Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I’m excited for some high-stakes afternoon baseball today after the weather in Cleveland forced MLB to move ALCS Game 3 to 1 p.m. ET.
In today’s SI:AM:
🍻 Brewers take Game 3
👮♂️ Amar’e Stoudemire’s new job
✅ Week 6 NFL picks
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Brewers push Dodgers to the brink
That’s not the sort of three-peat the Dodgers wanted.
Their pursuit of a third straight championship is in peril after they dropped their third straight NLCS game against the Brewers last night in Los Angeles.
And for the second straight game, Milwaukee first baseman Jake Bauers played a key role.
In the third inning of Game 2, Bauers outlasted Yoshinobu Yamamoto in a 12-pitch plate appearance and worked a two-out walk that loaded the bases, setting the stage for Christian Yelich’s go-ahead two-run single. Last night, he had another marathon at-bat—this time providing the game-changing hit himself. He crushed a no-doubt home run off of Blake Snell on the 11th pitch he saw in the top of the seventh, turning a 2–1 deficit into a 3–2 Milwaukee lead. Garrett Mitchell added to the lead with a solo shot of his own two pitches later.
— MLB (@MLB) October 15, 2026
Bauers’s story has been well-documented during these playoffs. He had bounced around the league early in his career, shuffling between the majors and Triple A while struggling to find success at the plate. He batted .199 with a .662 OPS in his first season in Milwaukee in 2024, after which he was released by the Brewers. He strongly considered retiring, but ultimately decided to keep playing, in part because his wife was expecting their second child and he needed health insurance. He signed a minor league deal with the Brewers and then had his first above-average season at the plate in ’25. This year was even better. He was an everyday player for the first time in his career and posted the best OPS on the team (.874).
Every step of that long journey has led to this. Bauers is the best hitter on a team that won 103 games in the regular season, and after a slow 4-for-15 start to the postseason, he’s come up clutch when his team needed him in the past two games. He became just the second player since MLB began tracking pitch-by-pitch data in 1988 to have plate appearances of at least 11 pitches in consecutive playoff games, according to MLB.com. And last night’s homer was just the sixth time on record that a player has gone deep in the postseason after seeing at least 11 pitches.
Thanks to Bauers, Mitchell and Jackson Chourio (who hit a homer on the first pitch of the game), the Brewers now hold a commanding 3–0 series lead. Much has been made about the Dodgers’ high payroll and how their dominance in the free-agent market made another championship seem inevitable. But last night a journeyman making $2.7 million this year got the better of a pitcher whose salary is literally 10 times higher.
The best of Sports Illustrated
The top five…
… things I saw last night:
5. An own goal in the USL that went off a player’s butt.
4. Missouri State’s walk-off field goal against Kennesaw State. It was the first win over an FBS program for first-time head coach Casey Woods.
3. Alex Tuch’s no-look goal.
2. An excellent diving catch by Brewers center fielder Garrett Mitchell.
1. An even better catch by Milwaukee left fielder Luis Lara.
📺 What we’re watching today …
NFL
Seahawks at Broncos, 8:15 p.m. ET, Prime Video
Since the beginning of the 2024 season, the Seahawks have the highest road winning percentage (84.2%) in the NFL, while the Broncos have the second-highest home winning percentage (also 84.2%) during that span.
MLB
Rays at Guardians, 1 p.m. ET, TBS
The teams split the first two games of the series in Tampa. Today’s game was moved up from 6 p.m. because rain is expected in Cleveland.
Brewers at Dodgers, 8 p.m. ET, FS1
Milwaukee can clinch its first trip to the World Series since 1982.
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