Blake Snell got hit with the same October punch from a different opponent, and the Dodgers are now one loss from going home.
On Wednesday in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series, Milwaukee attacked Snell in the exact kind of rapid, no-breathing-room sequence that Toronto used to unravel him in last year’s World Series. Jackson Chourio jumped on the first pitch he saw and sent it out, Jake Bauers later survived an 11-pitch fight before launching a go-ahead blast in the seventh, and Garrett Mitchell followed with another homer as the Brewers rolled to a 6-2 win and a 3-0 series lead.
For the Blue Jays, the template was easy to recognize. In Game 5 of the 2025 World Series, Davis Schneider opened the night by crushing Snell’s first pitch into the left-field seats, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. added a 394-foot solo shot on the third pitch. That made Toronto the first team in MLB history to start a World Series game with back-to-back home runs.
Chourio’s homer carried the same kind of instant sting. He became one of only two hitters since 2008 to homer on the first pitch of a postseason game, joining Schneider, and both came against Snell. The message was the same in Milwaukee: don’t let the left-hander settle in.
The Brewers didn’t stop there. Toronto’s back-to-back shots came before Snell could record an out. Milwaukee saved its pair for the seventh, when Bauers finished his marathon at-bat with a 412-foot go-ahead homer and Mitchell immediately followed with Snell’s last pitch over the fence.
Bauer's at-bat is his second 10+ pitch at bat against a Dodgers starter this series in which the outcome of the at-bat likely changed the outcome of the game. In Game 2, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the mound, Bauers hung in for 12 pitches before drawing a walk. That was followed up by Christian Yelich's two-run single that knocked Yamamoto from the game.
Snell had been cruising before Milwaukee cracked the door open. He retired 14 straight batters, then watched his first pitch leave the yard and his last one do the same.
The loss puts the Dodgers in a brutal spot. They trail 3-0 in the best-of-seven series, a deficit only the 2004 Boston Red Sox have ever erased in major league history. The last time Los Angeles was down 3-0 in a best-of-seven postseason series was when the Baltimore Orioles finished off a sweep in the 1966 World Series.
Snell’s October job description is obvious. The Dodgers barely used him in the regular season, with only nine games, because this is why they have him.
They need him for nights like this. Instead, the two-time Cy Young Award winner came up short again.
Over his last four playoff starts, Snell has given up 21 hits, 15 earned runs and 14 walks in 21.1 innings. His 6.33 ERA and 1.64 WHIP in that stretch are nowhere near what Los Angeles expects when it hands him the ball in October.
Toronto showed how fast Snell can be knocked off track. Milwaukee took that same formula, added its own firepower, and left the Dodgers hanging by a thread.
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