San Diego — Maybe the moment that defines Milwaukee Brewers baseball, the zig to everybody’s zag, was when pitching coach Chris Hook told middle reliever Aaron Ashby he was done with the business of mowing down the San Diego Padres in NLDS Game 4 on Wednesday.

“He’s always wanting the ball,” Hook said, “and it’s almost like he was mad because we took him out of that game. He is genuine as they come. ‘Leave me out there.’ He was great. He was [bleeping] pissed. He was mad.”

Or maybe it was manager Pat Murphy reminding his slumping centerfielder Garrett Mitchell before the game just how good he is.

“He thinks I hate him,” Murphy said. “So, I have to show him love sometimes.”

Or maybe it was Murphy before the game telling Jake Bauers, another of his slumping hitters, to stop overthinking possible pitch sequences and just react to what he sees.

Of course, it was all those moments and more. Ashby (three hitless, scoreless innings), Mitchell (two hits, an RBI, a run and a home-run robbery) and Bauers (four times on base) had the best games of their lives, considering what was on the line. The Brewers ended a taut NLDS with a 3–1 clinching win over the Padres to advance to an NLCS rematch against the Dodgers.

The NLDS games may have been excruciatingly close—36 innings with every pitch thrown with no worse than the tying run on deck—but Milwaukee’s pitching smothered the Padres. The hardest-throwing staff in postseason history (average four-seam velocity entering Game 4: 98.1 mph) allowed San Diego just three extra base hits, including two solo homers, a .181 batting average and no hope that it could ever pull away from them.

The Brewers are baseball’s greatest ensemble cast without a leading man, unless you count DH Christian Yelich, who was moved to tears when Murphy named him captain last month, or Jacob Misiorowski, who has one full season under his belt with the world’s greatest fastball and goofiest aw-shucks demeanor of any presumptive Cy Young Award winner.

In the final day or two of the regular season, Misiorowski was in the clubhouse before a game when a television showed a graphic listing the lowest ERAs in Brewers history. The Mis topped the list at 1.80. He turned to teammate Brandon Woodruff and said, “Hmm. Is that right? I did not know that.”

Said Woodruff, “He had no idea he set the franchise record. No idea. But that’s him. I was one of the names up there (2.56) and thought I had a good year then. And he was almost a full run better. It’s crazy how good he is.”

Misiorowski provided another defining moment. Though lined up to start Game 5, he laced up his yacht-sized spikes and headed to the bullpen in the first inning as a volunteer backup closer in Game 4. He was throwing in the bullpen when Trevor Megill took care of the final three outs.

“He was throwing like 110 [mph] out there in the pen,” Woodruff said. “All the guys who were in the pen were like, ‘Wow. Is it that easy?’”

Said Murphy, “We’ve had guys here in the past who would not do that. Believe me, he had no problem with it. He would have loved to get the ball.”

If 103 regular season wins with the sport’s No. 2 offense and No. 2 pitching staff did not convince you, the NLDS left no doubt as to how thoroughly the Brewers win baseball games. It’s reductive to call it small ball. The Brewers’ best traits are the hardest-throwing staff to ever play in the postseason and an honest-to-goodness belief, stoked by their irascible manager, that no one can beat them if they play smartly and together.

“I think it’s a credit to the guys and the players,” Yelich said, “and just making the commitment to each other that, ‘Hey, if we want to win and be a really successful team, then we’re going to do this together. We’re going to play a certain type of way and we’re going to emphasize playing the game of baseball how we want to do it,’ which is playing good defense, grinding out at-bats, executing on the bases and playing the game of baseball, which is to try to score more than the other guy, whether you hit it over the fence or manufacture it. That’s kind of what we’ve committed to as a group and it’s been buy-in from the players.

“And it's really hard to find. Murph coaches the group hard and sets the tone from spring training. There’s no wondering when you come to the ballpark about what’s expected of you. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s serious and he makes it very clear how we’re going to go about things.”

