A year ago, the Los Angeles Dodgers swept the Milwaukee Brewers out of the National League Championship Series. Now the Brewers are one win away from returning the favor. Milwaukee beat the Dodgers 6-2 in Game 3 on Wednesday at Dodger Stadium to take a 3-0 series lead.
The MLB on FOX postgame crew could hardly believe what it was watching. "It’s hard to watch," Alex Rodriguez said. "It reminds me of the first time I saw Mike Tyson get knocked out.
You can’t believe what you’re seeing. We were in awe in the green room watching, our mouths open." Rodriguez turned to David Ortiz: "Papi, the Brewers, they simply melt your soul away, and they did that again tonight." The latest blow came from Brewers left-hander Robert Gasser, who who held the Dodgers scoreless for five innings. He allowed three hits and a walk and struck out three before DL Hall threw 2 1/3 scoreless innings for the win, and Trevor Megill got the final four outs for his fourth save of the postseason.
"Robert Gasser looked like he didn’t drop a sweat while he was out there facing these Dodgers," Ortiz said. "He was locating his pitches in an incredible type of way, and he just kept coming at them, kept keeping that offense down. He did an incredible job." For Ortiz, Game 3 encapsulated what Milwaukee has done all season.
"This is the result of what they did all year long," Ortiz said. "They know how to shut down an offense." Ortiz also singled out Jake Bauers, who has made a habit of wearing down the Dodgers’ best arms. In Game 2, Bauers worked a 12-pitch, bases-loaded walk against Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Then in the seventh inning on Wednesday, with Milwaukee trailing 2-1, he fouled off pitch after pitch from Blake Snell before hitting the 11th one for a go-ahead, two-run homer. "You don’t get to watch many games of the Brewers on TV, but once you are following their steps during this playoff, you get to know how good they are," Ortiz said. "They are deep in every category of the game: pitching, defense, speed.
They battle in the at-bat. "Those two at-bats against Yamamoto, and tonight against Snell, those are the most impressive two at-bats that I have seen probably in my whole life." Derek Jeter agreed, saying the most impressive part is who the Brewers are doing it against. "They’ve been doing it all year," Jeter said.
"I think the impressive thing is, as was mentioned, they’re doing it against the Dodgers, who swept them last year. It tells a lot about the mentality they have, the resilience they have to come back and face the two-time defending world champion, disregard what happened just 12 months ago, and now you’re up 3-0." Still, Jeter cautioned that the series isn’t over. Nobody knows that better than this crew.
In the 2004 American League Championship Series, Ortiz’s Boston Red Sox became the only team in MLB history to come back from a 3-0 series deficit. They did it against Jeter and Rodriguez’s New York Yankees. The Dodgers will try to start their own comeback in Game 4 on Thursday at Dodger Stadium.
