Here’s why the Dodgers-Brewers NLCS might have been decided in August

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MILWAUKEE — The National League Championship Series starts Sunday. The series could have been decided on Aug. 1.

That was the day the Dodgers traded for Tarik Skubal. The Milwaukee Brewers wanted him badly, but they declined to include a promising young pitcher in the deal.

So, on Sunday, the scenario the Brewers most hoped to avoid comes true: Instead of starting for them in Game 1 of the NLCS, Skubal starts against them.

If the Dodgers win the series, the Milwaukee winter could be cold and long, with fans tortured by visions of Skubal and presumptive Cy Young winner Jacob Misiorowski starting four games in the series.

The Dodgers have one of baseball’s most formidable starting rotations, and they are in a strong position to be at their collective best against Milwaukee.

Instead, the Dodgers could get four starts out of Skubal and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

“Every night when you play these guys, you know you’re going to face a Cy Young-caliber pitcher,” Brewers captain Christian Yelich said. “It’s the reason why they’ve been so good as a team.”

In the alternate reality, the Dodgers start Yamamoto — perhaps the world’s best big-game pitcher — followed by Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and maybe Emmet Sheehan. Snell and Glasnow each starred last October, but each walked five in his division series start while failing to complete five innings.

In actual reality, the Brewers are expected to follow Misiorowski with rookie Logan Henderson, with whom they would not part in the Skubal trade. That’s no easy assignment for the Dodgers: Henderson posted a 2.47 earned-run average in 18 games this season, better than Yamamoto (2.53) and Skubal (2.72).

If Henderson can outshine the bigger names, the Brewers could be OK. But, if the Brewers fall behind in the series, they could be faced with coming back behind the likes of ex-Dodger Dustin May and rookie Robert Gasser.

Not surprisingly, Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold had little to say about his team facing Skubal in Game 1 rather than trading for him — and keeping him away from the Dodgers.

“Every team was looking to acquire good players at the deadline,” Arnold said, “and, ultimately, they landed a really good one there in Tarik Skubal.”

Said Misiorowski: “The dude’s insane. I’m just hoping that these guys can do their job and handle business with him and let me do my thing and try to get that side taken care of.”

It is entirely rational that the Brewers decided six years of Henderson would be more successful and certainly more cost-effective than two months of Skubal, who is eligible for free agency and is likely to receive the largest contract ever awarded to a pitcher (the current record: Yamamoto’s $325-million deal with the Dodgers).

It is unfortunate, too, in the sense that the Brewers are not some plucky underdog but the team that won the most games in the NL this year and last year.

“We’ve been expecting having to play them in this round since spring training,” Yelich said.

Flags fly forever. The Brewers, founded in 1969, never have won the World Series. If you’re not going all-in during a season in which you won a franchise-record 103 games, when are you?

“I’m grateful for the opportunity to compete against the Dodgers, because they obviously have proven to be a dominant baseball organization,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “You can complain or explain or say it’s this or it’s that, but the opportunity to get in the ring and do that is pretty special.

“That’s the way you’d want this storybook ending — when you’re writing the last words of the Milwaukee Brewers championship, you’d want it to go through the Los Angeles Dodgers. It’s the way it has to be if it’s an incredible story, for lack of a better adjective.”

The Brewers should be offended at the premise behind the owners’ push for a salary cap. The owners claim small-market teams cannot compete effectively or consistently without one. The Brewers — the team that plays in baseball’s smallest market — have won a division championship for four consecutive years, and five out of six.

“Nobody here is worried about that right now,” Arnold said. “We’re focused on trying to win, and I think we have for awhile. Regardless of what the economics look like, the guys in there believe, and so do I.”

The owners have argued the system needs reform because a small-market team has not won a World Series in 11 years. Do the Brewers consider their run of success as a failure?

Andrew Friedman wants “chaos,” and he could see a lot of it when the Dodgers face a talented 103-win Milwaukee Brewers team in an NLCS rematch.

“I wouldn’t,” Arnold said. “I would consider it an opportunity to go win it this year.”

In the big picture — what this all means to Major League Baseball — this series makes no difference. The owners are hell-bent on their demand for a salary cap whether the underdog Brewers win, or the big, bad Dodgers do.

In the local picture here, the Brewers have to ask what every manager or coach does: Did we put our players in the best position to win?

If the Brewers win this series, good for them. If they don’t, they got their answer on Aug. 1.

Bill Shaikin, a California Sportswriter of the Year honoree, covers baseball and sports business for the Los Angeles Times.

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