best-of-seven series

Once brimming with life, the Dodgers’ historic quest has curled up into a withered heap.

The three-peat is dying.

The three-peat is slowly, agonizingly having the life squeezed out of it by a collection of hardscrabble Midwesterners with no regard for stardom or status.

Two games into the National League Championship Series, the three-peat was formally placed on life support Monday after the mighty Dodgers lost a second consecutive game to those little giants known as Milwaukee Brewers.

Shohei Ohtani strikes out during the sixth inning

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

This time the score was 7-4 after another devastating night at American Family Field, and now the Dodgers trail two games to none in a best-of-seven series that appears beyond their control.

For a second consecutive game, their ace was knocked out. For a second consecutive game, their powerful offense petered out.

For a second consecutive game, they looked like a weary, aging band of fallen stars that had stumbled into a surprisingly deep pothole and had no idea how to climb out.

For the Dodgers to win this series and continue their journey toward a third consecutive championship, they must beat the Brewers in four of the next five games, the last two of which would be played in Milwaukee.

It doesn’t seem likely. It doesn’t even seem possible.

Not once in in their previous two title seasons did they trail anybody two games to none, and they certainly don’t seem equipped to survive it now.

Look at how they lost Monday. On second thought, don’t look, because what you’ll see bears scant resemblance to the swaggering, self-assured Dodgers of postseasons past.

They pitched their October ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and he’s always saved them, right? Not this time. He couldn’t make it out of the third inning, battered by scattered wildness and scathing swings.

They were handed runs on two errors by the Brewers’ shaky rookie starter, Logan Henderson, and they’ve always capitalized, right? Not this time. They couldn’t make the Brewers pay for their clumsiness, managing just three hits, the slumps of their superstars ever deepening, Will Smith and Shohei Ohtani becoming absolute offensive liabilities.

Even with all this, they sent Henderson packing after four innings and took aim at a heavily used Brewers bullpen and surely they could summon the firepower to send at least one of those relievers running, right? Not this time, as four Brewers relievers set a postseason record by pitching five perfect innings.

The last two innings being a sad microcosm of the previous seven.

Entering the eighth inning, the Dodgers trailed only 4-3 and had the top of their order coming up in what still could have been a trademark Dodgers October comeback.

Mookie Betts strikes out in the eighth inning.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Not so fast.

Facing Abner Uribe, Mookie Betts struck out. Facing Aaron Ashby, Freddie Freeman struck out and Teoscar Hernández grounded out. Yeah, with perhaps their season on the line, they couldn’t even get the ball out of the infield.

The Brewers, of course, sealed the deal with two runs on three singles in the bottom of the eighth, and the Dodgers went meekly 1-2-3 in the ninth.

It was surely, truly painful for Dodgers fans to witness the final out, a strikeout by … yep, last season’s World Series hero Miguel Rojas.

The three-peat is dying, and it’s almost unbearable to watch.

Having both of their aces beaten in Milwaukee, the Dodgers will come home with Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow starting in Games 3 and 4, respectively.

In any other scenario, both pitchers are aces as well, and the Dodgers would have a huge advantage. But neither pitcher has looked great in the postseason, and both will be pitching while bearing the weight of a stressed-out Dodgers Nation.

“Yeah, it’s certainly a challenge,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I think that if you look at Game 3, I like where we’re at as far as in a vacuum, who’s pitching, where our bullpen is at, being at home. Then you’ve got to go from there.”

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about Game 2 is that the Dodgers led … then blew the lead … then led … then blew the lead … then led …then blew the lead.

The Brewers’ final tying blow came on William Contreras’ fifth-inning homer against Kris Bubic, who has struggled in this postseason and perhaps shouldn’t have been in the game. The Brewers’ final go-ahead run came in the sixth on Contreras’ bases-loaded single after Brice Turang surprisingly was intentionally walked in front of him.

But neither of those plate appearances was the game’s most important. The key moment that actually didn’t score any runs was Jake Bauers’ 12-pitch walk in the third inning.

That loaded the bases, and Christian Yelich then greeted an exhausted Yamamoto with a two-run single.

“Yeah, it just got to a certain point where it was straight compete mode, a little bit of like blackout, just kind of in the flow a little bit competing,” Bauers said. “It was fun. It was a fun at-bat. I knew that was a moment where the guys needed something, the team needed something.”

Funny, but those are the kind of things Dodgers hitters used to say, back when they were confident and full of life.

But Smith is one for 23, and Ohtani is three for 19, and the Dodgers have just one extra-base hit against the Brewers, and nobody is saying anything about the fun of competing.

