Vaughn went deep again, while midseason call-up Jacob Misiorowski pitched the bulk of the game, going four innings and allowing just that one run.
Vaughn, in particular, felt the meaning of the moment more than most. Traded by the Chicago White Sox after a terrible start to his season, he found new life with the Brewers. He compiled a 1.126 OPS in the series, including two home runs.
“The journey has been kind of crazy,” Vaughn said. “But not taking anything for granted. The opportunity to be with this group, it’s changed my life.”
For Misiorowski, it was the first time in 17 appearances, dating back to the regular season, that he didn’t issue a walk. He gave up three hits and struck out three in a masterful performance.
“I think I was giving everything I’ve got,” he said. “And I think I left everything out there.”
The other four Brewers pitchers held the Cubs scoreless.
“It kind of went according to plan,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “But then, we saw [Aaron Ashby] was a little bit not as sharp as he could have been. It’s his fourth time seeing them. And then, Chad Patrick was maybe the player of the game because you don’t expect him to be that good, pitching an inning plus.”
Patrick relieved Ashby during a potential turning point in the sixth. With Milwaukee up 2-1, Ashby gave up a hit and then hit a batter, putting runners on first and second with no outs. But then he threw the pitch of the game, a nasty 98.6 mph fastball on the edge of the zone to Kyle Tucker, who swung and missed on a 3-2 count. Patrick entered next. He got Seiya Suzuki to fly out and caught Ian Happ looking. It was the last rally of the season for the Cubs.
“Ashby made a pretty darned good pitch, 3-2, to Tucker,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “Looked like right down away on the corner. It was a nasty pitch. Seiya had a good at-bat against Patrick. … And then, they got out of it essentially.
“It’s really the only inning you could talk about. We just didn’t do much. We had six baserunners. You’re going to have to hit homers to have any runs scoring in scenarios like that.”
The win completed a back-and-forth series where the home team held serve throughout. The Brewers admitted the environment in Games 3 and 4 in Chicago got to them, allowing the Cubs to even the series after Milwaukee took a 2-0 lead. Would the Brewers give it away like they did in the wild-card round last year when New York Mets star Pete Alonso beat them with a late home run in the deciding game?
Longtime Brewers star Christian Yelich was asked what he learned from that heartbreaking experience.
“Just go at it fearless,” Yelich said during the postgame clubhouse party. “You can’t really lose them tougher than we did last year. So going into the night, you just play with a bunch of freedom. You know you’ve got belief and trust in your teammates that we’re going to be able to get the job done. That’s exactly what we’re able to do.”
The Brewers said all the right things about beating the Cubs, though it had to feel extra special taking down a big-market payroll and Milwaukee’s former manager, who left for greener pastures two years ago. As has become the norm since he took the job in Chicago, Counsell was booed every time he poked his head out of the dugout.
Milwaukee owner Mark Attanasio was asked if he had any doubts about his team continuing its winning ways after Counsell left the organization before the 2024 season.
“I believed in the process and the system and the people,” Attanasio said. “The Cubs were really good this year. It’s just a testament to this whole organization.”
In terms of big-market, high-payroll teams, the Cubs were just the appetizer. Next up for the Brewers are the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers, who reside in the sport’s second-largest market and own the highest team payroll in the majors, more than $200 million ahead of the Brewers.
“It doesn’t get any more big market and small market than Brewers-Dodgers,” Yelich said with a smile. “We’re up against it. We know it. We love being in those situations. It’s fitting the season for us is going to come down to that series, that team and all that star power. You have the average Joes coming there. We’re going to do what we did all year, compete our asses off, go hard and see what happens.”
Attanasio added: “Let’s go! I can’t wait.”
The Brewers went 6-0 against the Dodgers in the regular season and have home-field advantage in the series, but they will be the decided underdogs. Uecker’s spirit might be needed now more than ever, as taking down the Dodgers despite everything that the Brewers have accomplished will be their toughest task yet.
“I’m grateful for the guys we’ve had in the room,” Murphy said. “They’ve been doubted every year. Everyone. There’s no one predicting the Brewers playing the Dodgers in the series.”
Arnold added: “We’ve been planning for this. You can’t just roll out of bed and play the Dodgers.”
Penn State has fired coach James Franklin after 12 seasons, the school announced Sunday.
Franklin is owed more than $49 million, according to his contract. It’s the second-biggest buyout in college football history behind only Jimbo Fisher’s $76 million buyout from Texas A&M.
Associate head coach Terry Smith will serve as the Nittany Lions’ interim head coach for the remainder of the season, the school said.
Less than a year removed from an appearance in the College Football Playoff semifinals, Franklin’s program appeared to hit a new low when the Nittany Lions traveled out to Los Angeles two weeks ago only to lose to UCLA, a team that not only was winless but hadn’t previously held a lead all season.
