The Clubhouse DJ: Bauers, Mitchell Go Back-to-Back as Brewers Top Dodgers 6-2
By Nate Mercer ·
Jake Bauers saw 11 pitches from Blake Snell with the Brewers down a run in the seventh Wednesday at Dodger Stadium, fouled off five of them, then drove the last one 412 feet to right for a go-ahead, two-run homer. Garrett Mitchell followed with a 428-foot shot to right-center, and Milwaukee never gave the lead back in a 6-2 win that put the Brewers up 3-0 in the National League Championship Series.
One more win and Milwaukee is in the World Series for the first time since 1982. The Dodgers, chasing a third straight title, are one loss from elimination. Game 4 is Thursday night in Los Angeles.
Jackson Chourio set the tone before most of the 50,708 had found their seats. He swung at Snell's first pitch of the night, a fastball over the middle, and sent it to right-center for a 1-0 lead. Per MLB.com, it was only the sixth time since pitch tracking began in 1988 that a postseason game opened with a first-pitch home run.
Snell settled in after that. He retired 14 hitters in a row at one point, struck out nine, and carried a 1-0 deficit into the sixth. Robert Gasser matched him for five innings: three hits, one walk, three strikeouts, no runs, 72 pitches. The Dodgers put runners on in several innings and still could not score.
Then Abner Uribe came on for the sixth and walked Teoscar Hernández and Kyle Tucker. Max Muncy, pinch-hitting for Andy Pages, struck out. Shohei Ohtani walked to load the bases. Will Smith, who entered the night without a hit in the series, doubled off the wall in left-center, and Los Angeles led 2-1. The park finally sounded like October. DL Hall struck out Enrique Hernández and Tommy Edman to end the inning, and the lead lasted exactly as long as it took Milwaukee to bat again.
Andrew Vaughn walked on seven pitches to open the seventh, ending Snell's streak of 14 retired. Christian Yelich pinch-ran. Bauers stepped in and did the same thing he did to Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 2, when a 12-pitch walk flipped that night. He took a strike, took two balls, missed a changeup, then started fighting everything off. Slider. Changeup. Fastball. Changeup. Slider. On the 11th pitch Snell went back to the fastball, and Bauers did not miss it. Yelich scored. It was 3-2. Mitchell's homer made it 4-2 and ended Snell's night: six innings, four hits, four runs, two walks, nine strikeouts, three home runs, 101 pitches. Per FOX Sports, Snell had not allowed a home run in nine regular-season starts this year. He allowed three on Wednesday.
"I know the numbers aren't there," Brewers manager Pat Murphy said of Smith before the game, according to FOX Sports. "But if you do what I do, you watch the swing and you watch his approach, I think he's looked good." Smith's double was the swing that briefly made Dodger Stadium believe. Bauers and Mitchell were the answer.
Hall kept working. He retired the side in the seventh, got two outs in the eighth, and handed a runner to Trevor Megill. Milwaukee added one more in the eighth when Brice Turang singled, William Contreras singled him to third, and Justin Wrobleski's wild pitch scored Turang for a 5-2 lead. In the ninth, Cooper Pratt singled, stole second (Los Angeles challenged the tag; the call stood), and scored on Joey Ortiz's two-strike single to left. Megill finished it by striking out Betts on a foul tip. Hall got the win. Megill got the save, his fourth of the postseason.
Pratt finished 3-for-4. The Brewers had nine hits, no errors, and their fifth comeback win of this postseason, a total MLB.com noted is tied with the 1996 Yankees and 1980 Phillies for the most in a team's first seven playoff games. The Dodgers are still looking for their first home run of the series.
The first pitch was at 7:09 p.m. Central on a clear 79-degree night, and the game took 3 hours and 2 minutes. Milwaukee is 6-1 this October and one win from the World Series.
I've had Bauers' Game 2 at-bat on loop for two days. Eleven pitches and a go-ahead homer in Chavez Ravine is the sequel, and it might be the better track. Not that Dodger Stadium wanted to hear it.