SAN DIEGO -- They have taken the field in Los Angeles, Washington, Los Angeles (again), Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles (again) and now San Diego to play postseason baseball games.
And the Brewers have come up short in all of those places.
With a 4-3 loss to the Padres in Game 3 of the National League Division Series at a sold-out Petco Park on a Tuesday night chock full of missed opportunities, the Brewers’ streak of road losses in the postseason stretched to 12. That matched a dubious Major League record set by the Senators and Twins that spanned 62 years from 1925-1987 and a move from Washington to Minnesota.
The Brewers haven’t gone quite that long since winning a playoff game away from home.
It only feels that way.
“I mean, this team has one person playing from 2018,” said Christian Yelich, who is that person. “So that really has no effect on this group.”
Perhaps, though, it highlights the perils of playing on the road in October. Tuesday’s loss dropped the franchise to 6-24 all-time in postseason road games, and 0-12 since a 4-0 triumph at Dodger Stadium in Game 3 of the 2018 NLCS, when Yelich walked with one out in the first inning and scored on Ryan Braun’s double and the Brewers never looked back.
Since then, they have known only frustration. The next day, the Dodgers beat the Brewers in 13 innings. And in the 11 postseason road games that have followed, they have had a lead in four of them, including a lead in the fifth inning or later three times.
They lost every time.
“It's tough to win on the road in playoff situations, obviously,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said, pointing out that all but one of the teams that handed Milwaukee those road losses -- the 2025 Cubs being the exception -- went to the World Series, and three of them won the World Series. “I wouldn't beat up the old Brewers if you don't mind.”
Just like the first two games of this series, Game 3 could have gone either way. But the Brewers missed a chance to move on after running out of the magic they conjured in thrilling Games 1 and 2 in Milwaukee, stranding multiple runners on base in three consecutive innings from the fifth through the seventh and then coming up empty in the eighth and ninth against a Padres bullpen that was without its relief ace, Mason Miller, who was placed on the paternity list in a surprise move right before the game.
Jackson Chourio said he didn’t find out about Miller’s absence until 10 minutes before the first pitch.
Instead, those final two innings went to a Padres starter, Michael King, who breezed through the eighth before holding off a Brewers rally in the ninth while throwing 40 pitches, two days removed from throwing 72 pitches over the first five innings of Game 2 at American Family Field.
It was Yelich who had the last shot, representing the go-ahead run after King walked William Contreras and Brice Turang with one out. Yelich’s 107.1 mph grounder carried an expected batting average of .630, but it went for a game-ending double play.
It was one of those nights. Contreras reached safely four times, tallied two hits including his second home run of the series and scored twice, Turang emerged from an 0-for-10 start to the series and a 2-for-40 stretch in his last 11 postseason games with a single in the seventh and Yelich followed with his own single for one of his three hits on the night, ending a streak of 19 postseason games without an RBI that dated all the way back to Game 1 of the 2018 NLCS.
But then there were the missed opportunities, none more costly than Turang bouncing out in the top of the fifth to leave the bases loaded, only to see Jake Cronenworth hit JoJo Romero’s first pitch in the bottom of the inning for a go-ahead home run.
"We hit the ball hard," said Turang. "We had really good at-bats. We were drawing walks. Sometimes, guys are just right there when you hit them, and sometimes they make really nice plays."
That started from the game’s very first batter. When Chourio, one of the Brewers’ heroes in Games 1 and 2, led off game three with a fly ball to the wall in left-center field, San Diego’s Jackson Merrill ran it down for the first of his two stellar catches.
Chourio finished 0-for-4. He hit a sacrifice fly in the fifth inning for a 2-2 tie, but was retired two other times with a runner on base.
“I was maybe a little bit anxious on some of those, but [Wednesday] is a new day,” Chourio said.
Is it harder to not be anxious on the road? Especially in October?
“I think those are learning opportunities,” Chourio said. “Tomorrow I’ll be able to come a little bit calmer, and just try to do the little things the way we’ve been doing all season.”
Speaking of that, the run that decided the game scored for the Padres in the sixth when the Brewers didn’t do the little things. Xander Bogaerts singled off DL Hall and took second on a wild pitch, then broke for third on pinch-hitter Miguel Andujar’s broken-bat bouncer toward rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt.
With half of the bat twirling through the air and Bogaerts’ arms and legs doing the same as he attempted to stay out of the way, Pratt managed to field the ball. But he bounced his throw to first baseman Jake Bauers for a run-scoring error.
“You can make excuses about everything, but I fielded the ball and I threw the ball in the dirt,” Pratt said. “I cost us a run."
Again, one of those nights.
And now this cinematic series, only the 13th postseason series on record in which each of the first three games were decided by a single run, will continue. The Brewers will go into Game 4 on Wednesday night with two outcomes in play.
Either they lose again, and set an all-time record for consecutive postseason losses on the road.
Or they win the game and the series, and play for the pennant with this losing streak behind them. Going into this leg of the series, Milwaukee’s oft-used lefty reliever Aaron Ashby was viewing that as an opportunity.
“It’s like we’ve got 40 guys versus 50,000,” said Ashby on Tuesday afternoon. “That’s a cool feeling.”
Turang heard that assessment before the game, and it resonated.
"I think Ash said it earlier: It’s like 40 of us versus 50,000. But it’s fun. It’s fun to play like this, and this is what we play for. We play for times like this. We’ve just got to go out there and trust each other, trust in ourselves and keep playing winning baseball, and things will work out."