Down in the NLCS, deflated Dodgers are nearing the brink
By KEN ROSENTHAL / THE ATHLETIC
It’s not over. But if you were to picture the end of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ championship run, this is how it would look, no?
A physically compromised Shohei Ohtani bearing no resemblance to his usual most valuable player self. An offensively challenged lineup managing only one extra-base hit in two games. Aces Tarik Skubal and Yoshinobu Yamamoto lasting a combined 7 2/3 innings in their two starts.
The Milwaukee Brewers, who led the National League Championship Series two games to none going into Wednesday’s Game 3, have looked hungrier, more athletic and superior in the bullpen. Including the playoffs, they were at 108 wins going into Wednesday.
After a 7-4 loss on Monday put Los Angeles in a two-game hole, it was difficult to imagine the Dodgers taking four of the next five games, even with Wednesday’s game and the following two at home. But considering how many escapes they pulled off while becoming two-time World Series champions, it is also difficult to imagine them just fading away.
“We know what we can do. We know the team that we have,” left fielder Teoscar Hernández said. “There is still a lot of series to go. We know right now they’re playing really good baseball. They’re going to be tough to beat. But it’s not impossible.”
No, it’s not, but so much for the Dodgers needs to change.
Crazy as it sounds, the Dodgers need to sit Ohtani, whose at-bats could not be any worse, for a rookie, Josue De Paula. The idea is at least under consideration. Ohtani is 3 for 20 with no extra-base hits and three walks in the postseason. Manager Dave Roberts said he would speak with Ohtani on Tuesday and “try to figure out what’s best for him, what’s best for us.”
The answer should be obvious. Allowing Ohtani to continue like this would be unfair to him and the team. Whether it is his left knee or right biceps, some combination of both, something else entirely, he clearly is not right. Batting him cleanup, as Roberts did the first two games of this best-of-seven series, disrupts the flow of the lineup, not that the flow would necessarily improve much without him.
Through Monday the Dodgers had scored 19 runs in six postseason games. They were batting .193 with a .263 on-base percentage, and were 2 for 26 with runners in scoring position. Roberts moved up Hernández to the third spot Monday and dropped Will Smith to fifth. Smith went 0 for 4, falling to 1 for 23 for the postseason.
Two of the Dodgers’ runs Monday scored on errors. Two scored on sacrifice flies. Roberts, in his postgame news conference, noted correctly that the Brewers saw far more pitches than the Dodgers, 172 to 125. Milwaukee’s total included a 12-pitch walk by Jake Bauers that led to a two-run single by Christian Yelich and Yamamoto’s removal after 2 2/3 innings.
The Brewers have not exactly been flawless, striking out 23 times in two games and getting sloppy defensively in Game 2. But they have still been the better team.
“They had much better at-bats than we did across the board, top to bottom, and they put the ball in play, created havoc,” Roberts said. “That’s what they do, and we didn’t do that.”
The Brewers in the postseason through Monday had allowed only two homers in 53 innings. Their bullpen in this series had allowed two hits in 9 2/3 innings. On Monday, Milwaukee relievers threw five perfect innings, the most by a team’s bullpen in a postseason game, according to MLB.com.
But, hey, at least there’s the Dodgers’ pitching staff, the collection of arms that Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president for baseball operations, described as the best of his 12-year tenure, right?
Well, yes. But it isn’t quite working out that way, not with the Brewers chasing Skubal after five innings in Game 1, then shattering Yamamoto’s air of postseason invincibility in Game 2.
The Dodgers, in theory, should have held the starting pitching advantage in Game 3 on Wednesday in Los Angeles, with Blake Snell facing Robert Gasser. Tyler Glasnow would seem to hold a similar edge in Game 4 tonight, most likely matching up against a parade of relievers. Which would be all well and good, except neither Snell nor Glasnow is proficient at holding runners, and the Brewers ranked fifth in stolen bases during the regular season.
The last time the Dodgers rallied from two games behind in a postseason series was in the 2020 NLCS, when they overcame 2-0 and 3-1 deficits to beat Atlanta. But they faced elimination on the road against the San Diego Padres in a 2024 division series before winning a bullpen game and then the clincher at home. And lest anyone forget, they were down, three games to two, going back to Toronto in last year’s World Series, then were two outs from defeat in Game 7 before prevailing in 11 innings.
It would be foolish to count out the Dodgers in this series. Time and again, they have demonstrated their resilience and savvy. The problem is trying to figure out just how they will rally against the Brewers.
Maybe Snell and Glasnow come through. Maybe the offense will summon the same kind of spunk against the Brewers’ bullpen that it did against Chris Sale in Game 3 of the division series and, to a lesser extent, Jacob Misiorowski in Game 1 of this series.
So much can happen, and probably will.
It’s not over. It’s just easy to see how it could be, very soon.
