Dave Roberts' Blake Snell decision was the tip of the iceberg in mortifying Dodgers Game 3 loss

Dave Roberts has not been at his best in the NLCS, with the Los Angeles Dodgers facing the league-best Milwaukee Brewers in a best-of-seven that's making LA's NLDS against the Atlanta Braves look like the smallest of potatoes.

In Game 2, Roberts had Brock Stewart intentionally walk Brice Turang in the sixth to get to the Brewers' hottest hitter in William Contreras, for seemingly no other reason than that the righty-righty matchup looked favorable on paper. Contreras hit a go-ahead single on the first pitch Stewart served him.

That was small potatoes in contrast to Game 3, where Roberts seemed to make the worst possible decision at every conceivable turn. There is, of course, leaving Blake Snell in after he walked Andrew Vaughn to lead off the seventh, which then turned into a go-ahead, two-run homer for Jake Bauers ... and then a solo homer for Garrett Mitchell for some insurance.

The Dodgers went down 6-2, and their backs are now firmly against the wall. Roberts' Snell decision is the one that's going to be remembered least fondly, but there was a parade of other choices that all but doomed LA's three-peat hopes.

Dave Roberts' Blake Snell decision is obscuring smaller mistakes that doomed the Dodgers in NLCS Game 3

Roberts' next greatest sin, perhaps, was burning Josue De Paula in the bottom of the sixth. After Will Smith broke out of his slumber to hit a bases-loaded, go-ahead double, Roberts replaced Miguel Rojas with left Josue De Paula to face righty Abner Uribe. Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy countered by bringing in lefty DL Hall, so Roberts figured he would do play 3D chess and instead offered up righty Kiké Hernández, rendering De Paula unavailable for the rest of the game. Hernández struck out swinging.

There's the fact that Roberts started Tommy Edman, who had a single hit coming into Game 3. He went 0-for-4 on Wednesday night. There's the fact that he put Justin Wrobleski, who had a 6.13 ERA in the second half and was briefly demoted to Triple-A, in the game with the Dodgers down by two. Wrobleski quickly threw a wild pitch that allowed the Brewers' fifth run to score.

It might be going a little too far to say that this showing was legacy-threatening ... but it sure does feel like that right now. Roberts, no doubt, will be appropriately self-critical if the Dodgers' postseason road comes to an end after this series, but that doesn't erase how inexplicable his decisions in Game 3 were, and that they, alone, might've doomed LA.

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