Two World Series rings in two years, and now a 6-2 pasting at home that dropped the Dodgers into a hole they've faced exactly once in the entire history of the franchise. Save the sympathy. This team hasn't earned a drop of it.
Game 3 of the NLCS ended Wednesday night with the Brewers up 6-2 and up 3-0 in a best-of-seven, and the clip everyone keeps replaying put it bluntly: "FINAL: Brewers 6, Dodgers 2... They are stunned in Dodger Stadium." Stunned fits the building. Anyone paying attention saw this coming.
It took one pitch. Jackson Chourio jumped on Blake Snell's first offering and drove it the other way for a 1-0 lead, only the sixth time since 1988 a hitter has gone deep on the very first pitch of a postseason game. Los Angeles clawed back, Will Smith's two-run double put them up 2-1, and the place was rocking. Then the seventh happened. Snell walked Andrew Vaughn to start it, Jake Bauers ground out an 11-pitch at-bat and took him over the wall, and Garrett Mitchell went back-to-back to chase him. Two more runs followed, and the silence followed that.
Dave Roberts left Snell out there for the seventh when the lefty hadn't gotten an out past the sixth all year in another injury-wrecked season. He got beaten on that call in real time, in front of a home crowd. The manager wears this one.
And the roster wears the rest, because this wasn't a fluke inning. In Game 2 the Dodgers went hitless with runners in scoring position for the fourth time in six postseason games. Over the last two games, every time the Dodgers scored, the Brewers answered in the next half-inning. One team's offense is working right now. The other's isn't.
Milwaukee won a franchise-record 103 games this year. Game 3 was their fifth comeback win of this postseason, tying the most in a club's first seven playoff games with the 1996 Yankees and the 1980 Phillies. Backing them just means noticing who's better.
The Dodgers have trailed 3-0 in a best-of-seven only once before, when the Orioles swept them in the 1966 World Series. The Dodgers swept these same Brewers in last year's NLCS. Game 4 on Thursday gives Milwaukee the chance to flip that sweep right back around.
Fans who paid to be there felt something real when that seventh inning turned. The glee at zooming in on a crying kid in the stands is a cheap, ugly way to enjoy a baseball game. People are allowed to hurt.
The team is a different matter. This is a two-time defending champion chasing a three-peat, and the resale market already showed how little sympathy it's getting: Game 3 get-in prices fell 42% in three days, from $167 to $97, with Game 4 sliding to $98. That's people cutting losses on a product that stopped delivering.
You can feel for the eight-year-old in Section 12. You do not owe the back-to-back champs a thing while a 103-win team walks into their yard and takes it.
