Dodgers collapse again, tumble into 3-0 NLCS hole against surging Brewers

Blake Snell stood on the mound with his hand on his hip, waiting for Jake Bauers to cross the plate before punching in his pitch call for the next batter.

The Dodgers left-hander had just given up the lead on Bauers’ two-run homer, spoiling what had been a stellar start Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium. But Snell was ready to move on.

Two pitches later, he watched another ball fly over the fence, this time off Garrett Mitchell’s bat.

The Dodgers’ 6-2 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series, after the visitors regained the lead with back-to-back home runs in the seventh inning, gave the Brewers a commanding 3-0 lead and set up an elimination game Thursday. After setting their sights on a history-making three-peat, the Dodgers will have to win the next four games just to advance to the World Series.

For five innings, the only run on the board was the one the Brewers scored on the first pitch of the game.

Snell zipped 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.

For much of Snell’s start, however, that aggressive approach worked. He dotted the upper rail with his fastball, threw his curveball for both swings and misses and called strikes, and mixed in his changeup to right-handed batters.

Unlike Snell’s last postseason start, when he issued five walks and lasted just 3-2/3 innings against the Atlanta Braves, his efficiency got him through six-plus innings Wednesday, with just two walks.

And while Snell’s fastball averaged 97 mph in his last start — something he’d done only twice before in his career, regular season or postseason, and not since 2022, according to Statcast — he threw even harder on Wednesday: 97.3 mph.

After Chourio’s home run, Snell retired 18 of the next 20 batters, including 14 in a row, to get through six innings. His nine strikeouts were one shy of a postseason career high, which he recorded against the Brewers last year in Game 1 of the NLCS.

Then in the seventh inning, he issued a leadoff walk to Andrew Vaughn and surrendered back-to-back homers, and suddenly the game had flipped.

With the way the Brewers’ bullpen pitched in the first two games, it seemed the Dodgers would have to score against the Brewers’ starters to have a chance to pull themselves out of the hole they’d dug.

They failed to do so in Game 3, logging just three hits off left-hander Robert Gasser.

Luckily for them, pitching every game of the postseason seemed to finally have caught up to hard-throwing right-handed Abner Uribe in his seventh appearance.

Uribe took over for Gasser in the sixth inning and walked the first two batters he faced.

Then Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had left-handed-hitting Max Muncy pinch-hit for Andy Pages. Muncy struck out, and the biggest moment of the game fell to two Dodgers who have had the worst postseason production on the team.

Roberts had moved Shohei Ohtani down to sixth in the batting order and put Will Smith behind him. Naturally, the game found them.

Ohtani drew a five-pitch walk without taking a swing. With the bases loaded, it was up to Smith, who had gone one for 25 in the postseason 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.

The rally halted there. Roberts burned rookie Josue De Paula as a pinch-hitter, swapping him out for Kiké Hernández when the Brewers brought in left-hander DL Hall. Hernández and Tommy Edman struck out to end the inning.

Then, three Brewers batters into the seventh, the Dodgers were down 4-2.

Snell hadn’t given up a home run all season — not in his nine regular-season starts or in his division series start. Three on Wednesday defined his defeat.

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 tacked on another in the ninth with a pair of singles and a stolen base off Wrobleski.

With the flash of red taillights flickering outside of the stadium, a sign of fans already heading for the exits, the Dodgers went down in order to end the game. A year after sweeping the Brewers, the Dodgers now had their backs to the wall, facing the same fate.