{"id":874119,"date":"2026-10-07T16:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T16:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/874119\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T16:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T16:32:08","slug":"the-opener-king-the-closer-playoff-kike-acunas-knee-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/874119\/","title":{"rendered":"The Opener: King The Closer, Playoff Kik\u00e9, Acuna’s Knee Injury"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Brewers can\u2019t seem to win a playoff game away from American Family Field. Milwaukee has dropped 12 straight postseason games on the road, matching the longest streak in playoff history (h\/t Adam McCalvy of MLB.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n

1. King keeps Padres alive<\/p>\n

With Adrian Morejon<\/a> ailing and Mason Miller<\/a> on paternity leave, the Padres turned to Michael King<\/a> to close out Game 3. The Game 2 starter navigated the final six outs to keep San Diego alive in the NLDS. It was the first time a pitcher secured a six-out save in the postseason two days after making a start, relays Jayson Stark of The Athletic<\/a>. King ran into some trouble in the ninth inning, walking two to put the tying run in scoring position. Christian Yelich<\/a> then scorched a grounder right to Xander Bogaerts<\/a> for a game-ending double play. Walker Buehler<\/a> will get the ball for the Padres tonight. The Brewers\u2019 starter is TBD.<\/p>\n

2. Playoff Kik\u00e9 does it again<\/p>\n

Chris Sale<\/a> and Yoshinobu Yamamoto<\/a> cruised through three innings on Tuesday. The Dodgers finally broke the seal in the fourth inning thanks to their secret weapon. Kik\u00e9 Hernandez<\/a> launched a Sale changeup into the left field stands to get the Dodgers on the board. Freddie Freeman<\/a> would soon homer as well. The lead would be more than enough for Yamamoto and company. Hernandez now has 17 home runs in 332 plate appearances in the postseason. \u201cWe needed a little bit of that Kik\u00e9 dust,\u201d manager Dave Roberts said (h\/t Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic<\/a>).<\/p>\n

3. Acuna dealing with knee injury<\/p>\n

Braves outfielder Ronald Acuna Jr.<\/a> was limited to DH yesterday because of knee soreness. Manager Walt Weiss told reporters that the injury could keep him from playing right field in Game 4 tonight (h\/t Mark Bowman of MLB.com<\/a>). Acuna was initially in the lineup in right field for Game 3, but was moved to DH before game time. Lane Thomas<\/a> started in right field, with Mauricio Dubon<\/a> covering left field and Ha-Seong Kim<\/a> at shortstop.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Denis Poroy, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brewers can\u2019t seem to win a playoff game away from American Family Field. Milwaukee has dropped 12…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[99],"class_list":["post-874119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}