Mariners know all too well Brewers' 2-0 LCS lead doesn't guarantee World Series

The Milwaukee Brewers have an 83 percent chance of finishing off the Los Angeles Dodgers and making it to the World Series. That's according to history, as teams that have taken a 2-0 lead in a best-of-seven in the postseason have gone on to win the series 79 times in 95 tries.

But lest anyone in Milwaukee get too cocky, here's a word of warning from Seattle: Those odds were at 84 percent when the Mariners were in the same spot last year.

It was a year ago today that the Mariners took a 2-0 lead over the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Championship Series. Since both victories were on the road in Toronto, Seattle's chances of getting to the World Series were more like 89 percent.

The 365 days that have passed since then haven't dulled the pain of what happened next. Despite going home with a 2-0 lead, the Mariners found themselves back in Toronto several days later for Game 6 anyway. What eventually happened in Game 7 was a dang tragedy that haunts the franchise just as much today as it did on the day it happened.

So, at the risk of sounding dramatic: Do you really know what you have there, Brewers?

The answer seems to be yes, at least if we're going to take Christian Yelich's word for it. As he said after the Brewers made it two straight over the Dodgers in the NLCS on Monday: “We've got to keep going. We haven't accomplished anything yet. It was a good start. But still a long way to go.”

The Brewers should be able to succeed where the Mariners failed, but nothing is certain yet

The Brewers haven't merely hung two losses on the Dodgers. They've won games started by Tarik Skubal, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the reigning World Series MVP. They have also limited the Dodgers to a single extra-base hit, and it sure looks like Shohei Ohtani is literally powerless to drive that number upward.

Even so, Mariners fans can tell Brewers fans all about how even a 2-0 lead can vanish in a hurry.

When the Mariners took a 2-0 lead over the Blue Jays last year, it felt decisive. Game 1 had been a pitching masterclass. Game 2 featured a three-home run barrage. They had hung Ls on both an experienced ace in Kevin Gausman and an ascendant rookie in Trey Yesavage. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was 0-for-7 in the series. George Springer was 2-for-8.

And then, the Blue Jays woke up. They hit .318 for the rest of the series, paced by a 10-for-19 showing by Guerrero. The Mariners hit just .213, falling prey to revenge for Gausman and Yesavage. By the time Springer hit that home run, it felt a little too inevitable. The Blue Jays were simply the better team.

This was a case of a 94-win team putting a 90-win team in its place, so it's not a perfect parallel for an NLCS that has the 103-win Brewers matched against the 100-win Dodgers. Yet even if the Dodgers won three fewer games this season, their creds as the "better" team still include back-to-back World Series titles and a payroll about three times the size of Milwaukee's.

It would be foolish to count the Dodgers out for a Jason Voorhees-like return from the dead, akin to the one Toronto pulled off last year. Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow don't represent a massive leap down from Skubal and Yamamoto, who may yet get another turn each in this series. And while suppressing the Dodgers' power is a sound strategy on paper, it'll be hard to pull off all series. They did finish second in the league in slugging, after all.

So, we say again: Do you really know what you have there, Brewers?

For the sake of pulling for the only other Seattle-born franchise in MLB history, we hope so. And besides, we wouldn't wish what happened to Mariners fans last year on anyone.

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