Jake Bauers and Garrett Mitchell hit consecutive home runs off Blake Snell in the seventh inning Wednesday night, and the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-2 to take a 3-0 lead in the National League Championship Series. The Brewers built the 3-0 cushion with that win, and they can clinch their first World Series berth in 44 years with a victory in Game 4 tonight.
The two-time defending champions now face the prospect of elimination. Game 4 is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET on FS1, FOX Deportes and FOX One.
Seventh-inning swing
The game turned in the seventh. Snell, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, had retired 14 batters in a row before the inning began. Andrew Vaughn opened with a walk. Bauers then battled Snell for 10 pitches before driving the 11th into the right-field bleachers for a go-ahead, two-run homer. Mitchell followed with a 438-foot home run.
“We play for each other,” Bauers said afterward, according to MLB.com.
Milwaukee added two more runs late. The Dodgers’ final score was 2 runs on 5 hits, against 9 hits for the Brewers.
A first-pitch homer
Milwaukee led from the start. Jackson Chourio drove Snell’s first pitch of the game out for a solo homer. Since 1988, when pitch-count data was first fully tracked, only five hitters had homered on the first pitch of a postseason game; Chourio became the sixth. The blast came on the one-year anniversary of a similar first-pitch homer Chourio hit against Yoshinobu Yamamoto in last year’s NLCS. Bauers described his reaction to that homer to ESPN: “I was still putting my batting gloves on to get ready.”
Snell settled down after the first inning, and the Dodgers’ only real offense came in the sixth. They scored twice, with Will Smith driving in both runs on a double, to take their only lead of the night. That lead lasted until Bauers connected an inning later.
Bullpen and pitching
Milwaukee’s relief corps again held the Dodgers in check. DL Hall took over from Abner Uribe with runners on second and third and struck out pinch-hitter Kike Hernandez and Tommy Edman to strand both. Hall allowed one hit over 2 1/3 scoreless innings and improved to 3-0 this postseason. Closer Trevor Megill then recorded four outs for his second save of the series and fourth of the playoffs.
Starter Robert Gasser worked five scoreless innings before handing off to the bullpen.
Series background
The Brewers-Dodgers series has run in Milwaukee’s favor from the start. The Brewers opened with a 7-4 win in Game 1 on Monday. ESPN described the series by Game 3 as tilting against the two-time defending champions, and said the loss left the Dodgers’ quest for a third straight title in peril.
The Dodgers now need four straight wins. Only one team in major league history, the 2004 Boston Red Sox, has recovered from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven postseason series.
What to watch in Game 4
- Whether the Dodgers can solve Milwaukee’s bullpen, which has repeatedly shut them down late
- Whether Snell’s struggles in the seventh inning carry over to the next Dodgers starter
- Whether the Brewers can finish a sweep and book their first World Series trip since 1982
- Whether the Dodgers’ lineup, which went hitless with runners in scoring position for most of Game 3, finds its timing
Back-to-back homers in the seventh inning turn Game 3 at Dodger Stadium; two-time defending champions face elimination tonight. This report will be updated with the result of Game 4.
