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Well, the Cubs are about as up against a wall as you can be in this here game of baseball, down 3-0 to a Dodgers team that had everything go right in Game 3. The Dodgers were all smiles in the top of the eight inning, on their way to a 6-1 win, and they should have been.
Coming back from a 3-0 hole in the playoffs has only happened once before (and Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts is intimately familiar with that particular event) so it’s not that the Cubs have no hope here, they just have very very little hope. Infinitesimal hope.
With the first three runs of the game coming in the form of solo home runs, Game 3 started out not only in a unique way but in a way that certainly gave the Cubs some hope.
They drew first blood in the game, against Yu Darvish nonetheless, with a Kyle Schwarber solo home run in the first inning. That would be the last run they scored.
The Dodgers answered in the second and third innings with two solo home runs of their own, from Andre Ethier and Chris Taylor respectively, to take the lead and they never gave it back.
They scored again in the fifth inning, when Chris Taylor hit a triple that brought Joc Pederson around to score to make things 3-1.
In the sixth, they added on to their tally in amazing fashion, when Yu Darvish got a postseason RBI. With two men on base, Kyle Hendricks was finally pulled and Carl Edwards Jr. came in to pitch.
He got one out but then walked a Austin Barnes to load the bases, and because Darvish was still so sharp on the mound he batted for himself after another out was recorded. So with two outs and the bases loaded, Darvish came to the plate — and Edwards threw him four straight balls to walk a run home.
YU. DARVISH. RBI.
Then, in the eighth, with players on first and third, Willson Contreras and Mike Montgomery got crossed up on a third strike and it hit Contreras in the arm and skittered away from the plate. Logan Forsythe would score to make it 5-1, and after being moved to third on that play Austin Barnes would score on a Kyle Farmer sac fly just one batter later to make things 6-1.
The Cubs threatened in the bottom of the ninth, teasing a comeback that wouldn’t happened and runs that wouldn’t score. Thanks to some shenanigans with the Wrigley Field ivy that gave them a ground rule double, they had runners on second and third with no outs and looked set to score at least one of them.
Instead, the recorded three outs in a row — two of them strikeouts — to lose their third game in a row again the Dodgers.
Darvish, besides getting an RBI, went 6 1⁄3 innings for the win, allowing six hits but only one run and one walk while striking out seven Cubs. Kyle Hendricks got through five innings, also allowing hits but letting up four runs off those hits, giving up two home runs, and striking out five.
The Cubs will have to rally like they’ve (literally) never rallied before to get back to the World Series, but they did just win one after all so it’s likely people won’t feel too bad if that doesn’t happen.