Brewers put Dodgers season on the brink with stunning comeback Game 3 win

The Dodgers embarked on this postseason in search of an historic third-consecutive World Series championship.

In order to accomplish that goal now, they have an even more daunting challenge impeding their path.

A year after they swept the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series, the shoe is suddenly, stunningly, unbelievably in danger of being put on the other foot.

With a 6-2 loss in Game 3 on Wednesday, the Dodgers are on the verge of not only elimination, but a humiliating sweep.

And unless they can become only the second team in MLB history to overcome a 3-0 hole in a best-of-seven series, the way they got there Wednesday will reverberate long into the winter –– serving as the potential death-knell in their modern-day dynasty.

In the sixth inning, the Dodgers had finally captured momentum in this previously one-sided matchup, taking a 2-1 lead on a bases-loaded two-run double from Will Smith against hard-throwing Milwaukee reliever Abner Uribe.

It was the kind of moment the Dodgers had been waiting for all series: A big hit with runners on base. A hard-nosed rally against the Brewers’ dominant bullpen. A late-game lead that seemed to take their season off life support.

“You feel like you finally break through,” infielder Miguel Rojas said.

Minutes later, however, it would all disappear.

After six nearly flawless innings from Blake Snell, in which he had retired 18 of 20 batters after a leadoff home run on the first pitch of the game from Jackson Chourio, the two-time Cy Young Award winner returned to the mound in the seventh with Dodger Stadium still pulsing.

Then he issued a leadoff walk, and got locked in an epic battle with Brewers first baseman Jake Bauers.

Just as he had done to Yoshinobu Yamamoto in a 12-pitch duel during Game 2, Bauers refused to be put away, working an 11-pitch at-bat in which he fouled off five two-strike offerings.

Finally, having exhausted all other options, Snell challenged him with a fastball in the heart of the plate.

Bauers was ready for it, clobbering a 412-foot shot halfway up the right-field pavilion.

Chavez Ravine went silent. The Brewers had regained a 3-2 lead.

“I threw everything I had,” Snell said. “[Then a] fastball down the middle. If I can locate that better, who knows what would happen.”

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What happened instead was a gut punch the Dodgers are unlikely to recover from.

Two pitches later, Garrett Mitchell also took Snell deep on a no-doubt drive to right.

“I mean, three home runs in a game –– I didn’t give up one the whole year,” said Snell, who had indeed not only avoided any long ball in his 10 previous outings this season, but had only allowed three homers in a single game four times previously in his entire career.

“Pretty frustrating,” he added.

This time, it was on a hanging changeup, sending another shockwave through a dazed crowd of 50,708. And this time, there would be no way back for the Dodgers’ offense, which went missing again after its sixth-inning outburst.

“This one sucks,” infielder Kiké Hernández said. “At the end of the day, we haven’t hit. It’s tough to win a series the way that we’ve been hitting.”

Added Rojas, in agreement: “It’s really hard to pitch when you have no run support. That’s on us. Offensively, we haven’t done what we’re supposed to do to keep building momentum and getting more runs in the times we have opportunities with runners on base.”

Indeed, in some ways, the Dodgers’ most costly sequence might have come at the end of the sixth, when they failed to tack on more after Smith’s two-run drive.

Shohei Ohtani, having drawn the third walk of the inning against Uribe, seemed to get a late read on Smith’s ball and only made it from first to third on the play. Then, after the Brewers turned to left-hander DL Hall, Hernández and Tommy Edman both struck out to end the inning, leaving Ohtani and Smith stranded in scoring position.

“That was the game right there,” Hernández said of his at-bat. “We need to put the ball in play. I didn’t. I struck out and gave Tommy a way harder job with two outs.”

Really, it epitomized the Dodgers’ struggles over this entire series, in which they’ve managed just 15 total hits against the Brewers’ pitching staff and gone a woeful 2-for-16 with runners in scoring position.

“It’s a pretty simple answer,” third baseman Max Muncy said of the Dodgers’ team-wide slump. “We’re playing like s–t. They’re playing great. It’s as simple as that. No need to overcomplicate it.”

Over the final three frames, a two-out eighth-inning single from Ohtani –– who, base-running mistake aside, took a step forward by reaching base three times in the wake of speculation he could be benched following Game 2 –– would be the Dodgers’ only offense.

The Brewers, meanwhile, tacked on insurance runs in the eighth and ninth en route to putting the Dodgers’ season on the brink.

“We still have the pitching staff to be able to [come back in this series],” Muncy said, with Tyler Glasnow set to start Game 4 on Thursday, and co-aces Tarik Skubal and Yoshinobu Yamamoto lined up behind him. “We just have to get some hits … We’ve just got to show up ready to play.”

At some point, of course, the Dodgers’ dynasty was bound to end.

After so many close calls the last two years, their October luck was eventually due to run out.

But not even in their worst nightmares could they have imagined a scenario like this, a loss like this, a potential sweep like this.

“It’s really hard to put it into words,” Rojas said.

And now, they either have to make history, or become history.

Even for the two-time defending champions, it feels like a too tall of a task.