Blake Snell stood on the mound, hand on hip, waiting for Jake Bauers to cross home plate before making his call for the next batter.
The Dodgers left-hander had just given up the lead on a two-run homer by Bauers in the seventh inning, spoiling what had been a great start Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium. But Snell was ready to move on.
Two pitches later, he saw another ball go over the fence, this time off the bat of Garrett Mitchell. And with that ended the Dodgers’ momentum in what would become a 6-2 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series.
“It sucks,” Snell said of falling behind 3-0 in the series. “But that’s part of it. How do we bounce back? How do we fight? I think that’s the most important thing. It’s us coming together and finding a way to win.”
After setting their sights on a historic three-peat, the Dodgers will need to win the next four games to advance to the World Series.
Only one team in MLB history has come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven series: the 2004 Red Sox in the American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees, en route to breaking the Curse of the Bambino.
“At the beginning of this year, we decided to do something historic,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said. “It looks like we’ll have to make a little more history along the way if we’re going to get there.
“That’s the task ahead of us. We still have the pitching staff to be able to do it. We just need to get some hits.”
Through five innings, the only run on the board was the one the Brewers scored on the first pitch of the game.
Snell sent a 97.6 mph fastball over the center of the plate, and Brewers leadoff hitter Jackson Chourio sent it into the first row of the stands in right-center.
However, for much of Snell’s early days, this aggressive approach worked. He peppered the top rail with his fastball, threw his curveball for swings and misses and called strikes, and mixed up his passing to right-handed hitters.
Unlike Snell’s last postseason start, when he issued five walks and lasted only 3 2/3 innings against the Atlanta Braves, his efficiency allowed him to go more than six innings on Wednesday, with just two walks.
And while Snell’s fastball averaged 97 mph in his last start — something he’s only done twice before in his career, in the regular season or postseason, and not since 2022, according to Statcast — he threw even harder on Wednesday: 97.3 mph.
After Chourio’s homer, Snell struck out 18 of the next 20 batters, including 14 in a row, to go six innings. His nine strikeouts were just shy of a career postseason high, which he recorded against the Brewers last year in Game 1 of the NLCS.
The game was still far from decided in the bottom of the sixth, even though the Dodgers offense had been calm.
With the way the Brewers bullpen pitched in the first two games, it looked like the Dodgers would have to score against the Brewers starters to have any chance of digging themselves out of the hole they had dug.
They fell short in Game 3, recording just three hits against left-hander Robert Gasser.
Fortunately for the Dodgers, the pitching in each postseason game finally seemed to have caught up with powerful right-hander Abner Uribe in his seventh appearance.
Uribe replaced Gasser in the sixth inning and walked the first two batters.
Milwaukee’s Jake Bauers hits Snell in the seventh inning of Game 3.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Then Dodgers manager Dave Roberts hit Max Muncy left-handed to Andy Pages. Muncy was struck out and the biggest moment of the game came from two Dodgers who had the team’s worst postseason production.
Roberts had relegated Shohei Ohtani to sixth in the batting order and put Will Smith behind him. Naturally, the game found them.
In a short-lived comeback story, they succeeded.
Ohtani managed a five-pitch walk without gaining momentum. With the bases loaded, it was up to Smith, who had gone 1 for 25 in the postseason up to that point.
He ambushed a first-pitch sinker and drove it into the left-field gap for a two-run double and the lead.
“It’s really hard to put it into words because it feels like we’ve finally broken through,” said veteran utility player Miguel Rojas. “Is the big success, you feel really good for him, because we all know he struggled at the plate, he took advantage of the opportunities and now he’s able to come out of it.”
The gathering stopped there. Roberts burned rookie Josue De Paula as a pinch hitter, trading him for Kiké Hernández when the Brewers brought in left-hander DL Hall. Hernández and Tommy Edman struck out to end the inning.
“That was the game right there,” Hernández said. “We have to put the ball in play; I didn’t. I struck out and gave Tommy a much tougher job with two outs. I just have to be better tomorrow.”
Snell returned to the mound with a lead for the first time. He gave Andrew Vaughn a first goal. And then Bauers locked him in an 11-pitch battle — the second time in as many games that Bauers worked a Dodgers starter for double-digit pitches — that ended with a fastball to the middle of the plate.
“What a fight at bat,” Snell said. “I threw everything I had. Fastball up the middle – if I can locate that better, who knows what would happen. That’s the best I’ve ever seen him play.”
Snell hadn’t given up a home run all season – not in his nine regular-season starts and not in his Division Series start. On Wednesday, three defined his defeat.
“Having three in a game is pretty frustrating,” Snell said. “It’s something I have to learn from. It’s also part of their journey. It will only make me better.”
The next inning, the Brewers added an insurance run with back-to-back singles against right-hander Roki Sasaki and a wild pitch from left-hander Justin Wrobleski. They added another in the ninth with a pair of singles and a stolen base from Wrobleski.
As the red taillights flashed outside the stadium, a sign that fans were already heading for the exits, the Dodgers came down to end the game.
“It’s uncharted territory for us, especially in the last couple of years,” Rojas said. “It’s a little difficult to understand, especially with the talent we have in this group and the way we know we’re capable of playing, especially on the offensive side of the ball.
“That being said, I feel like we don’t have to do or say anything. It’s just more, come here tomorrow, we have another opportunity to win a baseball game and believe in a potential four-game streak.”
Gn sports
