Category: Sports News

The Milwaukee Brewers have no chance.

Neither will the Seattle Mariners or the Toronto Blue Jays.

The clear truth emerged from the Dodger Stadium shadows late Thursday amid a downtown-shaking roar of delight and disbelief.

This is ridiculous. This is simply ridiculous, how well the Dodgers are playing, how close the history books are beckoning, and how an ordinary summer has been followed with unbelievable days of the extraordinary.

The Dodgers are not going to lose another game this October. Write it down, bet it up, no major league baseball team has ever played this well in the postseason, ever, ever, ever.

With their 3-1 victory over the Brewers on Thursday in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series, the Dodgers take a three-games-to-none lead with a sweep likely in the next 24 hours and coronation coming in the next two weeks.

The Dodgers are going to win this NLCS and follow it with a four-game whitewash of the World Series because, well, you tell me.

How is anybody going to beat them?

Match their aces-flush rotation? Nope. Equal their hot closer and revived bullpen? Sorry. Better than their deep lineup? Nobody is even close.

The Dodgers are more than halfway to finishing the most dominant postseason in baseball history. It’s all there in the numbers.

The only team to go undefeated through the playoffs since the divisional era began was the 1976 Cincinnati Reds. But the Big Red Machine had to win only seven games. Since the playoffs were expanded and the test became tougher, the greatest October streaks have belonged to the 2005 Chicago White Sox and the 1999 New York Yankees, both of whom went 11-1.

Read more:Dodgers capitalize on their chances to beat Brewers and take 3-0 NLCS lead

These Dodgers were forced into that early wild-card series, so if they end this postseason without another loss, they will finish 13-1.

The last team in this town to have such a dominating postseason was the champion 2001 Lakers, who went 15-1 in the postseason with only one stumble against Philadelphia on the night Allen Iverson famously stepped over Tyronn Lue.

Fittingly, the mamba mentality of that group was referenced Thursday by Mookie Betts.

“Honestly, I have zero emotions,” he said. “We're up but, you know, like Kobe said, the job’s not done, so we’ve got to keep going and just keep applying pressure.”

Those Lakers were legendary. These Dodgers will be soon.

“That team is pretty good,” acknowledged Brewers manager Pat Murphy.

You think? They are currently 8-1 in the playoffs and have won 23 of their previous 29 games and again, who’s going to beat them?

Start with that rotation. Tyler Glasnow followed gems by Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Thursday by twirling 5 ⅔ innings of swing and miss, holding the Brewers to one run with eight strikeouts. In three games, the Brewers have scored two runs in 22 ⅔ innings against Dodgers starters.

And perhaps their best pitcher hasn’t even taken the mound yet, that being Friday’s starter, Shohei Ohtani.

Now for their deep lineup. Ohtani is still mired in a career-worst slump, but his one hit Thursday was a leadoff triple that led to him scoring the first run, and seemingly everybody else chipped in. Betts had the first RBI, Tommy Edman knocked in Will Smith with the go-ahead run in the sixth, a hustling Freddie Freeman scored on a wild pickoff attempt, and on and on ...

Finish with their bullpen, which is actually finishing. Taking over for Glasnow with a runner on first and two out in the sixth Thursday, Alex Vesia, Blake Treinen, Anthony Banda and Roki Sasaki shut the Brewers down the rest of the way, and their regular-season weakness has become their strength.

“I think the thing about our guys is, they're battle-tested, and they know that I've never lost faith in them,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.

Incidentally, Sasaki’s ninth-inning shutdown was aided by a brilliant in-the-hole putout by shortstop Betts, seven innings after Max Muncy threw out a runner at home, and that golden defense is just one more way the Dodgers can beat you.

All this, and as Thursday confirmed, they have arguably the best home-field advantage in baseball.

No place is bigger. No place draws more fans. And no place is louder, from the bleacher-rattling roar to the cover-your-ears sound system.

“This place has an aura about it,” Muncy said of Dodger Stadium. “It's the biggest capacity in baseball. Everybody talks about it when you come here. The lights seem a little brighter. The music seems a little louder — that might actually be because it is a little louder.”

Yeah, fans, you might hate the otherworldly stadium volume, but the players like it.

Read more:Dodgers defeat Brewers to move to the verge of returning to the World Series

“That's part of the perks of being at Dodger Stadium, we have that sound system,” Muncy said. “It sounds silly to say something like a sound system could be an advantage. But it really is. When the speakers in the center field are cranking and the crowd is going absolutely nuts and you feel the field shaking beneath your feet, it's a really big advantage. And that's something we've always had here.”

The stadium rose to the occasion Thursday as it always does this time of year, filling up despite the weird midafternoon starting time, constantly standing and screaming by the game’s end.

“When we've had those big moments, there's arguably no place that can get louder than Dodger Stadium, especially in the postseason,” Muncy said. “When you have 56, 57,000 people screaming all at the same time in a big moment, it's pretty wild. That's an advantage that we've always had here, and the guys love it.”

There’s a lot to love.

“We’ve got a long way to go,” Roberts said.

Getting shorter by the roar.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

For five innings on Thursday afternoon, the Dodgers waited.

For impossible shadows to vacate the playing surface after a 3:08 p.m. start at Dodger Stadium.

