Dodgers biggest advantages are disappearing at the worst possible time
MILWAUKEE – One by one, their advantages are vanishing.Their edge in starting pitching?Marginalized by the Brewers’ lineup.Their superior offensive firepower?Held without a home run in the first two games of this National League Championship Series.Shohei Ohtani?Reduced to being blown away by mid-90s fastballs.The Dodgers are behind by two games in this race to four wins, and in the wake of their 7-4 defeat in Game 2 at American Family Field, they find themselves praying the Brewers will miraculously run out of gas before they reach the finish line.Before the Dodgers can win this series, they will have to get back into it first.They will play at home over the next three games.They have Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow lined up to pitch in Games 3 and 4, respectively. But that alone doesn’t guarantee anything, not with how the Brewers are playing.
They have an unspectacular but industrious offense.They have a relentless bullpen.
And they display the kind of edge that makes it obvious they believe they can take down the two-time defending World Series champions.If there was a game the Brewers were expected to drop, it was Game 2.Yoshinobu Yamamoto was pitching for the Dodgers.The Brewers didn’t just beat Yamamoto.
They wore him down and forced the Dodgers to empty their bullpen.The result was an unmitigated disaster for the Dodgers, who have made it an annual tradition to have the Japanese right-hander bail them out of trouble at this time of the year.The Dodgers were intimately familiar with the script from which the Brewers read.Run up the pitch count of the starter.Force him out of the game early.Get into the other team’s bullpen.Only this time, the Dodgers weren’t the team executing the game plan.They were the team against which the plan was being executed, and Yamamoto was the target of the attack.Instead of a big game they anticipated from Yamamoto, the Dodgers received a big flop.Yamamoto struck out Jackson Chourio to start the bottom of the first...