Milwaukee Sweeps The Champs: 3 Takeaways From The Brewers’ Game 4 Win Over Dodgers

Los Angeles (Uniqlo Field at Dodger Stadium) – Get the brooms out. The Brewers just sent a powerful message to the rest of baseball. Milwaukee swept the back-to-back defending-champion Dodgers and advanced to the World Series for the first time since 1982. The National League Championship Series sweep ended the Dodgers’ season and obliterated their season-long objective of a three-peat. The decisive victory also announced that Milwaukee belongs among baseball’s elite. For so long, October success was never a sure thing for these Brewers. As dominant as they were in the regular season, this was the first time in the postseason that they didn’t buckle against top contenders. Finally, Milwaukee showcased the same sense of complete control that it showed throughout the regular season in October. With the win, the Brewers became the first team in MLB history to sweep a postseason series against the team that swept them the previous year. Here are our takeaways from Game 4: Staring at a daunting four-run deficit, the Brewers did what they have done so many times this season. No, they didn’t panic. They didn’t tense up and forget their approach, either. Undaunted, they put their heads down and got to work. Who else but first baseman Jake Bauers got the Brewers on the board with a two-run, ground-rule double off Dodgers starter Tyler Glasnow in the fourth inning? Before that big swing, the top of Milwaukee’s order did its part. Second baseman Brice Turang drew a walk. Catcher William Contreras put Turang on third with a ground-rule double to left. And then Bauers got both of them home with yet another huge at-bat in this series. By the time the fourth inning was over, the Brewers had trimmed their deficit to 4-2. Much more manageable. Milwaukee kept the pressure up in the fifth, this time with the bottom of the order getting things started. Sal Frelick drew a one-out walk, stole second base, and No. 9 hitter David Hamilton ripped an RBI single up the middle to score Frelick. Los Angeles led by just one run, 4-3. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had seen enough. Once gifted with an early 4-0 lead, Glasnow walked off the mound with the tension mounting at Chavez Ravine. In came right-handed reliever Evan Phillips, who couldn’t find the strike zone against the heart of Milwaukee’s order. After falling behind on Turang, 3-0, Phillips intentionally walked him in lieu of facing Contreras. The Brewers backstop drew a walk and loaded the bases for none other than Bauers. At that point, it would’ve been surprising if Bauers didn’t come through. After drawing a 12-pitch walk against Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 2 and crushing a go-ahead, two-run home run on the 11th pitch of the at-bat against Blake Snell in Game 3, this was the easiest run Bauers manufactured in Game 4. He drew a four-pitch walk against Phillips and tied the game at 4-4, completing the Brewers’ comeback with a slow and steady ease that has become Milwaukee’s identity. – Deesha Thosar After the Dodgers fell into a 2-0 hole in the NLCS in Milwaukee, third baseman Max Muncy called his shot. Not for him, but for his struggling teammate. Shohei Ohtani had started the postseason hitting .150 with no extra-base hits. At the time, he hadn’t homered since Aug. 18 and hadn’t knocked in a run in 24 games. An injured list stint and the break from a wild-card bye didn’t yield the October turnaround the Dodgers had hoped to see. His teammates still expected some fireworks at some point, though. “He knows we’re all still behind him,” Muncy said after the Dodgers’ Game 2 loss. “I can tell you right now, he’s going to get a big hit for us at some point, and that’s going to turn things.” Three days later, Ohtani delivered the swing that had eluded him since the middle of August and let out months’ worth of frustration as he flipped his bat and screamed toward his teammates while Dodger Stadium erupted. It was as animated as he has ever been, for good reason. As Ohtani’s slump continued, there was chatter of the Dodgers potentially giving him a game off to reset his ailing body. That was only going to happen if Ohtani felt he couldn’t play. And he insisted that he could, that his symptoms had subdued and that he was getting closer to where he wanted to be. “I would say the word I would use is conviction,” Roberts said on Tuesday. “He was very convicted that he is onto something mechanically. He was adamant that he can help us.” So, the Dodgers listened. And over the next 48 hours, Roberts saw a renewed level of focus from his star hitter. The big blast didn’t come in Game 3, when Ohtani dropped from the clean-up spot to sixth in the order, but he finished the day 1-for-2 with a walk. The single he hit left the bat at 113.5 mph, his hardest-hit ball since June. In Game 4, Roberts did not tell Ohtani that he would be returning to the leadoff spot before the Dodgers’ manager posted the lineup with the season on the line. But if their season was going to end Thursday night, Roberts was going to go down with his superstar at the top. “I think that the work, being here till 9 o’clock two nights ago working, the at-bats yesterday, for me, baking all that in, I felt, absolutely, put him at the top,” Roberts said on Thursday afternoon before Game 4. “I feel good about him taking five at-bats and giving us our best chance to win and produce runs.” The move paid off, as Ohtani gave the Dodgers their first home run of the series and an early 4-0 lead with a 428-foot blast. The Dodgers need all the early support they could get. – Rowan Kavner His teammates did the rest of the work. They came all the way back in the fourth and fifth innings after being down 4-0. Now, in the sixth, they just needed someone to step up and put them over the edge. Brewers center fielder Garrett Mitchell, one day after hitting a huge insurance-run homer off Blake Snell, was feeling good about his chances against Dodgers left-handed reliever Tanner Scott. Mitchell, putting on his best impression of Bauers, was patient. Leading off the sixth, he didn’t jump on the first pitch. He let the 91 mph slider from Scott clip the top of the zone for strike one. Then he chased the next slider and fell behind in the count, 0-2. But then Scott threw three consecutive balls and quickly lost his advantage. On a full count, Scott finally made a mistake he will be thinking about all offseason. Scott hurled a middle-middle 97 mph fastball over the plate, practically begging Mitchell to hit it out of the ballpark. So, he did. Mitchell, hungrily waiting for his opportunity, pounced and sent it 409 feet to center field, giving the Brewers a 5-4 lead. With some crucial shutdown help from the bullpen – lefty relievers JoJo Romero and Aaron Ashby combined to throw four scoreless innings – that was the only edge Mitchell and the Brewers would need to eliminate the defending champions, win the NL pennant, and get a well-earned trip to the World Series. – Thosar