By BETH HARRIS AP Sports Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Milwaukee Brewers hit the second-fewest home runs in baseball during the regular season, even as they topped the majors with 103 wins.
Maybe they were saving their biggest swings for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Jake Bauers and Garrett Mitchell launched back-to-back homers off Blake Snell in the seventh inning, and the Brewers beat the Dodgers 6-2 on Wednesday to build a 3-0 cushion in the National League Championship Series.
Jackson Chourio also went deep on the first pitch of the game to help the Brewers close within one win of their first NL pennant. Milwaukee was in the American League when the franchise reached its only World Series, a seven-game loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1982.
“Job’s not finished yet,” Mitchell said.
Game 4 is Thursday at Dodger Stadium, where the Brewers can become the first major league club to complete a postseason sweep after getting swept by that same opponent in the previous postseason.
Los Angeles took all four games against Milwaukee in the NLCS last year.
The Dodgers had just gone ahead 2-1 in the sixth inning before getting stunned by the Brewers in their three-run seventh. The loss pushed the two-time defending World Series champions to the brink of elimination.
“All three games we’ve played so far, and hopefully that continues, where just every time they score, we come back and score,” Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy said. “That’s not easy to do in baseball.”
It was the fifth comeback victory in seven postseason games for the Brewers, who have never beaten Los Angeles in three previous playoff series.
The only other time the Dodgers trailed 3-0 in a best-of-seven postseason series, they were swept by the Baltimore Orioles in the 1966 World Series.
The lone team in big league history to come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven postseason series was the Boston Red Sox in the 2004 AL Championship Series against the New York Yankees.
“We’ve won four in a row a number of times this year,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “We’ve got to win tomorrow. That’s our only focus.”
Coming into the seventh, Snell had retired 14 batters in a row. But the first pitch of the game thrown by the two-time Cy Young Award winner was hit for a home run by Chourio, and his last pitch was Mitchell’s solo shot.
Andrew Vaughn drew a seven-pitch walk to open the seventh and was replaced by pinch-runner Christian Yelich. Bauers followed with a 412-foot drive to right field on the 11th pitch of his at-bat for a 3-2 lead as most of the players in Milwaukee’s dugout came onto the field to celebrate.
“I was looking for a fastball, and I didn’t want to miss it,” said Bauers, who had a team-leading 26 of Milwaukee’s 154 regular-season homers.
It was his latest relentless plate appearance, too, after Bauers drew a 12-pitch walk from Yoshinobu Yamamoto that helped the Brewers go ahead early in Game 2.
“I think what changed for me this year was I stopped caring about results,” Bauers said. “I started caring about competing. I started caring about being in the moment and getting out of my own way.”
Watching Bauers work over Snell was “super sick,” Mitchell said.
And then it was his turn.
Mitchell’s drive traveled 428 feet to right-center. That chased Snell, who hadn’t given up a home run in 46 1/3 innings this year entering the game. It was the first time in his career he served up back-to-back homers to left-handed hitters and only the second time he gave up multiple longballs to left-handed batters in one game.
Bauers and Mitchell became just the third pair of left-handed hitters with consecutive postseason home runs off the same left-handed pitcher. Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper did it for Philadelphia against Atlanta reliever Dylan Lee in an NL Wild Card Series this year, and Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig connected for the New York Yankees off Bill Sherdel of the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1928 World Series.
Milwaukee has five homers in the NLCS and eight this postseason.
Snell gave up four runs and four hits in six-plus innings. He struck out nine and walked two.
The Brewers extended their lead to 5-2 in the eighth on Justin Wrobleski’s wild pitch that scored Brice Turang, who reached on an infield single and advanced to third on William Contreras’ single. They added another run on Joey Ortiz’s two-strike RBI single in the ninth.
The offensively starved Dodgers took a 2-1 lead on Will Smith’s two-run double off reliever Abner Uribe in the sixth.
After rookie starter Robert Gasser pitched five shutout innings, Uribe entered and loaded the bases on walks to Teoscar Hernández, Kyle Tucker and Shohei Ohtani. Smith, who was 1 for 25 in the playoffs, doubled off the left-center fence with one out for his first hit of the NLCS.
DL Hall took over from Uribe and stranded runners at second and third by striking out pinch-hitter Kiké Hernández and Tommy Edman.
Hall allowed one hit in 2 1/3 scoreless innings to improve to 3-0 in these playoffs. Trevor Megill got four outs for his second save of the series and fourth this postseason.
The Dodgers played from behind again after the 22-year-old Chourio connected for his third career leadoff homer in the postseason as fans were still heading to their seats.
After that, Mitchell walked and Cooper Pratt singled in the second before Snell retired 14 in a row — six on strikeouts — before getting hammered in the seventh.
The Dodgers had runners on base in all but three innings, but couldn’t get enough across. They have yet to homer in the NLCS and are 3 for 32 with runners in scoring position this postseason.
Ohtani was 1 for 2 with a walk while hitting sixth in the order, the lowest he’s batted since joining the Dodgers three years ago.
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