For Milwaukee Brewers rookie star Jacob Misiorowski to lose steam after an electric start to his bulk-relief outing.

For a door to open that their veteran club, seeking a 3-0 lead in the National League Championship Series, could finally exploit.

In the bottom of the sixth inning, it arrived.

With a two-run rally fueled by professional hitting, aggressive baserunning and a little cat-and-mouse game with the pitch clock, the Dodgers broke an early tie and took a lead they wouldn’t relinquish, moving to the doorstep of the World Series with a 3-1 defeat of the Brewers in Game 3 of the NLCS.

The decisive rally followed five innings of frustration.

Tyler Glasnow carved up Brewers hitters on one side, giving up just one run over 5 ⅔ innings. Misiorowski did the same to the Dodgers, following opener Aaron Ashby, who gave up a run two batters into his outing, with five innings of almost perfect relief.

In the sixth, however, the Dodgers flipped the script — finally getting more favorable circumstances, and immediately manufacturing a couple of runs.

First and foremost, Misiorowski’s velocity, which was previously 100 mph or more with his fastball and up to 96 mph with his slider, started dipping. The shadows that had tortured hitters all day, leaving home plate covered in shade while the outfield batter’s eye was drenched in sun, also suddenly subsided.

Read more:Plaschke: Are these Dodgers the best postseason team in baseball history? They will be

With one out, Will Smith took advantage by hitting a hanging 95-mph slider to left for a single. Then, Freddie Freeman drew a walk in a strategic battle with the 23-year-old pitcher, whose plan to hold the ball against Freeman as the pitch clock wound down was thrown back in his face by Freeman standing outside the batter’s box as long as possible.

With two runners aboard, and Misiorowski facing his first real stress since inheriting two runners back in the first, Tommy Edman hit a first-pitch slider (this one at just 94 mph) to center to break a 1-1 tie.

As the relay throw came into the Brewers' infield, Freeman made an aggressive — and ultimately rewarding — decision to go all the way to third from first.

The move paid off two batters later. While heavily used Brewers closer Abner Uribe (who was making his fourth outing in the last six days) set Teoscar Hernández down swinging for a key second out, he then made a back-breaking mistake: Firing an errant pickoff throw to first that got past Andrew Vaughn and trickled up the right-field line.

Freeman trotted the 90 feet home with ease. The Dodgers had a 3-1 lead that their bullpen — which used Alex Vesia, Blake Treinen, Anthony Banda and Roki Sasaki for the final 10 outs — protected. And now, entering Game 4 on Friday night, the Dodgers are in position for a sweep.

Unlike Games 1 and 2 of this series, which the Dodgers dominated outside of a brief ninth-inning scare in the opener, Thursday’s contest was much of a jump ball.

The Dodgers scored first, thanks to a questionable tactical move from the Brewers — who used the left-handed Ashby as an opener, forcing him to face the top of the Dodgers’ order for the third time in this series.

The familiarity backfired. Shohei Ohtani hooked a leadoff triple into the right-field corner, snapping his season-long seven-game drought without an extra-base hit. Mookie Betts drove him in on the next pitch, belting a double into the right-center field gap.

Read more:Shaikin: It's not easy to repeat as World Series champs, but Dodgers don't seem to mind

Only once Misiorowski entered did the Brewers settle down.

Four months after dismantling the Dodgers in a six-inning, one-run, 12-strikeout gem, one that helped him earn a surprise (and controversial) All-Star selection just five starts into his MLB career, the long-limbed, flame-throwing right-hander was similarly stout for most of his bulk-relief outing Thursday.

He stranded the two runners he inherited in the first with back-to-back strikeouts. He worked around an infield single from Andy Pages in the second. Then, he didn’t let another runner reach base until the sixth, racking up nine strikeouts along the way.

Glasnow, however, found equal success.

In a three-hit, three-walk, eight-strikeout start, he gave up his only damage in the second inning, when Caleb Durbin tripled (with the help of an over-aggressive dive from Kiké Hernández in left field) and scored on Jake Bauers’ RBI single.

But later in the inning, Glasnow got some help from his defense, with third baseman Max Muncy making a diving stop and a spinning throw from a drawn-in position to get Bauers (who had advanced to third on a steal and errant pickoff throw from Glasnow) at the plate.

And from there, Glasnow was untouchable, retiring 14 of his next 15 batters before his day ended on a two-out walk in the sixth.

Glasnow’s start kept the Dodgers’ rotation ERA in this postseason at an immaculate 1.54. The group also now has 71 strikeouts in 58 ⅓ innings over its nine combined starts.

That strength has been enough to give the Dodgers control of this series.

But the usually pesky Brewers haven’t helped their cause, either.

The clearly fading Misiorowski wasn’t removed until the Dodgers had already gone in front in the sixth. Uribe’s pickoff throw later in the inning was also puzzling, given that he hadn’t allowed a steal since 2023 and had successfully picked off a runner only once in that time. And during their one opportunity to rally in the seventh, when Durbin hit a leadoff double, manager Pat Murphy left Jake Bauers in the game for a left-on-left matchup against Vesia — leading to a harmless fly ball and the first of nine consecutive Brewers outs that would end the game.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.