Blake Snell had retired 14 straight. Then he walked Andrew Vaughn to open the seventh, and Jake Bauers stepped in.
Eleven pitches later the Brewers led, and the National League Championship Series was effectively finished.
Milwaukee won Game 3 by 6-2 at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday night and leads the series 3-0.
The At-Bat
Bauers fouled off five pitches in the sequence, including the eighth, ninth and tenth, a four-seamer, a changeup and a slider. Pitch 11 was a fastball down the middle, and he hit it into the right-field pavilion. Statcast projected it at 412 feet.
The two-run homer turned a 2-1 Dodgers lead into a 3-2 Milwaukee lead. Garrett Mitchell homered two pitches later, back to back, and that ended Snell’s night.
Snell finished with six innings, four hits, three of them home runs, four earned runs, two walks and nine strikeouts on 101 pitches. Jackson Chourio had homered on his first pitch of the game.
Snell Handled It Better Than Most Would
This is the part that deserves attention. A pitcher who just lost a playoff game on an 11-pitch at-bat spent his postgame talking about the hitter.
“I’ve known him since he got drafted with San Diego, then he was with the Rays,” Snell said. “I’ve seen all the ups and downs he’s been through and it’s been a lot of downs.”
Then: “So for him to go through this right now, he’s earned it. Hat’s off to him.”
On the pitch itself he was blunt. “I threw everything I had. Fastball down the middle. If I can locate that better, who knows what would happen.” He called it “a good at-bat” and said it was the best he has ever seen Bauers play.
The Downs Snell Mentioned Were Real
Bauers, 31, was a seventh-round pick by San Diego in 2013, 208th overall. He went to the Rays in a 2014 trade, debuted in 2018, then passed through Cleveland, Seattle, Cincinnati and the Yankees.
Milwaukee acquired him from New York in November 2023 for two outfielders. He hit .199 in 2024, mostly off the bench. In November 2024 the Brewers removed him from the 40-man roster and outrighted him to Triple-A Nashville. He rejected the assignment, became a free agent, and considered quitting the game.
He re-signed on a minor-league deal in January 2025 and made the Opening Day roster.
In 2026 he played a career-high 144 games, led the team with 26 home runs, and posted a 143 wRC+, seventh among qualified major league hitters.
“It’s not easy to bounce around from team to team and still believe in yourself,” Bauers said. On the at-bat: “I was looking for a fastball, and I didn’t want to miss it.” And on the moment it turned: “There was for sure a moment where I thought to myself like, ‘Oh, you’re in it again.'”
The History Is Absurd
The homer is only the sixth hit on the 11th pitch or later of a postseason plate appearance since pitch tracking began in 1988.
Bauers is the second player ever with plate appearances of 11-plus pitches in consecutive games of the same postseason. The other was Aramis Ramirez in Games 4 and 5 of the 2003 NLCS.
The back-to-back homers with Mitchell were only the third such set in Brewers postseason history.
Milwaukee Is One Win From 1982
The Brewers have not reached a World Series in 44 years. They are one win away, and they got here by beating four Dodgers starters with a lineup that includes a man who nearly retired 20 months ago.
Snell was right to tip his cap. He was also the proof.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
