Brewers fall to a deep Dodgers team they may see down the road

MILWAUKEE -- It took Mookie Betts only two at-bats to look like Mookie Betts again, on a night Clayton Kershaw delivered a vintage performance and Shohei Ohtani hit a home run to a spot a left-handed hitter is not supposed to reach -- all at the Brewers’ expense.

If Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy’s plucky Crew is to get where it wants to go this season, it may require going through the deep Dodgers, who had all of their stars out while sending Freddy Peralta and the Brewers to a 5-2 loss at American Family Field on Monday.

While the young Brewers lineup had trouble against Kershaw, Peralta had trouble keeping the ball in the park, allowing his sixth and seventh home runs over his past four starts. Betts fell down on a swinging strikeout against Peralta in his first at-bat coming off two months on the injured list but scored revenge by hitting a two-run home run in his next at-bat, before Ohtani took Peralta even deeper for a 424-foot, opposite-field home run on a 3-0 fastball that wasn’t even a strike.

“I’m feeling healthy. All the pitches are good. Sometimes you don’t get the results you are expecting,” Peralta said. “I just have to keep going, keep battling, keep fighting. I just need a little break, that’s it. And I know it’s coming. I know everything is going to be alright at the end of the day.”

William Contreras hit a two-run homer in the sixth inning off Dodgers reliever Joe Kelly to make it close, but the Dodgers dealt the Brewers their second straight loss on the heels of a five-game winning streak.

Kershaw, as he has done before, played a role in sending the Brewers to defeat. After being charged with one run on three hits in 5 2/3 innings on Monday, he’s 10-6 with a 2.84 ERA against the Brewers in 130 innings lifetime, regular season and postseason.

“This guy is a Hall of Famer for a reason. He’d be the first to tell you his stuff isn’t as good, but he knows how to pitch,” Murphy said. “I haven’t seen our young guys respond that way. I haven’t seen our young guys seem like -- the moment was a lot, you know? I’m a little surprised by that.

“Kershaw was great. He deserves everything he’s going to get in this game. … We still had chances.”

Is the aura of a pitcher like Kershaw part of what a young hitter has to overcome when stepping into the batter’s box?

“I’d say it’s definitely a thing when you’re first breaking into the big leagues, but if you’re asking me specifically if that’s how I felt, no,” Garrett Mitchell said. “I’m past that point now. But he’s been doing it for a long time and there’s a reason he’s been doing it for a long time, because he’s really good.”

The Brewers still hold a comfortable lead on the rest of the NL Central -- 7 1/2 games up with 44 to go -- but this series also has potential implications for the overall NL standings. By becoming the first NL team to reach 70 wins, the Dodgers (70-49) pushed one-half game past the idle Phillies (69-49) for the best record in the league. The Brewers are two games back of the Phillies. That’s important because the two division winners with the best records earn first-round byes in the postseason.

Also important are the tiebreakers. The Brewers trail on that front against both teams; they got swept by the Phillies in Philadelphia in June and will host them in Milwaukee from Sept. 16-18. The Dodgers lead the season series with the Brewers, 3-1, with three more games to play this week.

“This is the end of the line for the regular season,” Peralta said. “It doesn’t look like it for some people, but it is. As a starting pitcher, I have to do what I do best right now and finish strong.”

Which made it all the more notable that Betts was back in the Dodgers’ lineup in time for Monday’s series opener.

“I would particularly like him to sit out these four games,” Murphy joked on Monday afternoon, “but I don’t think he’s going to do that.”

In all seriousness, Betts is “a special player,” Murphy said.

So are Ohtani and Kershaw, for that matter.

“Somehow it’s more gratifying when you win and you beat the best,” Murphy said. “You have a chance to compete against a Hall of Fame pitcher [in Kershaw] and face that lineup at full strength, that’s the way you want it to be. But it doesn’t make it easier, that’s for sure.”