The Milwaukee Brewers are going to the World Series. They beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-4 Thursday night at Dodger Stadium, wrapping up a four-game sweep of the National League Championship Series. It is the franchise’s first National League pennant and its first trip to the Fall Classic since 1982, 44 years ago, when the Brewers reached it as an American League team and lost to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games.
It also ended the Dodgers’ bid for a third straight championship. Los Angeles swept Milwaukee in last year’s NLCS, and the Brewers became the first team in major league history to sweep an opponent that had swept it the previous postseason.
Down 4-0, then a takeover
The Dodgers looked in control early. Starter Tyler Glasnow retired the first 10 Brewers he faced, and in the second inning Shohei Ohtani, batting leadoff, hit a three-run homer after Andy Pages’ RBI single. It put Los Angeles up 4-0. It was Ohtani’s first home run since Aug. 18, according to MLB.com.
That was the last time the Dodgers scored. Milwaukee answered in the fourth, when William Contreras and Jake Bauers hit back-to-back ground-rule doubles to make it 4-2. In the fifth, Sal Frelick walked, stole a base and scored on David Hamilton’s single. Bauers then drew a bases-loaded walk to tie the game at 4. Glasnow was out of the game before the fifth inning ended.
In the sixth, Garrett Mitchell fell behind 0-2 against Tanner Scott, then hit a 409-foot home run to center for a 5-4 lead, according to the Associated Press. Hamilton added a two-out solo shot off Edwin Díaz in the ninth for the final margin. JoJo Romero got the win. Aaron Ashby pitched the last three innings without allowing a run for the save, stranding the tying run in scoring position in both the seventh and eighth before Kiké Hernández lined out to left to end it.
The crowd at Dodger Stadium was 49,104.
“We weren’t coming in to play patty-cake,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said afterward, according to the AP. “They may have a bunch of Hall of Famers, but we’ve got a bunch of gamers.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of the Brewers: “Those guys played flawless.”
Jake Bauers was named NLCS Most Valuable Player.
How the sweep happened
Game 1 (Sunday, Oct. 11, Milwaukee): Brewers 2, Dodgers 1. Pages’ RBI single put Los Angeles ahead in the second against Brewers starter Jacob Misiorowski. Brice Turang tied it with a home run off Tarik Skubal in the fourth, and Luis Lara’s single in the fifth scored Mitchell for the go-ahead run. The Brewers’ bullpen held on after Misiorowski left in the fifth.
Game 2 (Monday, Oct. 12, Milwaukee): Brewers 7, Dodgers 4. Bauers worked a 12-pitch walk with the bases loaded in the third inning against Yoshinobu Yamamoto, his longest plate appearance and the longest Yamamoto had ever thrown to a batter, according to MLB.com. Christian Yelich followed with a two-run single that put Milwaukee ahead 3-2 and ended Yamamoto’s night. Contreras tied it at 4-4 with a homer in the fifth, then drove in the go-ahead run in the sixth. Four Brewers relievers retired the last 15 Dodgers hitters in order. Murphy said of Bauers’ at-bat, “That changes the game,” according to MLB.com.
Game 3 (Wednesday, Oct. 14, Los Angeles): Brewers 6, Dodgers 2. Jackson Chourio homered on the first pitch of the game, his sixth home run of this postseason, a Brewers record, according to Yahoo Sports. Robert Gasser threw five scoreless innings. After the Dodgers took a 2-1 lead in the sixth on Will Smith’s double, Bauers hit a go-ahead, 412-foot home run on the 11th pitch of his at-bat against Blake Snell in the seventh. Two pitches later, Mitchell homered again, a 428-foot shot that ended Snell’s night, and Trevor Megill finished with the last four outs. “I was looking for a fastball on the inner lane the whole time,” Bauers said, according to Sports Illustrated.
Game 4 (Thursday, Oct. 15, Los Angeles): Brewers 6, Dodgers 4. Described above.
Why it worked
Milwaukee won the series by never giving the Dodgers time to settle in. By my arithmetic from the four final scores, the Brewers outscored Los Angeles 21-11. The Dodgers led at some point in every game, according to the AP, and lost all four. Bauers’ long at-bats in Games 2 and 3 turned both games, and Milwaukee erased deficits in Games 2, 3 and 4.
The bullpen was a big part of that. Through Game 2, Milwaukee relievers had allowed one earned run in 28 playoff innings, a 0.31 ERA, according to the report on that game. Thursday, Ashby’s three innings closed it out after Romero took the win.
The Dodgers’ offense never found its power. The AP noted they had not homered through three games, which means Ohtani’s three-run shot on Thursday was their first of the series, by my reading of the Game 4 scoring. The Dodgers’ only four runs that night all came in the second inning.
What it means
The Brewers won a majors-best 103 games in the regular season, according to the AP, and now will play for the franchise’s first championship. They lost the 1982 World Series to the Cardinals in seven games.
Milwaukee opens the World Series at home Friday, Oct. 23, on FOX, with a week to rest. Its opponent is the winner of the American League Championship Series between Cleveland and Tampa Bay, which is still in progress.
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