Jake Bauers has made a habit of hanging around long enough to change a game, and he did it again in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series.
The Brewers were staring at a 2-1 deficit after the Dodgers scratched out two runs in the bottom of the sixth, giving Blake Snell a lead heading into the seventh. Then the inning flipped fast. Andrew Vaughn worked a walk to open the frame, ending Snell’s run of 14 straight batters retired, and Bauers stepped in to deliver the biggest swing of the night.
After taking a called strike to start the at-bat, Bauers watched two balls miss, then swung through a changeup. With two strikes, he kept extending the battle, fouling off a slider and a changeup. He then spoiled a four-seam fastball, another changeup and another slider after Ball 3.
On the 11th pitch, Snell went back to the fastball. Bauers turned on it and sent his first home run of this postseason 412 feet to the right field seats, giving Milwaukee a go-ahead, two-run blast.
Garrett Mitchell followed with another home run, and suddenly the Brewers were up 4-2 and Snell was done for the night. The sequence gave Milwaukee its third set of back-to-back postseason homers in franchise history. Bauers and Sal Frelick last did it in Game 3 of the 2024 NL Wild Card Series, while Orlando Arcia and Keon Broxton accomplished the feat in Game 3 of the 2018 NLDS.
The moment fit Bauers, who nearly walked away from baseball a couple of years ago before choosing not to quit. He had already helped tilt this series with a 12-pitch walk in Game 2, and now he was back at it, winning another marathon at-bat when the Brewers needed it most.
It was also a rare kind of postseason swing: the sixth home run on the 11th pitch of an at-bat or later in playoff history since pitch-count tracking began in 1988.
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