Jake Bauers Has the Brewers One Win From a Pennant

Jake Bauers’ 11-pitch, two-run homer off Blake Snell turned a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 lead in the seventh, and the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-2 on Wednesday to take a 3-0 lead in the National League Championship Series. Milwaukee is one win from its first World Series since 1982.

The swing came from a 31-year-old first baseman the Brewers released after 2024, not from the names that usually decide October in Los Angeles. Jackson Chourio had already homered on the first pitch. Garrett Mitchell went back-to-back after Bauers. The inning still ran through the man whose job, as he said it, was to get on base.

Bauers Needed 11 Pitches to Flip a 2-1 Game

Snell, a two-time Cy Young winner, had retired 14 in a row after Chourio’s leadoff shot and had thrown 81 pitches heading into the seventh. Andrew Vaughn opened the inning with a seven-pitch walk. Christian Yelich, the Brewers’ captain, ran for him. Bauers stepped in telling himself the same thing he had told himself two nights earlier, when he drew a 12-pitch walk off Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 2.

“Really, the mindset was, ‘I’ve just got to get on base here,’” Bauers said. “That’s all I was trying to do.”

Over the first 10 pitches Snell mixed three sliders, three fastballs, three changeups and one curveball. Pitch 10 hooked a drive that bent inside the right-field foul pole. Bauers later said there was a moment when he thought, “Oh, you’re in it again.” Pitch 11 was a belt-high fastball in the middle of the plate. He hit it 109 mph and sent it 412 feet to the right-field seats.

He tossed the bat, yelled at the dugout, and trotted around with the lead. It was the sixth postseason home run on a 11th pitch or later since pitch counts were tracked in 1988. Sarah Langs, who tracks this for MLB, also logged him as the second player with 11-plus-pitch at-bats in consecutive games in the same playoffs, after Aramis Ramirez in Games 4 and 5 of the 2003 NLCS.

Every pitch from that UNREAL Jake Bauers at-bat 😤

11 pitches. One unforgettable moment. pic.twitter.com/QpDMUMMPFP

— MLB (@MLB) October 15, 2026

Mitchell, on deck and thinking about a bunt if Bauers reached, instead watched Snell throw another pitch over the heart of the plate and hit it 428 feet. The Brewers had their third set of back-to-back playoff homers, after Orlando Arcia and Keon Broxton in the 2018 NLDS and Bauers and Sal Frelick in the 2024 Wild Card round. They added a run in the eighth and another in the ninth on Joey Ortiz’s two-strike single, which scored Cooper Pratt.

GAME 3 AT DODGER STADIUM

Robert Gasser, a left-hander who began the year at Triple-A Nashville, threw five scoreless innings. Abner Uribe then walked Teoscar Hernández, Kyle Tucker and Shohei Ohtani and gave up a two-run double to Will Smith that put Los Angeles in front 2-1. DL Hall got the win with 2 1/3 scoreless innings. Trevor Megill finished a four-out save, his fourth of these playoffs.

Pat Murphy, the Brewers’ manager, called it an incredible at-bat, then said the same thing twice. Snell, who played with Bauers in the majors and minors with the Tampa Bay Rays, did not hide the view from the mound.

If I can locate that better, who knows what would happen. It’s the best I’ve ever seen him play. It’s a good at-bat. Hats off to him.

Blake Snell, Dodgers starter, after Game 3

The First Baseman Milwaukee Once Let Go

Bauers is from Newport Beach, drafted by the San Diego Padres in the seventh round in 2013 out of Marina High in Huntington Beach. He debuted with the Rays in 2018, then passed through Cleveland, Seattle and the Yankees. Milwaukee is his fifth major league club.

After a pinch-hit homer against the Mets in the 2024 playoffs, three days shy of his 29th birthday, he thought about quitting. He had hit.199 that season. The Brewers released him in November rather than take him to arbitration. His wife, Lauren, talked him into staying, and a second child was on the way. He signed a minor league deal to remain in the organization.

“It’s not easy to bounce around from team to team and still believe in yourself the way that you need to to succeed in this game,” he said this week.

He raised his on-base percentage to.353 in 85 games in 2025. In 2026 he played a career-high 144 games, led the club with 26 home runs, drove in 86, scored 93, and posted 94 walks and a.389 on-base percentage. The line was.266/.389/.484 with an.874 OPS, a 140 OPS+ and 3.3 WAR. He is signed through 2026 at $2.7 million and is due to be a free agent in 2027.

The walks ranked fifth in the National League. The on-base rate ranked second. Getting on base is still the skill. The homers arrived with it.

BAUERS, YEAR BY YEAR

Before Game 1 he said he was thinking about Lauren during the anthem, about two kids at home and the years when he was not the husband or father he wanted to be. She was in the seats Wednesday. The career batting average is still.223. The playoff version of him keeps fouling pitches until an ace misses.

Last October, They Never Led an Inning

A year ago the Dodgers swept Milwaukee in this round. The Brewers did not lead for a single inning of that series. Yamamoto answered Chourio’s first-pitch homer in Game 2 of the 2025 NLCS with a complete game. That blast fell on Oct. 14, 2025. Chourio did it again on Oct. 14, 2026, this time off Snell, a 391-foot drive on a 97 mph four-seamer, the sixth leadoff homer on the first pitch of a postseason game since 1988 and the third leadoff playoff homer of Chourio’s career.