The clinching game was so Brew Crew. The conga line of pitchers who shut down San Diego began with Robert Gasser (a.k.a. Bobby Diesel), a 27-year-old rookie making his first career postseason start. Gasser grew up in El Dorado Hills, Calif., admiring in the family house a framed 1984 Western Union Mailgram from the Brewers congratulating Jim Gasser, his father, on being drafted in the 27th round. Jim did not sign, choosing college, and was later drafted by the Giants, but hurt his arm before playing pro ball.

Robert went undrafted out of high school before a three-college odyssey led to him getting picked by the Padres in the second round of 2021. San Diego traded him to Milwaukee in the Josh Hader deal, allowing the Brewers to get their Gasser 38 years later. Robert doesn’t throw hard (92.9), but with his low and offset release point he has the toughest fastball to hit of any starter who averages less than 93 mph (.208).

“He’s really turned a corner,” Hook said. “I just see the growth from that kid from the beginning of the year to now and it’s incredible.”

Gasser took care of 12 outs, Ashby took care of the next nine with ease. Ashby is a former fourth-round pick from Crowder College, the same junior college Misiorowski would attend. He doesn’t start or finish games, but Ashby over the past three years has a 2.73 ERA while working in 132 games. He became only the fifth reliever to win a postseason clincher with hitless, scoreless ball over at least three innings, joining Julio Urías, Cristian Javier, Pedro Martínez and David West.

Following Ashby were Abner Uribe, who signed for $85,000 in 2018, and Megill, who bounced around three organizations before blossoming into a lockdown closer with Milwaukee. Ashby, Uribe and Megill can all throw 100 mph.

“They threw all their high-leverage arms at us,” Padres manager Craig Stammen said, “and we weren’t able to get anything done.”

The Brewers have the youngest pitching staff in baseball. They have a streak of 84 consecutive starts by pitchers in their 20s. They throw more fastballs than any team in the National League. And now they can match up Misiorowski and rookie sensation Logan Henderson against the Dodgers on full rest, a huge advantage over the spent, inexperienced team that stumbled into the NLCS last year after an exhausting series with the Cubs.

“I feel like that was a really unique series last year,” Yelich says, “just with everything involved and it going five games and going up 2–0, losing two in Chicago, and then having to come back and really grind one out. And then we kind of just flipped over into the LCS. And obviously everybody pretty well documented how that went for us.

“So, it’s just different. Coming into the postseason, you have a feeling that you’re going to have to go through L.A. and they’re back-to-back champs and they’re a great team, right? We have a lot of respect for those guys. But at the same time, we feel like we can play with anybody and when we play our game and our brand of baseball, we’re a really hard team to beat.”

Says Woodruff, “I think that [Cubs] series last year, just what it meant emotionally, took a lot out of us. You know, to win five games and then have to turn around. And now both teams have a couple days off here to kind of reset. We’re starting fresh and it’s going to be a good series. It makes a big difference. We know we’re going to have to keep the ball in the ballpark. I mean, that’s what they do. They hit home runs.”

Years ago, when he convinced Notre Dame to hire him as baseball coach at 28, Murphy worked alongside Fighting Irish football coach Lou Holtz. There is a streak of Holtz in Murphy, from the way he overpraises opponents and frets over his own group to his uncompromising demand on fundamentals to his liberal use of humor. The Brewers do give a collegial vibe with their one-for-all buy in. Deep down, Murphy loves his team, even more heading into this NLCS than the last one.

“They’ve been through it, that’s why,” he says. “Experience matters. Jackson Chourio has got hot at the right time. He didn’t have a great year. He missed the first month, so he got hot at the right time. Guys like [Brice] Turang ... Yeli, had a miserable year, but then at the end when it was a belief that, ‘Hey, man, we need you. You gotta do something.’

“And he did something.”

The Brewers got rid of the notion they could not win a big game on the road, having lost 12 straight postseason road games. They out-bullpenned the mighty Padres, beating the San Diego relievers for all three wins. Now they will try to end the trend that teams lacking home run power can’t win in the low-offense environment of the high-velocity modern game. The postseason batting average entering Wednesday was .206, the lowest in at least 19 years.

“A lot of people have said we’re not built for the postseason because we’ve done so well in the regular season,” Murphy said. “We just have a dearth of stars. [What] I think we’re proving is that, no, we still can win in the postseason because good baseball is good baseball.”