Big, Bad Dodgers Pushed to the Brink by a Journeyman and a Rookie

Heading into this season, the Dodgers were runaway favorites to win the World Series after further improving their roster with a pair of marquee free agent acquisitions in Kyle Tucker and Edwin Díaz. After winning back-to-back championships, many baseball fans were quick to declare Los Angeles as presumptive world champions for the third consecutive year before the season even began.

Fast forward to mid October, and after losing to the Brewers 6–2 on Wednesday night, the Dodgers find themselves with their backs against the wall facing a near insurmountable deficit in the NLCS, trailing the Brewers three games to zero. As you likely know, the only team in MLB history to ever win a postseason series from such a position is the 2004 Red Sox, who famously stunned the Yankees in four straight games en route to winning their first World Series since 1918.

Milwaukee has been outstanding in the series, and they’ve been the better team in just about every way. They’ve got the Dodgers on the ropes, with key contributions coming from across the entire roster. The story of NLCS, and Game 3 in particular, couldn’t be told without a tip of the cap to first baseman Jake Bauers and rookie left-handed pitcher Robert Gasser.

Bauers had been a journeyman for most of his career. He debuted in 2018 with the Rays and bounced around the league for the next few years, spending time with the Guardians, Mariners and Yankees before landing with the Brewers in ‘24. He nearly retired after his first season in Milwaukee. He’d never found any semblance of stability in MLB, moving from organization to organization and struggling at the plate. But after deciding he was ready to call it quits on baseball, his wife found out she was pregnant, which caused Bauers to reconsider his stance on walking away from the game. Instead of retiring, Bauers decided to continue his career, because, in his own words, “We needed health insurance.”

He returned to the Brewers in 2025, serving mostly as a role player. But this year, he broke out in a big way. Bauers transformed his approach at the plate and became one of the team’s most important offensive weapons. He was an on-base machine during the regular season, recording 94 walks and a .393 on-base percentage (third-highest in MLB). He also hit a career-high 26 home runs after never previously hitting more than 12 in a single season.

Bauers has arguably been the most impactful hitter in the postseason for Milwaukee. In Game 2 of the NLCS, Bauers changed the game with a 12-pitch walk against Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who was chased from the game later that inning. His patience at the plate has become his calling card, and that was on display again in Game 3.

He worked an 11-pitch at-bat against Blake Snell in the seventh inning that culminated in a go-ahead two-run homer, wearing out the Dodgers starter in the process. The next batter, Garrett Mitchell, followed suit with a solo shot of his own. It was the first time in Snell’s career he’d ever surrendered back-to-back home runs against left-handed hitters, and only the second time he’d ever allowed two home runs to lefties in a single game. The Dodgers didn’t recover from that three-run swing, only mustering a single from Shohei Ohtani over the final three innings.

For a player who entered the 2026 season with a career bWAR of -1.3, it’s safe to say there weren’t many fans out there who expected Bauers to be the one to put the mighty Dodgers on the precipice of elimination.

Of course, the Brewers’ lineup, which hit three home runs off Snell, got some help from Gasser on the mound. In just the second postseason start of his career, Gasser held the Dodgers’ lineup at bay. He threw five scoreless innings—becoming the first rookie in MLB history to record a spotless postseason start against the defending champions—and struck out three batters while surrendering just three hits and one walk. Milwaukee reliever Abner Uribe briefly surrendered the lead after Gasser exited, but the work the rookie southpaw did across five innings was superb.

This is a guy who was mostly an afterthought in what was a crowded Brewers rotation at the start of the season. It wasn’t until September that Gasser really found his form on the mound. In his first 15 starts of the campaign, the southpaw had a 4.79 ERA and had surrendered 13 home runs. He earned his spot in the postseason rotation over his final six starts, a span in which he threw 32 1/3 innings with a 1.67 ERA, 31 strikeouts and just two home runs allowed. He’s carried that performance over into the postseason, where he’s pitched nine innings with just one earned run.

Up against a team with award winners across the entire starting rotation and much of the lineup, the Brewers have been getting critical contributions from Bauers, a journeyman first baseman who finally had a breakout season after seven years in the league, and Gasser, a 27-year-old rookie who was acquired by Milwaukee in the highly scrutinized Josh Hader trade back in 2022.

This time last year, the scenario was reversed. Los Angeles swept the Brew Crew in the NLCS before claiming its ninth World Series title. Now it’s the Brewers who are in control and have the Dodgers on the brink of elimination. Milwaukee is just one win away from returning to the World Series for the first time since 1982, and are nearly in position to win the first championship in franchise history because of some major contributions from what were previously minor characters on the baseball landscape.