It could all be over soon for the Los Angeles Dodgers, staring down the prospect of a long winter that might be even longer than usual with the anticipation of an owner's lockout on the horizon.
Yet the Dodgers hold out hope for a turnaround, and the analysts for one of their broadcast partners seem to maintain the same high expectations for the two-time defending World Series champions. Or maybe it's just low expectations for their opponent in the National League Championship Series.
For the seventh consecutive game, the team on the "MLB on FOX" pregame show prior to Wednesday's Game 3 picked the Milwaukee Brewers to lose, as noted by X user @JustHxnter. As has become their custom, the Brewers won, 6-2, to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the series.
Despite what seem like relatively comfortable final scores for the Brewers in Games 2 and 3, every game of the series has been mostly competitive. None would be considered a blowout and one or two plays might have swung the advantage for LA.
But the discrepancy feels wider because while the Brewers' offense has flourished, the Dodgers' biggest bats have been largely silenced. Freddie Freeman has batted .091 through the first three games of the series; Kyle Tucker has batted .250; Shohei Ohtani has batted .222. That trio represents a huge chunk of the Dodgers' roster investment and are the first players the team is counting on to come through in big moments. Meanwhile, the Brewers clubbed three home runs off Dodgers starter Blake Snell in Game 3.
The series is close to over, but it's not completely over yet. No team except the 2004 Boston Red Sox has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in an MLB postseason series, but if any team is built to change that, it's the Dodgers. After proving the FOX team wrong, they now have an opportunity to prove them very, very right.