MILWAUKEE — Brice Turang doesn’t always stay late at the field to hit. Some years, he said he doesn’t do it all. But two nights before the start of the National League Championship Series, the scuffling Brewers second baseman felt it was necessary.
Turang was one of the most valuable position players in Major League Baseball this year. He hit 21 homers and led the Brewers in hits, runs scored and RBI. But that production didn’t translate to the National League Division Series, where he went 2-for-16 against the Padres.
So, he decided to hit and hit and hit alongside Brewers hitting coach Daniel Vogelbach and player performance consultant Jace Peterson into the late hours Friday night, trying to find the right feel with his hands and a better path to the baseball. "I love trying to figure it out," Turang said. "Kind of grew up hitting all the time for late hours of the night.
So, sometimes it brings me back to being a kid a little bit." Brewers manager Pat Murphy was throwing baseballs to his kids when he noticed Turang still working off the Trajekt machine. Murphy told me that Turang and the hitting coaches were in the cages until 10 p.m., five hours after the Brewers’ team workout ended. Vogelbach couldn’t confirm, because he lost track of time entirely.
"We could’ve been here not late, and with that guy, you feel like there’s a moment coming," Vogelbach said. "Good players are always going to come back to being good players. You never feel like he’s far away from being Brice." In his first at-bat against Tarik Skubal in Game 1, Turang fouled a ball off his knee before grounding out.
In his next, the Brewers’ lefty did something comparable only to a four-time MVP. Shohei Ohtani was the only left-handed batter during the 2026 regular season to send a pitch from a lefty on the inner third of the plate out the opposite way for a home run. Ohtani accomplished the feat twice, but neither time came on a fastball with the velocity that Turang saw Monday night.
"Sometimes, facing a lefty gets you more locked in than anything," Murphy said, "because you know you’ve got to stay tight and you know you’ve got to stay square." Skubal picked apart the Brewers’ lineup the first time through the order Monday night, racking up six strikeouts in the process. "It was looking like he was going to dominate," Vogelbach said. And then came Turang’s slump-busting swing.
The fourth-inning blast changed the course of Game 1, catalyzed the Brewers’ offense — which responded by knocking Skubal out after a go-ahead, 26-pitch fifth inning — and might have gotten Milwaukee’s most productive position player going again in a 2-1 win. "Just trying not to hit it off my legs anymore," Turang joked. "Yeah, if that's one way to help you stay inside of a ball, is hit a ball off your leg or your foot, then maybe that's what it was for.
Yeah, I was just trying to stay inside of it and drive it back up the middle." He did more than that. Turang got ahead 2-0 in the count when Skubal expertly placed a 95.5 mph sinker on the inner edge of the plate. The Brewers’ second baseman got his hands in and somehow sent it 102.5 mph out 384 feet the other way for a game-tying solo shot.
"You don’t see it a ton," center fielder Garrett Mitchell told me. "But nothing really surprises me with a guy like Brice. That’s why he’s one of the best in the game." Jake Bauers, another fellow left-handed Brewers hitter, was more incredulous.
During a pitching change later in the game, Bauers asked Turang where the pitch was. "He said it was in," Bauers recalled. "I was like, ‘What do you mean it was in?’ He was like,’Yeah, it was in.’ Having seen plenty of lefty sinkers at 97 in on the black in my life, I have no idea how he hit it out to left-center." Bauers credited it, in part, to Turang’s strength.
Turang may not be the most physically imposing figure, at 6 feet, 190 pounds, but he’ll showcase his raw power with epic drives in batting practice. "It’s pretty impressive," Bauers told me. "It’s not what you think when you look at him.
The whip he can generate is second to none." While many in the Brewers’ clubhouse were awed by Turang’s feat, Milwaukee southpaw JoJo Romero was not. On May 4, Romero was pitching for the rival Cardinals at the time when he threw Turang a sinker on the inner half of the plate. Turang sent it the other way at 100.9 mph off the bat.
That, however, was a single, not a homer. And it came on a 92 mph two-seamer, not a 96-mph sinker from the defending back-to-back American League Cy Young Award winner, who had allowed just four home runs to a left-handed hitter all year. Turang entered Game 1 of the NLCS with just three home runs total off left-handers this year and had performed much better against righties (.901 OPS) than southpaws (.619) overall.
He didn’t have any extra-base hits in the NLDS, and he had just one hit over four games in last year’s NLCS against the Dodgers. But the Brewers, with their Game 1 win, have already proven they aren’t last year’s squad. And the extra work paid off.
"It’s something he’s said he’s done since he was a kid with his dad," Vogelbach said. "It’s just who he is. … You always think he’s one swing away from getting back to being Brice Turang."