Snell settled in the way Yamamoto had. He struck out nine. He looked like the pitcher who had not allowed a homer in 46 1/3 innings this season, playoffs included, until Milwaukee hit three in one night. Dave Roberts left him in to face Mitchell after Bauers, saying he wanted three more hitters and liked the stuff. The third homer ended the night at 101 pitches, 4 earned runs, and a loss.

Murphy has said he told the room after last year’s sweep to remember how it hurt. Brice Turang called that feeling a real thing. This is Milwaukee’s fifth comeback win of these playoffs, tied with the 1996 Yankees and 1980 Phillies for the most in a club’s first seven postseason games.

All three games we’ve played so far, and hopefully that continues, where just every time they score, we come back and score. That’s not easy to do in baseball.

Pat Murphy, Brewers manager, after Game 3

The regular-season Brewers hit 154 home runs, more than only the Blue Jays (152) in the majors, and had 10 three-homer games, the fewest of any club. They won a major league-best 103 games anyway, against 59 losses, because they wait. Bauers is that approach in a batting helmet.

Why the Dodgers’ Big Bats Have Gone Quiet

Los Angeles is scoring 3.0 runs per game in these playoffs after averaging 5.1 across the previous two Octobers. The 100-62 roster that was chasing a third straight title has spent the NLCS watching its middle of the order go cold, then watching a visitor who used to share a Rays clubhouse with Snell take the building’s air away.

DODGERS REGULARS IN OCTOBER

• Shohei Ohtani: A.515 OPS in these playoffs, and he was walked by Uribe in the sixth before Smith’s double.
• Mookie Betts: A.586 OPS, and he struck out to end Wednesday.
• Freddie Freeman: A.664 OPS, with the usual damage missing.
• Will Smith: The two-run double was real, and he is still 2-for-27 (.074) this October.

Teoscar Hernández is at a.522 OPS after homering in the first game of the playoffs against Atlanta. Kyle Tucker, who struggled in the regular season, is the exception at.304 with an.885 OPS. Roberts said the club has won four in a row a number of times this year and that the only focus is winning the next one. He also knows the last map for a 3-0 hole, because he stole the base that started Boston’s rally against the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS.

“It’s certainly possible,” Roberts said. “I’ve lived it.”

The seats started emptying in the top of the ninth with the score 6-2. That is what a 3-0 deficit looks like in a park that has spent two Octobers on parades: a long walk to a paid lot before the last out, and a lineup that has not made the wait feel foolish.

The Sweep Nobody Has Ever Returned

If Milwaukee wins Game 4, it would become the first club to sweep the same opponent that had swept it in the playoffs the year before. The 1923 Yankees are the only previous team to get swept one postseason and then beat that club in a series the next year, and they did not sweep. The Brewers would also be a pennant winner for the first time in 44 years. Their last World Series trip ended in seven games against St. Louis in 1982.

They already lead 3-0 after a 2-1 win in Game 1 and a 7-4 win in Game 2, when Bauers’ 12-pitch walk helped push Yamamoto out in the third. Mitchell, after Wednesday, said the job is not finished and that they have to show up and play their brand for one another.

A 3-0 HOLE IN A BEST-OF-SEVEN

• The field: 42 teams have fallen behind 3-0 in a best-of-seven postseason series.
• The quiet endings: 32 of those 42 were swept.
• Game 7: Only two clubs even forced a seventh game, and the 2020 Astros won Games 4, 5 and 6 against Tampa Bay before losing Game 7.
• The exception: In MLB history, only the 2004 Red Sox have come all the way back.

Roberts is the living exhibit of that exception, a pinch-runner who never had a plate appearance in those 2004 playoffs. The 2026 Dodgers still have to win Thursday before any of that history becomes a plan.

Thursday’s Starter Is Still Unnamed

Game 4 is Oct. 15 at Dodger Stadium, first pitch 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT) on FS1, an hour earlier than first listed after the ALCS start in Cleveland moved. Tyler Glasnow has the ball for Los Angeles. He walked five in 4 2/3 innings of one-run ball against Atlanta in the NLDS, and he owns a 1.73 ERA in 26 career playoff innings with the Dodgers across seven games. Roberts said he is fresh and has the arm talent.

Murphy did not name a Brewers starter. Dustin May, a former Dodger who won a 2020 ring in that uniform, threw a scoreless inning in Game 2 and has been discussed as a candidate. Milwaukee may also treat it as a bullpen game. Jacob Misiorowski is the expected Game 5 starter if the series gets there.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The hole: Los Angeles must win four straight, a climb completed once in a best-of-seven.
• The arm: Glasnow starts for the Dodgers; Milwaukee has not posted a name.
• The workload: Uribe pitched a seventh straight playoff game and lost the zone; Megill has pitched in five of these playoff games.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The Brewers’ starter: May, a committee, and other names have all been floated.
• How far the bullpens stretch: A fifth game would still lean on Milwaukee’s relief if Thursday does not end the series.

Murphy still believes in Uribe, who had been good for seven straight playoff games before Wednesday. The larger problem for Los Angeles is the man it cannot finish an at-bat against. Bauers has now seen 23 pitches across two series-shaping plate appearances against Yamamoto and Snell and has reached both times. One more win, and the club that cut him two winters ago is in the World Series.