LOS ANGELES -- There’s something to the idea of playoff experience, Dodgers second baseman Tommy Edman said. For someone taking part in his first postseason series, “it’s definitely a lot harder to slow your heartbeat down, versus if you’ve been in those moments a lot in the past.”
If Edman was ever that type of player, he’s not anymore. Neither is Shohei Ohtani or Mookie Betts or Will Smith or Freddie Freeman or really anyone who’s signed onto this Dodgers juggernaut. To a man, they’ve been here before. To a man, they’ve won. The pressure they place on opponents is relentless. The force they exert is difficult to overcome.
For those reasons, Los Angeles is one win away from returning to the World Series.
“We know what it takes to win the big games,” Edman said.
For much of National League Championship Series Game 3 at Dodger Stadium on Thursday, Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski made it a fair fight. He struck out nine. His pitches exploded into the strike zone and darted out of it. But the Dodgers stayed persistent, eventually cracking Misiorowski in the sixth inning and going on to win, 3-1.
They now need just one more victory to advance to the World Series, where they would defend their championship against either the Mariners or Blue Jays. At this point, history very much favors their quest to make it there. Teams taking a 3-0 lead in any best-of-seven postseason series have gone on to win it a staggering 40 of 41 times (97.6%), including 31 sweeps. Quite famously, the only team to come all the way back after losing Games 1-3 was the Red Sox against the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS.
“It’s going to take more than what we’ve shown so far,” Brewers third baseman Caleb Durbin said.
“Obviously,” added designated hitter Christian Yelich, “[you] can’t win four before you win one.”
Thursday, the Brewers never came all that close to winning one. After three of the first four Dodgers batters reached base against opener Aaron Ashby -- including Ohtani, who tripled, and Betts, who doubled Ohtani home -- Brewers manager Pat Murphy replaced Ashby with Misiorowski. The dividends were immediate; Misiorowski struck out the first two batters he faced to strand a pair on base, and he retired 15 of his first 16 batters.
But the Dodgers remained their unrelenting selves, finally breaking through on a single, a walk and an Edman go-ahead RBI hit in the sixth. Two batters later, reliever Abner Uribe threw away a pickoff attempt to plate another run.
Milwaukee never recovered. Despite pressuring Dodgers starter Tyler Glasnow early, scoring a run against him in the second inning and knocking him out of the game in the sixth, the Brewers couldn’t muster any additional offense. Dodger pitchers have limited them to a single run in each of the first three NLCS games. In Game 3, they even flaunted their supposed weakness, cranking out 3 1/3 near-perfect innings from their bullpen.
“It’s challenging. These guys are the best in the world, right?” Brewers left fielder Jake Bauers said. “But that’s what you get when you get to this point in the season: the best arms that anybody has to offer.”
The Brewers will look to do more damage against them Friday in Game 4, with Jose Quintana likely to pitch bulk innings opposite Ohtani. But they face a significant challenge just to force the series back to Milwaukee, let alone to come from behind and win it. In the seven prior instances of a team with the best record in baseball falling behind 3-0 in a best-of-seven set, the series ended in a sweep all seven times.
“We just try not to get too ahead of ourselves,” Edman said. “We’re not thinking about getting to the World Series. We’re trying to think about how we win today. And I think that’s what allows us to win so many games.”
On the other side of the field, the Brewers understand their fraught position. They know it will be even more challenging if leadoff hitter Jackson Chourio misses any additional time due to the right hamstring cramp that forced him out of Game 3. They believe the only way to dig out of this hole is, as Yelich put it, to break their task down “into little goals.” And they know they can’t heap too much pressure on themselves.
Earlier Thursday, Murphy was going through his usual pregame histrionics, cracking jokes with media members and chatting about anything but baseball, when a reporter asked him about his conspicuous looseness.
“This is just an act,” Murphy shot back. “I’m not laid back. I’m nervous as hell.”
Several hours later, staring down a 3-0 NLCS deficit, Murphy no longer found himself with much reason for nervousness. At this point, the Brewers have little else to lose. They will either become the latest opponent to fold before the inevitable Dodgers, or the one that stuns them in historic fashion.
“It’s been done before, right?” Bauers said. “So why not us?”