MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy said Sunday that right-hander Dustin May will start Game 3 of the National League Division Series against the San Diego Padres on Tuesday when the series shifts to San Diego.
May will square off against right-hander Nick Pivetta, who was named the Padres’ Game 3 starter by manager Craig Stammen on Sunday.
“He’s pitched fantastic against the Padres,” Murphy said of May hours before Game 2 of the best-of-five series at American Family Field. “He’s got experience and we brought him in to do that.”
The Brewers won the series opener 3-2 on Saturday.
May is 3-5 with a 3.14 ERA in 16 career regular-season games (13 starts) against San Diego. He faced the Padres three times this season, twice with the St. Louis Cardinals and once with the Brewers. He went 1-1 with a 1.23 ERA in those three games, allowing four runs, three earned, in 22 innings.
May (7-9, 4.70 ERA), whose postseason roster spot was not a certainty, has been inconsistent with Milwaukee since being acquired at the trade deadline from St. Louis along with reliever JoJo Romero. May was 2-2 with a 5.65 ERA in 10 starts for the Brewers. Home runs were an issue; he gave up seven in 36 2/3 innings after allowing seven in 109 innings for the Cardinals.
May lasted more than 3 2/3 innings in just one of his five starts in September. In his last outing, he allowed two runs on three hits, including a homer, in three innings in a 3-2 win over St. Louis.
May is 1-0 with a 3.86 ERA in nine career postseason outings, including three starts, all with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2019 and 2020.
Pivetta (3-2, 2.86 ERA) was 2-0 with a 1.45 ERA in four September starts after missing most of the season with a right elbow injury. He made four starts before going on the IL in mid-April.
Pivetta started Game 2 of the Padres’ wild-card series against the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday, allowing one run on three hits in 3 1/3 innings. San Diego went on to win 4-1 and complete a two-game sweep of Chicago. Pivetta threw 66 pitches before giving way to the Padres’ vaunted bullpen, which Murphy has called the best in baseball.
Milwaukee earned a first-round bye and home-field advantage throughout the postseason after winning a franchise-record 103 games. San Diego entered the wild-card round having won 17 of its final 20 games.
–Jim Hoehn, Field Level Media
