If the sky feels like it’s falling for Los Angeles Dodgers fans right now, you can’t really blame them. After all, this is literally unprecedented territory: A second straight loss to the Milwaukee Brewers to open the NLCS has L.A. headed back home down 0-2, the first time they’ve trailed a postseason series by more than one game since 2023.
Even more distressing than the hole the Dodgers have dug for themselves is how they’ve done it. A wild pitch and two throwing errors from Brewers starter Logan Henderson essentially spotted L.A. all four of their runs; they managed just three hits all night, 24 hours after scoring one run in Game 1. Tarik Skubal and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, twin pillars of their super-rotation, combined to last just 7.2 innings.
Baseball’s best roster is springing leaks all over the place, and Milwaukee is running circles around a team that suddenly looks every bit its age. This is a crisis these Dodgers have never faced before, and if the stars below don’t turn it around soon, their three-peat bid won’t even make it back to the World Series.
Should the Dodgers bench Shohei Ohtani in NLCS Game 3?
That sounds blasphemous, and I don’t envy the position Dave Roberts is in right now. But it’s impossible to watch Ohtani at the plate right now and think he’s anywhere near his usual self physically. Not only did the four-time MVP go 0-for-4 on Monday night, but it was an ugly 0-for-4, full of swings lacking confidence and expanding the zone.
Obviously sending Ohtani to the bench is the nuclear option, one that the Dodgers won’t take unless they feel like they absolutely have to. But you’re now two losses away from going home for the winter. If Ohtani can’t help this team snap out of its offensive funk — and all evidence suggests he can’t — then at some point you have to consider giving youngster Josue De Paula a start. That almost certainly won’t come in Game 3, but Ohtani’s leash can’t extend forever.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s big-game magic finally wore off
Amid all the uncertainty surrounding this team’s postseason performance so far, Yamamoto was the great constant, the one thing Roberts and Co. could bank on. Until Monday, that is, when the righty got saddled with by far the worst October outing of his career.
And really, it’s not even that he didn’t pitch well; his stuff looked about as good as ever, even if his location wasn’t quite as pinpoint accurate as we’ve grown accustomed to. But Milwaukee made Yamamoto work for every single thing, spoiling tough pitch after tough pitch until he eventually blinked. Under normal circumstances, L.A. could weather a dud from its ace. Right now, though, there’s no margin for error, and Yamamoto couldn’t answer the bell.
Freddie Freeman is showing his age at the worst time
Freeman homered twice in the NLDS against Atlanta and put a good swing on a ball that Sal Frelick snared at the warning track in Game 2. Clearly he’s still got something left in the tank at age 37. But he’s done essentially nothing at the plate so far in this series, and it’s hard not to feel like he simply hasn’t been up to the high-octane stuff that the Brewers pitching staff has been coming with.
Freeman has for so long been the talisman for this lineup in the playoffs, the guy you could always count on to at least put together a professional at-bat no matter the situation. If that fail-safe no longer exists, this team is in trouble, because it’s built around its tentpole stars delivering as such.
Are Mookie Betts’ days as a star behind him?
Speaking of which: Is this just who Betts is now? He once again tallied a hit and a walk in Game 2, just like he did in Game 1, and manufactured a first-inning run thanks to some shrewd base-running. But his impact feels decidedly muted; his ability to do damage on contact, in particular, isn’t anywhere close to what we’re used to seeing from him.
And at this point, it’s hard to feel like it’s just a blip. Betts saw some of his power return this season after a down 2025, but everything from his bat speed to his walk rate is in decline, and it’s been a long time now since we saw him produce like a former MVP. He doesn’t have a single extra-base hit yet in these playoffs, and that’s simply not good enough.
Will Smith can’t continue in the middle of this lineup
Smith got dropped down to fifth in the lineup on Monday, and responded by going 0-for-4 yet again, dropping his overall line this postseason to 1-for-23 with a walk. I understand the good will that Smith has engendered during his Dodgers tenure, but at what point does Roberts decide that enough is enough? It’s not like Smith is putting together competitive at-bats and hitting the ball hard but just getting unlucky. He looks lost up there right now, and while Dalton Rushing’s injury leaves L.A. with only Hunter Feduccia as a backup, Smith needs to at least be dropped to the bottom third of the lineup.
Dave Roberts needs to take drastic measures with this lineup
Which brings us to Roberts himself, even though he’s admittedly far from the first person Dodgers fans should be blaming right now. He also needs to start acting with a bit more urgency. Why, exactly, has De Paula seen so little playing time with L.A. desperate for any sort of spark offensively? Why has he been so reluctant to drastically shake up an underperforming lineup? Why isn’t someone like Jack Dreyer on this NLCS roster when the Dodgers’ middle-relief situation is sketchy at best (more on that in just a moment)?
Again, Roberts can’t swing the bat for his highly paid stars, and it’s not his fault that neither Skubal or Yamamoto were able to put the team on their back. But an 0-2 hole will be a big test of his ability to navigate the Dodgers through adversity, and make hard decisions in the face of his most famous players.
Kris Bubic and the Dodgers’ middle relief hasn’t been good enough
The Dodgers actually took a 4-3 lead into the bottom of the fifth inning, but Yamamoto’s early exit meant that Los Angeles had too many innings to cover — and would have to expose the underbelly of a thin bullpen. That went about as you’d expect, as Bubic gave up a game-tying homer to William Contreras and Brock Stewart gave up the go-ahead run one frame later.
Roberts just doesn’t have enough trustworthy arms back there right now. If he’s forced to hand the ball to someone not named Edwin Diaz, Tanner Scott, Evan Phillips, Alex Vesia or Edgardo Henriquez, you don’t feel great about the outcome. That’s a failure of roster building, and it could come back to haunt Los Angeles again as Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow struggle to go deep in games.
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