NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: DODGERS VS BREWERS

October 12, 2026

Dave Roberts

American Family Field

Los Angeles Dodgers

Postgame 2 Press Conference

Brewers - 7, Dodgers - 4

Q. What did you think of Yamamoto today? How did he pitch?

DAVE ROBERTS: Obviously wasn't sharp. Just wasn't sharp today. I think that you can see from that Contreras at-bat in the third inning, that really stressed him. You've got to give him a lot of credit.

Then you follow that up with the Bauers at-bat, and the pitch count certainly crept up. At that point in time, then you've got Yelich, call it 70 pitches, and trying to think about maybe getting him through it as being one of your guys to kind of keep going to shorten the game and give us a little bit of length.

At that point in time, once the breaking ball -- he yanks the breaker, Yelich gets a hit, we've got to find a way to put it out and give ourselves a chance.

Tonight, he just didn't have it tonight, which is very rare.

Q. The first two at-bats by Turang, they were pitches, very close called balls that weren't challenged. Do you think --

DAVE ROBERTS: And they were strikes?

Q. They might have been. Do you think that they should have been challenged?

DAVE ROBERTS: Yeah, I didn't appreciate that. Obviously Will's got a great view back there, as all catchers do. You try to -- as an offense, you try to defer to the catcher to save those challenges.

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.

But I'm not back there. So it's one of those things that you've got to kind of trust the players to make those decisions when they get in those spots.

Q. When you went to Roki, were you planning to get more than one inning out of him? Why is he only a one-inning option?

DAVE ROBERTS: To me, you're trying to cover six-plus innings. For me, I felt Bubic had 4 out of 5 left-handed hitters, and that's a perfect spot for him. I knew they weren't going to for him, and you got Roki for an inning, and then you still have a guy -- in my opinion, you've got a great spot for Bubic. Tries to go with the fastball up to Contreras and then hits a homer.

That's a decision I made, and we just didn't -- again, that's his lane to be able to go out there and throw up a zero.

Q. The next inning, when you're choosing between Brock facing Contreras, maybe going to Tanner early, how did you view that situation and what went into the ultimate decision there?

DAVE ROBERTS: It just felt like trying to put Contreras on the ground. I just felt that if we forgo Brice right there and then we have a chance to put him on the ground and get a double play ball, but what these guys do, and even later on in the game, Turang just puts the ball in play. Contreras didn't hit the ball hard. He flared it out to left field, drove in a run, and that's what they do.

I think for me just in total they saw a ton more pitches than we did. They had much better at-bats than we did across the board top to bottom, and then they put the ball in play, created havoc, and that's what they do, and we didn't do that.

That's the difference in the game. I think that there's certainly a lot to unpack, but they did what needed to do tonight.

Q. Why are you guys having so much trouble against their bullpen especially?

DAVE ROBERTS: Well, we threw out three hits tonight. So it was some of the starter, some of the bullpen. I don't have an answer why. 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.

Sometimes you've got to find a way to get a base hit, and those guys, there's a lot of balls that weren't hit hard tonight but found the outfield grass. That's hitting.

Q. Down to what do you need from Snell and Glasnow going forward?

DAVE ROBERTS: I think it's just one of those things that you need Snell to go out there and give us some length, give us a typical Blake Snell outing and let us deploy guys with a lead.

I know Blake has a bad taste in his mouth from that last outing against the Braves. So you're going to see a locked-in, focused Snell.

On the other side of things, we've got to support him offensively too.

Q. Similarly, what do you make of the challenge going back home down 2-0 having lost with Skubal and Yamamoto here?

DAVE ROBERTS: Yeah, it's certainly a challenge. I think that, if you look 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.

But as far as can we do it, absolutely, but it's just you want to get that first one.