The Blue Jays just laid the roadmap for Brewers' NLCS Game 3 plans

An intimidating assignment awaits the Milwaukee Brewers. With their NLCS opponent, the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers, taking each of the first two games of the series at American Family Field in convincing fashion, Pat Murphy's squad now must win at least two of three games played at Dodger Stadium in coming days just to return the series to the Good Land. That's right, in order for Tuesday night's disheartening loss to Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Dodgers to not be the Brew Crew's final home game of the 2025 season, they will have to turn things around quickly.

Fortunately for the Brewers, it's baseball, and October baseball at that, where anything can happen, even the toppling of a giant like the Dodgers, whose success is making experts of the game question whether or not the league's spending policies need to be reshaped.

However, turning around the series requires more than just a win on Thursday evening, when the Brewers and Dodgers square off for Game 3 of the NLCS at 5:08 p.m. CT. No, if the Brewers want any chance of advancing to their second World Series in franchise history, they need to not only win Game 3, but also do so in a manner that returns momentum to their side. Over in the American League, the Toronto Blue Jays did just that in their emphatic win over the Seattle Mariners last night.

Brewers need a momentum swing resembling the one that the Blue Jays created in Game 3 of the ALCS

Prior to last night, the Blue Jays found themselves in the exact same spot as the Brewers. The top seed in the American League, Toronto knocked off a division rival, the New York Yankees, in the Division Series, before dropping each of the first two games of the League Championship Series at home, in large part due to their offense going quiet. They gave a Mariners ballclub, who has never been to a World Series in their 48-year history, all of the momentum as the series headed to T-Mobile Park in Seattle for Game 3.

In front of an energetic crowd, hoping to will their team to the Fall Classic on sheer crowd noise and adrenaline alone, the Mariners jumped out to an early lead; Julio Rodríguez slugged his third homerun of the postseason to give Seattle a 2-0 advantage in the first inning. However, that lead didn't last long, as the Blue Jays hung a five-spot on Seattle's talented Game 3 starter, George Kirby, in the third inning, and didn't stop scoring until the final scoreboard read 13-4 in Toronto's favor.

For a team that was outscored by nine runs at home in the first two games of the series, winning Game 3 by nine runs was exactly what the Blue Jays needed. Now, after the Mariners felt like the series was in the bag, they are fearful of what Toronto's offense will do in Game 4 tonight, with a similar performance inevitably tying the series at two games apiece.

The Brewers don't need to score 13 runs tonight; that much would be impressive against any pitcher, let alone the 6'8" All-Star Tyler Glasnow. However, a win of a similar fashion to Toronto's, one that makes clear that the series is far from over despite the first two games suggesting that it is, would be far more encouraging than, say, a one-run win, where the Brewers capitalize on a mistake that the Dodgers are unlikely to make again. In other words, Milwaukee needs a convincing win tonight.

Before last night, nearly every baseball fan, including those in Canada, believed that the Mariners making their first World Series appearance this year was a forgone conclusion, but after Toronto's offensive explosion in Puget Sound, the series feels more like a toss-up. If even a single person uses the word "toss-up" when referring to the NLCS after tonight's game, the Brewers will have done their job.