DODGER STADIUM (LOS ANGELES) – Twenty-four minutes after the Milwaukee Brewers’ latest onslaught pushed the defending back-to-back champions to the brink, Kiké Hernández remained in full uniform on Wednesday night. A fixture of this golden era of Los Angeles Dodgers baseball, Hernández sat in front of his locker with his face in his hands, staring silently ahead, still grappling with his superteam’s unforeseen reality.
In an adjacent corner of the home clubhouse sat ace deadline addition Tarik Skubal, an example of the excess talent expected to keep this dynasty alive. The Dodgers are experienced and expensive. They are star-studded and steadfast, featuring an assortment of All-Stars and a fusion of fresh faces and long-time franchise luminaries.
But they are neither invincible nor inevitable, certainly not in the way they seemed to be just a few days ago.
“We didn’t expect to be in this position,” Hernández said after Wednesday night’s 6-2 loss put the Dodgers in a 3-0 hole in the National League Championship Series. “This one sucks.”
A year after the Dodgers swept the Brewers in the NLCS, Milwaukee is one win away from returning the favor. The Brewers have not simply small-balled their way to three straight wins to begin the series; they have taken it to the Dodgers in every facet.
Milwaukee is hitting .281 with five home runs and 15 runs scored over three games. Los Angeles, meanwhile, are batting .165 with no home runs and just seven runs.
Rather than get into the minutiae of how the Brewers’ pitching staff — in particular an overpowering bullpen that is 3-0 with a 1.32 ERA in the NLCS — is neutralizing the Dodgers’ sluggers, third baseman Max Muncy decided not to overcomplicate the reasoning.
“It’s a pretty simple answer,” Muncy said in a postgame press conference. “We’re playing like s—. They’re playing great. It’s as simple as that.”
The Brewers beat Skubal, the reigning American League Cy Young Award winner, in Game 1. They then blitzed Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the reigning World Series MVP, in Game 2.
And in Game 3, as the series shifted to Los Angeles, where the Dodgers were 51-30 this season, the Brewers launched three home runs against two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, who had not allowed a single homer all season, to put the defending champions’ dreams of a three-peat on life support.
“At the beginning of the year, we set out to do something historic,” Muncy said. “It looks like we’re going to have to make a little more history along the way if we want to accomplish that.”
No team has won three straight World Series championships since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees. No National League team has ever accomplished the feat.
If the Dodgers are going to be the first, they need to dig out of a hole only one MLB team has ever survived in a best-of-seven series.
That team, the 2004 Boston Red Sox, stormed back against the Yankees in the ALCS en route to winning the World Series. They were sparked by Dave Roberts’ iconic steal in Game 4. The Dodgers’ manager hasn’t been tempted to pull out that game tape for his team.
“I don’t know if some of those guys even know I played,” Roberts quipped before Game 3. “No, absolutely not. When times get tough, I just kind of go the other way and get more lax and have fun with the guys.”
That will be more of a challenge after Wednesday night’s demoralizing defeat.
In the sixth inning of Game 3, after five scoreless innings from Brewers starter Robert Gasser, the Dodgers finally made a dent in Milwaukee’s pristine bullpen. Three walks loaded the bases against reliever Abner Uribe to bring up Dodgers catcher Will Smith, who broke out of a 1-for-25 October funk with a go-ahead double.
The euphoria for the 50,708 fans in attendance at Dodger Stadium was short-lived.
The Dodgers, who are 3-for-32 with runners in scoring position, failed to tack on any insurance runs after Smith’s extra-base hit.
“To be able to win championships, you’ve got to win moments,” said Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas. “And we haven’t been able to do that in this series.”
Two batters prior to Smith’s hit, Roberts pinch-hit Andy Pages — who had the team’s only two hits with runners in scoring position this October entering Game 3 — for Muncy, who struck out.
The move signified the urgency Roberts felt with his offense struggling to deliver and Uribe on the ropes.
After Smith’s double, Roberts could have left Rojas in to face Uribe with two runners in scoring position and one out. Instead, he turned to lefty Josue De Paula for another platoon advantage. Brewers manager Pat Murphy countered with southpaw DL Hall. Roberts then made another switch, bringing Hernández off the bench. Again, the result was a strikeout. Tommy Edman then went down looking to end the threat.
The Dodgers’ nearly emptied the bench, going all in for that inning.
“That was the game right there,” said Hernández, who has so often been the team’s hero during their October runs. “I have had two of the biggest at-bats in the series for our team, and I haven’t been able to come through.”
Their lead lasted minutes.
“It’s really hard to put into words,” Rojas said of the emotional swing.
Snell had retired 14 straight batters when he returned for the seventh inning. He walked leadoff hitter Andrew Vaughn, surrendered a go-ahead, two-run blast to Jake Bauers on the 11th pitch of another marathon at-bat from the Brewers slugger. Snell then hung his 101st pitch of the night in the zone to the next batter, Garrett Mitchell, who sent the pitch 428 feet to right field to make it back-to-back home runs.
Snell flipped his hands in the air after the Mitchell bomb, either in frustration or disbelief. It’s a reaction all too common for every opponent standing in Milwaukee’s way.
Wednesday’s win marked the Brewers’ fifth comeback victory this postseason, tying the 1996 Yankees and 1980 Philadelphia Phillies for the most within a club’s first seven games in playoff history.
It also put the Dodgers in unfamiliar territory.
They triumphed in two elimination games in the 2024 NL Division Series against the San Diego Padres en route to winning the World Series. They did so again in last year’s Fall Classic against the Toronto Blue Jays.
But they’ve never faced a challenge like this.
It’s the first time since the 2023 NLDS that the Dodgers have lost each of the first three games of a series. Unlike that best-of-five series against the Arizona Diamondbacks, this deficit has not yet ended their season.
With the Red Sox trailing, Dave Roberts stole second base in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS with Boston also down 3-0 in the series; the Red Sox went on to win the game and the series. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)
Other than Roberts’ 2024 Red Sox squad, the other 41 teams that have fallen behind 3-0 in a best-of-seven series have ultimately relented. Of those teams, 32 were swept.
The Dodgers will try to avoid being the 33rd.
“When you have a chance to play another baseball game, you have a chance to save your season,” Rojas told me. “I know it’s really hard to bounce back from this one, but we have a bunch of guys here in this clubhouse that are not going to go down quiet.”
A half-hour after Wednesday’s game ended, Rojas walked across the Dodgers’ clubhouse and gave Hernández a hug.
In less than 24 hours, their ride together could be over.
“We’ve never been in this big of a hole, but we’ve had our backs against the wall plenty of times before, and we’ve come out of it,” Hernández said. “We’re just trying to do it one more time.”