The Dodgers’ season has reached the edge of the cliff, and the numbers around them are brutal.
Down 3-0 in the National League Championship Series, Los Angeles now has the burden that has crushed almost every team before it. The Dodgers are the 43rd club in MLB postseason history to fall behind 3-0 in a best-of-7 series, and 32 of the previous 42 were swept. The Brewers can end it as soon as Thursday night in Game 4 at Dodger Stadium.
For the Dodgers, the problem has been bigger than one bad night. Through seven postseason games, they have produced only three run-scoring hits, and catcher Will Smith said the offense has to start doing its part.
“We’ve just got to be better as an offense, put together better at-bats with runners in scoring position,” Smith said, after driving in both Dodgers runs in Game 3 on Wednesday. “Just get back to ourselves, keep fighting, and win one game at a time. That’s how we’re gonna get back in this.”
History says even a single win would be a small step, not a rescue. Of the 42 teams to drop the first three games of a best-of-7, six managed only one victory before losing in five.
That group includes the 2017 Cubs, who won Game 4 at home before falling to the Dodgers in Game 5, a game marked by Kiké Hernández’s three home runs. The most recent example came in the 2024 World Series, when the Yankees won Game 4 at home before Los Angeles closed them out in Game 5 after erasing a 5-0 deficit.
That leaves the Dodgers staring at the same ugly math: 38 of the first 42 teams down 3-0 were finished by Game 5.
Still, this matchup carries one strange layer. Los Angeles swept Milwaukee just last year, and only seven other times had a team that got swept by an opponent met that same opponent in the postseason the following year. In those seven rematches, only one team managed to flip the result - the 1923 Yankees, who beat the Giants after being swept by them in the 1922 World Series.
This version of the Brewers looks nothing like a team waiting to be reversed. They’re in position to finish the job quickly, and the Dodgers know the punishment for letting that happen in their own ballpark.
Third baseman Max Muncy put it plainly: “At the beginning of this year we set out to do something historic,” Muncy said. “It looks like we’re going to have to make a little more history if we want to accomplish that.”
There are only a few comeback roads left, and they all get narrow fast. Two teams have pushed a 3-0 series deep enough to force Game 7.
The 2020 Astros won Games 4, 5 and 6 against the Rays before losing the final game at Petco Park in San Diego, in a neutral-site ALCS played without fans. The 2004 Red Sox remain the lone team ever to complete the full reversal, rallying from 3-0 down to beat the Yankees in seven after Dave Roberts’ famous steal helped save Game 4 at Fenway Park.
Roberts, who keeps getting asked about that run, laughed off the idea of using it as some kind of teaching tape.
“Absolutely not,” Roberts said, laughing. “Then I’ll lose them.
I don’t know if some of those guys even know I played. When times get tough, I just kind of go the other way and get more lax and have fun with the guys, just want to slow down.”
He was asked again about that Red Sox comeback before and after Game 3, and the comparison is unavoidable. Since Roberts took over in 2016, the Dodgers are 15-7 (.682) in elimination games, far better than the rest of MLB over that span, which is 84-105 (.444). They’ve won their last four elimination games, stretching back to Games 4 and 5 of the 2024 NL Division Series against the Padres.
That track record buys hope, but not much room. The Brewers have to be beaten four straight times now, and Milwaukee hasn’t lost four in a row since April.
Kyle Tucker said he still believes the group can answer.
“I believe in this group, the staff, the clubhouse and guys in here,” Tucker said. “I think if there’s a team to do it, it’s this team. It’s not going to come easy, obviously.”
Miguel Rojas framed the task in simpler terms.
“We have to win four in a row against a really good team,” Rojas said. “I just feel like we need to have a sense of urgency of winning every single pitch, starting tomorrow with pitch one. We have no room for error.”
Roberts said the message is the same as it always is in this position.
“It’s certainly possible. I’ve lived it, and I think the thing is that our guys have been battle-tested, as was that team I was a part of.
I think the mindset has to be -- and teams have been down before 0-2, 0-3 -- it’s just you’ve got to win tomorrow,” Roberts said Wednesday. “It’s an elimination game.
We’ve played in a lot of elimination games. We’ve just got to get a win.
We’ve got to find a way to build some momentum, and it takes all of us.”
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