Bauers Wins an 11-Pitch Duel, Mitchell Follows Back-to-Back: Brewers Take Game 3, 6-2, for a 3-0 NLCS Lead

Milwaukee's three-run seventh flipped Game 3 in about ten minutes — and pushed the two-time defending champions to the edge of elimination

LOS ANGELES

The Milwaukee Brewers are one win from the World Series. Milwaukee beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-2 on Wednesday night in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series at Dodger Stadium, taking a 3-0 series lead and pushing the two-time defending champions to the brink of elimination. The turnaround took about ten minutes in the seventh inning of the NLCS: Jake Bauers capped an 11-pitch duel with a two-run homer, Garrett Mitchell follows with a back-to-back solo shot, and a stadium that had been roaring a half-inning earlier went quiet.

The stakes of that swing are hard to overstate. Milwaukee's only World Series appearance came in 1982, when the franchise played in the American League. The Brewers have never won a National League pennant. One more win in this series — as soon as Thursday night in Game 4 — changes that, and it would finish a sweep that almost nobody outside Wisconsin saw coming against a Dodgers club trying to win its third straight title. Our Game 4 preview breaks down what Los Angeles has to do to keep its season alive.

Chourio strikes on the first pitch, then Snell locks in

The game could hardly have started louder. Jackson Chourio drove the first pitch of the night from Blake Snell over the wall for a leadoff home run and a 1-0 Milwaukee lead. It was the kind of opening statement that usually rattles a starter. Instead, Snell settled into one of his best stretches of the postseason. After the home run, the left-hander threw six scoreless innings, struck out nine Brewers, and at one point retired 14 consecutive hitters. Per Yardbarker's daily recap, Snell generated swings and misses at a 42 percent whiff rate, overwhelming Milwaukee's lineup with a mix that kept hitters guessing well into the middle innings.

Milwaukee had its own answer on the mound. Starter Robert Gasser matched Snell zero for zero, throwing five scoreless frames and keeping the Dodgers' lineup off balance. Los Angeles put runners on but could not break through, and the game moved into the sixth inning still 1-0, with both bullpens starting to stir and the margin for error shrinking by the pitch.

The sixth inning flips, briefly

The sixth is where the night nearly turned in Los Angeles's favor. Milwaukee turned to reliever Abner Uribe, and the Dodgers worked the inning patiently, loading the bases. Will Smith came through with the swing the home crowd had been waiting for all night, driving a two-run double off Uribe that put Los Angeles in front 2-1. For the first time in the series, the Dodgers had real momentum at home: a lead, a rested late-inning bullpen behind it, and a lineup that looked like it was waking up.

Milwaukee's response in the bullpen mattered. DL Hall came on and closed the door on the sixth before the inning could grow, and he kept pitching deep into the game. Hall recorded seven outs in relief and earned his third win of these playoffs — the kind of length from a middle reliever that postseason games so often hinge on. By the time the Brewers came to bat in the seventh, the deficit was still a single run, and Snell, for all his dominance, was deep into his outing.

An 11-pitch at-bat breaks the game open

The seventh inning is the one this series will be remembered by. Christian Yelich reached base to start the trouble, bringing Jake Bauers to the plate for the at-bat of the night. Bauers battled Snell through an 11-pitch at-bat, fouling off tough pitches and refusing to give in, before driving a two-run home run that put Milwaukee back in front 3-2. Most of the Brewers' dugout poured out to celebrate a swing that flipped the game, the series, and quite possibly the season.

Garrett Mitchell made sure there was no time for Los Angeles to regroup. The next hitter up, Mitchell launched a solo home run to right-center, back-to-back with Bauers, stretching the lead to 4-2 and ending Snell's night. Snell's final line told the strange story of his start: six-plus innings, nine strikeouts, long stretches of total control — and four runs allowed, three of them on home runs, including the first pitch of the game and the last pitch he threw.

Milwaukee was not finished padding the lead. The Brewers added insurance in the eighth when Brice Turang scored on a wild pitch, and Joey Ortiz drove in the final run with an RBI single in the ninth to make it 6-2. Trevor Megill handled the finish, recording a four-out save to close out the win. Los Angeles finished with five hits and has not homered yet in the series, a remarkable drought for a lineup of this caliber across three games.

How the series got here, and what Game 4 means

Milwaukee's grip on this series was built at home. The Brewers took Game 1 by a 2-1 score and Game 2 by 7-4, then flew to Los Angeles and did the hardest thing in October baseball: winning a close, late game in the other team's building with the crowd against them. Through three games, the pattern has been consistent — Milwaukee's pitching has kept the Dodgers' stars quiet, and Milwaukee's hitters have produced the series' biggest swings exactly when they were needed.

Game 4 is set for Thursday, October 15, at Dodger Stadium, airing on Fox and FS1, with schedule listings showing an evening start. The math is now brutally simple. Milwaukee needs one win in the next four games to reach the World Series. Los Angeles, the two-time defending champion, must win four straight or its season ends. Teams have come back from 3-0 before, but it remains one of the rarest feats in the sport, and the Dodgers will have to start that climb against a Brewers team that has won every close moment of this series so far.

While the National League picture sharpens, the American League race is just as tense — see our ALCS Game 3 preview for Thursday's other pennant battle. And for hockey fans, the Golden Knights open their homestand against the Flames on Thursday as well.