LOS ANGELES — After needing to get only three runs in the first two games of the National League Championship Series, the Dodgers bullpen was fully activated for Game 3. Four Los Angeles relievers got the final 10 outs, making a two-run sixth inning hold up in a 3-1 win over the Brewers on Thursday afternoon at Dodger Stadium.
The Dodgers are up three games to none in the best-of-7 series, needing only one more win for a return trip to the World Series.
This was a group bullpen effort for the final
3 1/3 innings, similar to last October when the Dodgers pieced together many complicated puzzles. There are fewer pieces this postseason, but a quartet got the job done in Game 3. Alex Vesia got the final out of the sixth and the first out of the seventh, leaving with a runner on second base. Blake Treinen got the final two outs of the frame to strand the runner, then Anthony Banda pitched a perfect eighth.
Roki Sasaki pitched a perfect ninth, aided by a tremendous play by Gold Glove Award finalist Mookie Betts from the hole at shortstop.
For starters
Both teams scored an early first run thanks to triples roughly into their respective corners — Shohei Ohtani to right field on a lunging two-strike swing in the first inning, and Caleb Durbin smartly taking an extra base after Kiké Hernández in left field dove for ball that easily got past him in the second inning.
Betts scored Ohtani with a double for the Dodgers’ first first-inning run in eight games, and Jake Bauers singled past a drawn-in infield to score Durbin. Things could have gone much worse in that second inning for the Dodgers, with an errant throw as Bauers stole second base, saved by Tommy Edman from further advancement. But a Tyler Glasnow pickoff went into center field which got Bauers to third base anyway. Playing the infield in ran rampant in those two early frames, and it worked once, when Max Muncy made a nice stab and spinning throw home to prevent Milwaukee from scoring a go-ahead run.
Tyler Glasnow didn’t allow another run after the first inning, though his pitch count was high enough for him to get pulled after a perfectly-fine 5 2/3 innings, which only stands out because of how great the Dodgers rotation has been for this postseason. Glasnow struck out eight to overshadow his three walks, though the last of those ended his day in the sixth inning. In came left-hander Vesia to strike out left-hander Sal Frelick to end the threat.
With Glasnow’s one run allowed in 5 2/3 innings, the Dodgers postseason rotation ERA actually went up, from 1.538 to 1.543.
Misioro loves company
Runs were hard to come by on either side. After scoring in the first the Dodgers still had Betts on second, and eventually had two runners on with one out when opener Aaron Ashby was removed after facing the top of the lineup for a third time in three games this series. In came Jacob Misiorowski, who burst onto the scene midseason and struck out 12 Dodgers in six innings in his fifth major league start on July 8.
Struggles in August and September and a pending innings limit caused the Brewers to dial back a bit on Misiorowski, who has pitched in shorter, but still bulk stints to end the season and into the postseason. The 6’7 right-hander came into a jam in the first inning of Game 3 and immediately put out the fire with two strikeouts.
A gangly mix of 102-mph fastballs and 89-mph curves dominated for a long stretch of this one, striking out nine of his first 16 batters faced, and allowed only one ball hit to the outfield to that point. But a matter of nine pitches turned the game around.
Will Smith singled, Freddie Freeman worked a walk, and Edman singled to center to both give the Dodgers the lead and end Misiorowski’s day. Freeman also aggressively took third on Edman’s single, which paid off when reliever Abner Uribe threw wildly to first base on a pickoff attempt, which plated an insurance run.
The Dodgers offense hasn’t scored often in the NLCS — only 10 runs in three games — but it’s been enough thanks to a pitching staff that has allowed exactly one run in every game of the series.
NLCS Game 3 particulars
Home runs: none
WP — Alex Vesia (2-0): 2/3 IP, 1 hit, 1 strikeout
LP — Jacob Misiorowski (2-1): 5 IP, 3 hits, 2 runs (1 earned), 1 walk, 9 strikeouts
Sv — Roki Sasaki (3): 1 IP, 1 strikeout
Up next
Shohei Ohtani is back on the mound for the first time in 13 days on Friday night in Game 4 (5:38 p.m., TBS), with a chance to win a pennant. With Misiorowski getting the call on Thursday, that leaves left-hander Jose Quintana for Brewers bulk work on Friday.
