Dodgers left-hander Blake Snell stood on the mound with his hand on his left hip, waiting for Jake Bauers to cross the plate before punching in his pitch call for the next batter.
He’d just given up the lead, on Bauers’ two-run homer, in what had been a stellar start Wednesday 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’ eventual 6-2 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series, after the visitors regained the lead via the long ball in the seventh inning, 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.
Read more:Dodgers fall to Brewers in Game 3, move one loss away from elimination
For five innings, the only run on the board was the one the Brewers scored on the first pitch of the game.
Blake 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 field.
For the rest of Snell’s start, however, that aggressive approach worked. He dotted the upper rail with his fastball, threw his curveball for both swing-and-miss 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 Braves, Snell’s 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’s only done 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 leadoff home run, Snell retired 18 of the next 20 batters he faced, including 14 in a row, to get through six innings. His nine strikeouts were one shy of a postseason career high of 10, 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 threw in the first two games, it seemed as if the Dodgers would have to score most of their runs against the Brewers starters if they were going 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-handed starter Robert Gasser.
Luckily for them, pitching every game of the postseason seemed to have finally caught up to hard-throwing right-handed reliever Abner Uribe in his seventh appearance.
Uribe took over for Gasser in the bottom of the sixth inning, and he walked the first two batters he faced.
Then Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had left-handed hitting Max Muncy pinch hit for center fielder 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 moved designated hitter Shohei Ohtani down to sixth in the batting order, and put catcher 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 1-for-25 in the postseason to that point.
He ambushed a first-pitch sinker and drove it into the left-field gap for a go-ahead double.
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-handed reliever DL Hall. Hernández and Tommy Edman struck out in order to end the inning.
Read more:Shaikin: Dodgers should have taken Shohei Ohtani off the postseason roster
Then, three Brewers batters into the seventh, the Dodgers were down 4-2.
Snell hadn’t allowed a home run all year — not in his nine regular-season starts, or in his NLDS appearance. Three on Wednesday defined his start.
The next inning, the Brewers added an insurance run with back-to-back singles against right-handed reliever 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 tail lights flickering outside of the stadium, a sign of Dodgers fans already heading for the exits, Dodgers hitters went down in order in the final half inning.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.