Milwaukee Brewers at Los Angeles Dodgers

LOS ANGELES – Maybe you did a double-take when you saw Brewers first baseman Andrew Vaughn playing third base on Thursday and catcher Gary Sánchez at first. Maybe you’re not sure that hitting near the bottom of the lineup will be the thing to spur slumping stars Christian Yelich and William Contreras. Maybe you’ve wondered what happened to all of the hits with runners in scoring position. Maybe you worry that a team so discombobulated at this late stage of a regular season can’t possibly beat a behemoth like the Dodgers in the postseason. If so, then this was the game for you. Trailing by two runs and down to their final two outs at Dodger Stadium, the Brewers won with the sort of rally that carried them into this week with the best record in baseball. They collected five singles in a six-batter span of the ninth inning against Dodgers relievers Edwin Díaz and Alex Vesia, flipping a two-run deficit into a lead on Jake Bauers’ go-ahead base hit on the way to a 5-4 win. How does David beat Goliath in October? That’s how. “That's Brewers baseball right there,” said Garrett Mitchell, who supplied the single that tied it. Talk about good timing. A Dodgers win would have pulled them even with the Brewers atop the National League’s overall standings, with the Braves just half a game back. That matters just as much as the battle between the Brewers and Cubs for the NL Central crown, since the top two records in each league come with a bye through the aptly named, best-of-three Wild Card Series round. But by rallying to secure a win when closer Trevor Megill closed out the bottom of the ninth for his 22nd save, the Brewers remained atop the NL at 75-47. They also improved to 4-38 when trailing after eight innings. Considering all the context, was it Milwaukee’s biggest victory of the year? “It’s got to be up there because of what we faced in the last three days,” said manager Pat Murphy, whose club just got swept in a three-game series in San Diego while going 3-for-28 with 12 strikeouts with runners in scoring position. "I think so, at least for this season,” said Megill. “That was huge to get the boys on track." “Definitely up there,” Mitchell said. The lone dissent came from Bauers, of all people. The man who supplied the winning hit. “I think to treat this game as bigger than another one is not wise,” he said.