LOS ANGELES – Jake Bauers almost quit baseball a couple of years ago, but he didn’t give up.
Now he’s showing the same mettle in the National League Championship Series.
After his 12-pitch walk turned NLCS Game 2 in the Brewers’ favor, Bauers was at it again in the seventh inning of Game 3, when he connected for a go-ahead, two-run home run on the 11th pitch of a battle with Dodgers starter Blake Snell.
Then Garrett Mitchell followed with another home run for a 4-2 lead, a stunning turn of events after the Dodgers had rallied for their first two runs of the night in the bottom of the sixth to hand Snell a 2-1 lead going to the seventh. When Andrew Vaughn opened the inning with a walk, it snapped Snell’s streak of 14 batters in a row retired.
Then came Bauers, who took a called first strike before beginning to battle. He looked at two straight balls out of the zone, then swung and missed at a changeup. With two strikes, he fouled off a slider and a changeup. After Ball 3, he fouled off a four-seam fastball, another changeup and another slider.
Whatever Snell threw at him, Bauers fought it off.
On the 11th pitch, Snell chose the fastball. Bauers didn’t miss it, sending his first home run of this postseason a Statcast-projected 412 feet to the right field seats.
It was the sixth home run on the 11th pitch of an at-bat or later in the postseason since pitch-tracking began in 1988. And the Brewers weren't done.
When Mitchell followed with another homer to knock Snell out of the game, the Brewers had their third set of back-to-back postseason home runs in franchise history. Bauers and Sal Frelick were the most recent duo in Game 3 of the 2023 NL Wild Card Series, and Orlando Arcia and Keon Broxton did it in Game 3 of the 2018 NLDS.