The woes flew back home with the team to Penn State, and with them came “Fire Franklin!” chants at Beaver Stadium on Saturday. The Nittany Lions dropped their second straight home game, and third overall, when they fell to Northwestern 22-21 in front of a stunned crowd at Happy Valley.
With the two losses, Penn State became the first team since the FBS and FCS split in 1978 to lose consecutive games while favored by 20 or more points in each game, according to ESPN Research.
In Saturday’s defeat to the Wildcats, the Nittany Lions committed six penalties for 71 yards in the first half alone. They simply could never get out of their own way, and that was before quarterback Drew Allar suffered a season-ending injury in the fourth quarter.
Earlier in the season, when the losing streak began against Oregon at Happy Valley, Franklin fell to 4-21 at Penn State against AP top-10 opponents, including 1-18 against top-10 Big Ten teams.
Franklin’s .160 winning percentage against AP top-10 teams is tied for the third-worst record by a coach (minimum 25 games) at a single school since the poll era began in 1936, according to ESPN Research.
Hired in 2014 in the wake of Bill O’Brien’s departure for the NFL, Franklin inherited a team still feeling the effects of unprecedented NCAA sanctions in the wake of Jerry Sandusky’s sexual-abuse crimes.
Armed with relentless optimism and an ability to recruit, Franklin’s program regularly churned out NFL-level talent, from Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley to Green Bay Packers edge rusher Micah Parsons. Franklin guided the Nittany Lions to the 2016 Big Ten title and a seemingly permanent spot in the rankings.
There was hope this fall might be the season when Penn State would finally break through and win its third national championship and first since 1986. Yet after three easy wins during a light nonconference schedule, the Nittany Lions crumbled.
Athletic director Pat Kraft said the school owes Franklin an “enormous amount of gratitude” for leading the Nittany Lions back to relevance but felt it was time to make a change.
“We hold our athletics programs to the highest of standards, and we believe this is the right moment for new leadership at the helm of our football program to advance us toward Big Ten and national championships,” Kraft said.
The move will cost Penn State at a time the athletic department has committed to a $700 million renovation to Beaver Stadium. The project is expected to be completed by 2027.
Former athletic director Sandy Barbour signed Franklin to a 10-year contract extension worth up to $85 million in 2021. According to terms of the deal, Penn State will have to pay Franklin’s base salary of $500,000, supplemental pay of $6.5 million and an insurance loan of $1 million until 2031.
It’s a steep price, but one the university appears willing to pay to find a coach who can complete the climb to a national title.
“We have the best college football fans in America, a rich tradition of excellence, significant investments in our program, compete in the best conference in college sports and have a state-of-the-art renovated stadium on the horizon,” Kraft said. “I am confident in our future and in our ability to attract elite candidates to lead our program.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Eli Lederman
Penn State suffered an immediate hit on the recruiting trail Sunday, will a slew of recruits decommitting in the aftermath of the school’s decision to fire head coach James Franklin following 12 seasons with the program.
Less than an hour after Franklin was fired, four-star 2027 recruit Kemon Spell, the No. 1 running back in the 2027 cycle and the No. 15 player overall in the ESPN Junior 300, decommitted from the Nittany Lions, sources told ESPN.
Two other ESPN Junior 300 recruits — offensive tackle Layton Von Brandt (No. 35 overall) and cornerback Gabriel Jenkins (No. 242) — also announced Sunday that they’d be decommitting from Penn State’s 2027 recruiting class upon news of the coaching change.
With four-star wide receiver Khalil Taylor (No. 66 overall) decommitting on Friday, a once-promising Nittany Lions class in the 2027 cycle no longer holds a single pledge.
As for the 2026 class, which entered Sunday ranked 17th nationally, three-star wide receiver Lavar Keys is the lone prospect to decommit in the immediate wake of Franklin’s exit. However, it is suddenly vulnerable less than two months out from the December early signing period.
High-profile commits from the SC Next ESPN 300 include wide receiver Davion Brown (No. 71 overall), offensive tackle Kevin Brown (No. 80) and running Messiah Mickens (No. 135), as well as quarterback pledge Troy Huhn (No. 186), and they could attract significant flip interest from across the country over the remainder of the cycle as Penn State navigates its post-Franklin future.
“We believe this is the right moment for new leadership at the helm of our football program to advance us toward Big Ten and national championships,” Penn State athletic director Patrick Kraft said in a statement.
The Nittany Lions consistently recruited among the top programs in the Big Ten across Franklin’s tenure, topping out with the nation’s No. 4 class in the 2018 cycle, when Penn State signed five-stars Micah Parsons and Justin Shorter.
The program finished in the top 15 of ESPN’s recruiting rankings in each of the past four cycles with quarterback Drew Allar and running backs Kaytron Allen and Nicholas Singleton — all members of the program’s 2025 roster — among the top additions over that span.
The school announced Sunday that associate head coach Terry Smith will serve as Penn State’s interim head coach for the remainder of the season. Riding a three-game losing streak, the Nittany Lions (3-3) travel to face Iowa in Week 8.
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