Brewers NLCS Lead Hits 3-0 as Dodgers Face Elimination

The Brewers NLCS lead is now three games to none, and the Milwaukee crew has the defending champions staring at an exit door. On Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium, Milwaukee flipped a tight game three with one monster inning and walked away with a six-to-two win, leaving Los Angeles one loss from elimination.

If you only caught the highlights, here is the short version: a leadoff bomb, a pitcher's duel that looked like it belonged to the home team, and then a seventh inning that changed the whole series. It is the kind of baseball that makes October feel like a different sport.

A first-pitch homer sets the tone

Game three started about as loudly as possible. Jackson Chourio jumped on the very first pitch Blake Snell threw and sent it into the seats in right-center, according to MLB.com. The Dodgers were trailing before they even came to bat.

Then Snell settled in and looked untouchable. He struck out the next three hitters to end the first, and over one stretch he retired eighteen of twenty batters while piling up nine strikeouts. For most of the night, the left-hander looked like the guy who was going to drag his team back into the series.

The Dodgers finally got to the Milwaukee pitching in the sixth. Will Smith, who had been stuck in a slump, ripped a two-run double with the bases loaded to put Los Angeles ahead two to one. Dodger Stadium got loud, and for a minute it felt like the series was about to change direction.

The seventh inning flips everything

It did not last. Snell opened the seventh by walking Andrew Vaughn on seven pitches, and Jake Bauers stepped in with the lead on the line. Bauers had already worked a twelve-pitch walk against Yoshinobu Yamamoto in game two, and he did it again, grinding through an eleven-pitch at-bat before launching a two-run homer.

Garrett Mitchell followed with a second home run, back to back, and Snell was done. Snell had not allowed a single home run in his previous ten starts this year, according to MLB.com, so giving up three in one night stung. Milwaukee added more runs in the eighth and ninth to lock up the six-to-two final.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts took some heat for leaving his starter in to face the heart of the order after the sixth. "I was trying to get him three more hitters," Roberts said. "I felt good with where Blake's stuff was at." It is a decision that will get replayed on every sports talk show until game four.

Why a three-nothing hole is brutal

Here is the number that should make Dodgers fans nervous. In best-of-seven postseason series, teams with a three-nothing lead have gone on to win the series forty-one out of forty-two times, and thirty-two of those ended as sweeps, according to MLB.com. Only the 2004 Red Sox ever climbed all the way back.

The funny part is that Roberts was on that Boston team. "It's certainly possible," he said. "I've lived it." He joked about the documentary too, saying his players have seen it and know it can happen. That is a pretty great locker room motivational tool, even if the odds are ugly.

The Dodgers' bats have not helped. As a team, they are three for thirty-two with runners in scoring position this postseason, per MLB.com. Max Muncy summed up the vibe by saying the opponent is playing great and there is no need to overcomplicate it, and Miguel Rojas said the club has lost all the room for error it had early in the series.

Payback for last year's sweep

There is real revenge energy here. According to FOX Sports, the Dodgers swept these same Brewers in last year's NLCS, outscoring them fifteen to four across four games, with Shohei Ohtani striking out ten and hitting three homers in one memorable game.

Now the tables have turned. Milwaukee and Los Angeles were the only two teams to win one hundred games this season, and the Brewers took game one by two to one and game two by seven to four before this game three win. Both clubs also needed just four games to win their division series, with Milwaukee beating San Diego and Los Angeles beating Atlanta.

Milwaukee has not been to the World Series since 1982, when it lost in seven games to the Cardinals, and the franchise has never won a championship. Brewers manager Pat Murphy credited his hitters' resilience, saying the team has responded every time Los Angeles gained ground. That is the whole series in one sentence.

What happens in game four

The Dodgers are not dead yet, and they have a few things going for them. Tyler Glasnow gets the ball for game four on Thursday night at eight Eastern, and Los Angeles has not lost any of the previous seven postseason games he has started. He also owns a three-point-six-zero ERA in three elimination games.

The bullpen should be mostly rested, too, and Roberts will not need Tarik Skubal or Yamamoto because both are being saved for games five and six if the club survives. Snell, for his part, kept it simple afterward: the key is finding a way to come together and win.

For Milwaukee, the math is easy, because the Brewers NLCS lead is one win from becoming a pennant. One more win sends the Brewers to their first World Series in over forty years. For the Dodgers, it is win four straight or go home. Keep your eyes on our sports coverage for the result, because this series is not boring anymore.