The Los Angeles Dodgers are one loss away from being eliminated by the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series.
The Dodgers lost to the Brewers, 6-2, in Game 3, and now face elimination and a sudden postseason exit on Thursday.
Though LA had hope for just a moment after Will Smith hit a two-run double in the sixth inning — snapping amajor slump at the plate and giving LA their first lead of the night — not many noticed the first of two grave mistakes that manager Dave Roberts made that contributed to LA’s eventual downfall.
Roberts took out Andy Pages (5-for-his-last-22) in favor of Max Muncy with two on and nobody out against right-handed reliever Abner Uribe, who had walked the first two batters of the inning and was clearly struggling to find the strike zone. Muncy striking out isn’t the fault of Roberts, but defensively, the Dodgers were now down their center fielder for the rest of the game.
After Shohei Ohtani was walked and Smith got his double, it was clear that Uribe would make an imminent exit from the game.
This is where Roberts looked to unleash 21-year-old rookie Josue De Paula and put him into the game in favor of Miguel Rojas. After Roberts made the aggressive call to put De Paula into the game before confirming who would be pitching to him, the Brewers put in southpaw DL Hall, a matchup that wouldn’t favor the left-handed hitting rookie.
The response was making yet another switch, putting Kiké Hernandez in for De Paula and ending the rookie’s night before it got started. By now burning De Paula — and having Muncy pinch-hit for Pages — the Dodgers had just one player left on the bench for the rest of the game: catcher Hunter Feduccia.
After Hernandez struck out, Tommy Edman was forced to stay in the game amid his struggles. He struck out, and the Dodgers mustered just two runs in an inning where they could have had much more.
That would be their only chance for the rest of the game, and the Dodgers’ lineup construction was much easier for the Brewers to now navigate the rest of the game.
The questionable decisions didn’t stop there as Blake Snell trotted out for the seventh inning. Despite giving up a home run on his first pitch of the night, Snell was dealing on Wednesday, striking out nine and allowing just one hit and one walk from his second pitch of the game until the start of what wound up being his final inning of the night.
After quite a wait for Snell in between the sixth and seventh innings, he surrendered a seven-pitch walk to start the seventh. Already at 88 pitches — and clearly laboring from the leadoff walk — he remained on the bump for another batter: the left-handed Jake Bauers.
Bauers, who battled through a 12-pitch at-bat against Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 2 that culminated in a walk, had an 11-pitch battle with Snell that ended in a two-run home run.
Quickly, the Dodgers’ lead was turned back into a deficit.
You can’t fully fault Roberts for leaving Snell in to face the lefty Bauers. What you can fault him for is then keeping Snell in to face the left-handed hitting Garrett Mitchell.
Mitchell took a first-pitch ball before uncorking a solo home run. That ended Snell’s night, and put the Dodgers into a 4-2 hole.
After Uribe’s blow-up inning, it felt like the Dodgers had taken control of this series for the first time. Instead, Roberts’ over-aggressive use of his bench — and lack of aggressiveness with his bullpen — put Milwaukee right back into control of the game.
The Brewers now have a 3-0 lead in the NLCS. They can sweep the Dodgers on Thursday.
The Dodgers will need to win four straight games against baseball’s best team to keep their three-peat hopes alive.
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