LOS ANGELES — Tommy Edman hit a tiebreaking single off hard-throwing rookie Jacob Misiorowski in a two-run sixth inning, and the Dodgers beat the Brewers, 3-1, on Thursday to take a 3-0 lead in their NL Championship Series.
Los Angeles moved within one win of becoming the first defending champion to reach the World Series since the 2009 Phillies. No team has won consecutive titles since the 1998-2000 Yankees took three in a row.
Game 4 is Friday. Only one Major League Baseball team has overcame a 3-0 postseason deficit, the 2004 Red Sox against the Yankees.
Shohei Ohtani tripled off Andy Ashby to start the bottom of the first and scored on Mookie Betts’s double to put the Dodgers ahead, but Jake Bauers tied the score with an RBI single in the second.
That was the only run allowed by Tyler Glasnow, who has combined with Ohtani, Blake Snell, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto to give Dodgers starters a 1.54 postseason ERA during an 8-1 postseason spurt.
Misiorowski replaced Ashby with two on and one out in the first, and struck out Edman and Teoscar Hernández. The 23-year-old righthander topped 100 miles per hour with 17 pitches and struck out a Brewers postseason rookie record nine, but his fastball velocity dropped to 98-99 m.p.h. in the sixth.
Will Smith singled with one out on an slider in the middle of the strike zone and Freddie Freeman walked after falling behind 1-2 in the count. Edman, who had struck out twice against Misiorowski, lined a low slider into center, and Smith scored for a 2-1 lead as Sal Frelick made a week throw.
Abner Uribe relieved and struck out Hernández, then made a wild pickoff throw past first as Freeman scored, the second straight game with an error by the Brewers closer.
Glasnow allowed three hits and three walks in 5⅔ innings while striking out eight, leaving to a standing ovation from the crowd of 51,251.
Alex Vesia followed Glasnow and got two outs for his second win of the playoffs.
Roki Sasaki pitched a perfect ninth for his third save of the postseason, finishing a four-hitter. Dodgers relievers allowed one hit of 3⅓ innings.
Milwaukee, which swept the Dodgers, 6-0, during the regular season, has lost its last 10 postseason road games dating to 2018. The Brewers have three runs and nine hits in the series, and dating to the Division Series finale the Dodgers are the first team to allow no runs or one run and four hits or fewer in four straight postseason games.
Ohtani, 1-0 with a 4.50 ERA in the postseason, makes his second postseason start in Game 4 after the righthander struck out nine over six innings against the Phillies in the NL Division Series. The two-way star was 1 for 4 with two strikeouts and is hitting .158 (6 for 38) with one homer and six RBIs in nine postseason games. The Brewers have not announced a starter.
