Tarik Skubal tried to paint the inner corner with a sinker on a 2-0 count. It was the fourth inning, the score was tied 1-1, and standing in the box was a left-handed hitter he’d retired easily his first time through. What happened next was only the third instance all 2026 MLB season of a left-handed batter hitting an opposite-field home run against a lefty pitcher on an inner-third fastball. The other two times? Both Shohei Ohtani.
The swing Milwaukee shouldn’t be able to make
Turang sent Skubal’s sinker 384 feet to left-center, well beyond the reach of center fielder Andy Pages, tying the game in the fourth inning. The moment was already notable on its own — a playoff game, a Cy Young winner on the mound, a tight score — but the mechanics make it something else entirely.
When a left-handed batter faces a left-handed pitcher, an inside pitch naturally pushes him toward his pull side — right field. Taking that pitch the other way, to left or left-center, demands keeping your hands inside the ball, not opening your hips early, and generating power from a contact point out front. It’s hard to execute. Getting it out of the park is even harder.
FOX Sports reporter Jake Mintz documented it with Statcast data: across the entire 2026 regular season, only three hitters hit a home run with that exact combination — left-on-left, opposite field, inner-third fastball. One was Turang. The other two were Ohtani.
Skubal didn’t miss his spot — that’s what makes it harder
Here’s the detail that reframes the whole play: Skubal didn’t make a mistake. MLB.com noted the pitcher was trying to work back in the count by attacking the inner corner with the sinker. The pitch went exactly where he wanted it. Turang simply did something almost no one else in the big leagues can do with that kind of offering.
Turang’s 2026 regular season with the Brewers closed with a .268/.366/.816 slash line — an OPS 65 points higher than his previous campaign — along with 21 home runs, 100 RBI in 151 games, a 90.3 mph average exit velocity and a 7.7% barrel rate. Those are legitimately strong numbers for a second baseman. But none of them specifically predicted this kind of swing.
Skubal, for his part, had dominated the first time through Milwaukee’s order — retiring 9 of the first 10 Brewers he faced and striking out 6. It was the second time through that cost him: Turang’s homer in the fourth and a Luis Lara RBI single in the fifth put Milwaukee ahead for good. Skubal finished with a line of 5 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 2 BB, 7 K — the first time in his eight postseason starts that he didn’t record an out past the fifth inning.
The rematch Milwaukee has been waiting for since 2025
This 2026 NLCS is a direct rematch. Last year, the Dodgers swept the Brewers in four games; Ohtani was named MVP with 3 home runs, and Turang hit .114 with 6 strikeouts in 15 plate appearances against this same pitching staff. Game 1 this October was Milwaukee’s first NLCS win since 2018.
Sunday’s homer was Turang’s second of the 2026 postseason — he’d already gone deep in the decisive Game 5 against the Cubs in the NLDS — and his first of this series. That he delivered it with the statistically rarest swing of the season, against one of the two best pitchers in baseball, on a well-executed pitch, is exactly the kind of thing Statcast keeps on file for when nobody’s watching.
Game 2 of the NLCS is set for Monday with Yoshinobu Yamamoto starting for the Dodgers. Milwaukee already knows it can beat this staff. Now let’s see if Turang has to do something only Ohtani had done before — again.