In fact, things are so lousy, Roberts appeared to call out Smith for not using the ABS challenge in the early innings against Turang. Both times strikes were called balls, and Turang took advantage of the missed calls to double and walk and score twice.

Yamamoto also seemed annoyed that his catcher could be letting his batting woes affect his work behind the plate.

“Obviously in that spot, Will didn’t feel like it was a strike, but obviously if you look back, that’s a called third strike, he doesn’t double, and that changes the outing,” Roberts said of Turang’s first-inning at-bat.

Roberts still has hope. But he’s not looking past Game 3.

“As far as can we do it, absolutely, but it’s just you want to get that first one,” he said.

Dodger Stadium will be filled with fans in what could be a celebration. Or a wake.

MILWAUKEE — The Dodgers spent $163 million on the back end of their bullpen the past two years. The Milwaukee Brewers did not.

So two games into the National League Championship Series, guess which team’s relief corps has been lights out and which one has been lit up? (Spoiler alert: it’s not the team with all the money.)

Milwaukee sent a parade of four relievers to the mound for a second straight game Monday, and for a second straight game they didn’t give up a run, retiring the last 15 Dodgers in order in a 7-4 win that gives Milwaukee a commanding 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series, which moves to Dodger Stadium for Game 3 on Wednesday.

The Brewers’ bullpen has pitched 9 2/3 innings in the series, yielding just two hits — both off Abner Uribe — and three walks. That’s it. Both wins have gone to relievers, DL Hall in the opener and JoJo Romero in Game 2.

Dodger relievers, meanwhile, have pitched 9 1/3 innings in the two games, giving up four runs on nine hits. Reliever Brock Stewart took the loss Monday.

In a series that’s rapidly shaping up as a battle of the bullpens, the Dodgers clearly aren’t getting what they paid for.

“I don’t have an answer,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shrugged when asked why the Dodgers relievers have struggled while the Brewers have shined. “I know that they’ve got good arms; so do we. I think they’re just finding ways to win pitches better than we are.”

Slugger Max Muncy has a theory on the same question.

“They’re really good,” he said.

The Brewers’ 48 bullpen wins was the most in baseball during the regular season and its 3.40 ERA was best in the National League. And it has been even better in the postseason, giving up just one earned run in 28 2/3 innings against the Dodgers and San Diego Padres. In the divisional era (since 1969), only the 1991 Minnesota Twins have a lower bullpen ERA through six playoff games and with a reliever earning the victory in all five of Milwaukee’s postseason wins, the Brewers have done something only the 2014 Kansas City Royals had done previously.

“There’s a reason they’re where they’re at right now and the bullpen’s a big piece of that,” Muncy said. “If there is a positive, you can say that a lot of our guys are starting to get looks at their back-end guys. But when they’re as good as they are, I don’t know how much that helps.

“They’re all throwing 100 [mph] plus and they all have really nasty stuff.”

Especially Aaron Ashby, who has pitched in both games, holding the Dodgers to a walk in 3 2/3 innings, striking out three. He’s the Brewers’ best-paid reliever, earning $5.5 million this season.

The Dodgers have three relievers making at least twice that — and one of them, Blake Treinen, didn’t even make the postseason roster. One of the others, Tanner Scott, gave up twice as many runs in his first postseason appearance as the Brewers’ bullpen has given up this month.

Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Abner Uribe celebrates after completing the seventh inning of Game 2 of the NLCS.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“They attack the hitters,” Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernández said of Milwaukee’s relievers. “They throw strikes. They got good stuff. They throw hard. We’ve just got to do a better job.”

Hernández then echoed Muncy in pointing out the Dodgers have now seen six of Milwaukee’s nine relievers, with Ashby and Uribe throwing in both games. And while the Dodgers haven’t done anything against them yet, that familiarity could help going forward.

“We know what we’re going to get,” Hernández said.

Brewers manager Pat Murphy conceded the point — sort of.

“Familiarity, as the numbers tell us, does provide an edge,” he said. “So what we try to do is make sure they don’t face the same guys the next time they pitch if they’re one-inning guys.

“Can’t always do that.”

Sometimes you can, though. Uribe, who has appeared in all six Brewers games this postseason, has already faced eight Dodger hitters in the series, but only one of them, Andy Pages, twice. And when he does face someone a second time, Murphy said with a smile, who’s to say he’ll him pitch the same way?

“Uribe might have something up his sleeve based on how those other times went,” he said. “Like, well, I never gave him this.’”

That would count as a surprise. However the dominant performance of the Brewers’ bargain-basement bullpen would not. Because even in baseball, the Dodgers are finding out, there are some things money can’t buy.