Brewers Rally Past Dodgers To Sweep Their Way to the World Series
Orange County native Jake Bauers placed a stake against the heart of the two-time defending champion Dodgers, and Garrett Mitchell and Aaron Ashby drove it home. After an initial four-run flourish from the Dodgers offense, the Brewers plated six unanswered runs; they took the lead in the sixth and never looked back. Ashby worked three scoreless and twice stranded the tying run at third base. The Brewers won Game 4, swept the mighty Dodgers, and are now headed to their first World Series since 1982.
Initially, it looked as though fortune favored Tyler Glasnow and the Dodgers. Brewers star outfielder Jackson Chourio hit an absolute rocket on the first pitch of the game, but it ricocheted off Enrique Hernández at third and right into the hands of Mookie Betts, who was poised to make a bang-bang play. After that, Glasnow was untouchable for a bit, remaining perfect through three innings.
In the meantime, Los Angeles jumped out to a four-run lead. Brewers starter Shane Drohan was bailed out of a wild first by a Will Smith double play ball, then was removed after he allowed a Kyle Tucker leadoff single in the second. Former Dodger Dustin May relieved Drohan, gave up singles to Teoscar Hernández and Andy Pages, and then left a fastball in the happy zone of an ailing Shohei Ohtani, who vaporized it.
Though Ohtani’s catharsis was evident as he rounded the bases, the feeling proved fleeting and would be replaced by frustration, as the Brewers battled back and the Dodgers squandered opportunity after opportunity in the middle innings.
That began in the fourth. Glasnow surrendered his first baserunner via a walk to Brice Turang. Then, somehow, William Contreras (who would later have several consequential blocks on pitches in the dirt) turned on a 96-mph fastball in on his hands and ripped a ground rule double into the left field stands. Up stepped Bauers, who worked a full count when a Glasnow two-seamer nearly nicked the inside corner. In real time, it looked like a pitch that Smith perhaps should have challenged; Glasnow certainly seemed to think so, though Gameday had it off the plate. On the very next pitch, Bauers hit his own ground rule double, and plated two.
Bauers was named NLCS MVP after the game. He went a respectable 4-for-14 with three walks in the series, and a couple of the hits were doozies, most notably the epic at-bat that led to his backbreaking two-run homer in Game 3, which was the moment of the series.
In the fifth, the Brewers tied the game via some small ball and a bit of self-inflicted Dodger damage. Sal Frelick walked, stole second, and then was singled home by David Hamilton. That ended Glasnow’s night. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts turned to Evan Phillips, who struggled. After Chourio hit a 110-mph line out, Roberts decided to intentionally walk Turang, and then Phillips walked Contreras on his own and was removed for Alex Vesia, who walked Bauers to force in a run and knot the game up at four.
In the top of the sixth inning, Roberts turned to Tanner Scott to face the bottom portion of Milwaukee’s order, which is mostly left-handed. Mitchell, who went to high school at nearby Orange Lutheran and to college at UCLA, battled back from an 0-2 count and, on the sixth pitch of his at-bat, got a fastball down the middle.
It was Mitchell’s second home run off a lefty in the series, after he had just one against a southpaw during the regular season.
Brewers manager Pat Murphy would only need two relievers to navigate the final five innings of the game, which hung in the balance several times. Deadline acquisition Jojo Romero needed just 12 pitches to deal with three future Hall of Famers in Ohtani, Betts, and Freddie Freeman in the fifth and became the pitcher of record when Mitchell homered. In the sixth, Romero gave up a left-on-left double to Tucker (who had two hits on Thursday and was the Dodgers’ best hitter in this series) but was able to strike out Max Muncy and strand Tucker at third later that inning.
In the seventh, Murphy called upon Ashby. To call Ashby dominant would be correct – he matched his season-high fastball velocity at 100 mph and punched three tickets – but it would also undersell how many times he and the Brewers had to avoid danger during his three innings of work. Ashby pitched around a leadoff double from Pages (who moved to third via an Enrique Hernández sac bunt) by striking out Ohtani on three pitches and inducing Betts to ground out to shortstop Cooper Pratt, who made multiple dynamite throws from deep in the hole in this game.
In the eighth, Smith finally ran into one and hit a double of his own to right field, then advanced to third as the ball rattled around in the corner and was fumbled by Frelick. Tucker followed him with a jam-shot flare that looked like it could be real trouble off the bat, only for Mitchell to come streaking in so far from center field that he fielded the ball just a few strides from the infield.
After that, Ashby bent in a pair of curveballs from hell to strike out Teoscar Hernández and end the inning. He worked a 1-2-3 ninth to close things out, capping off 6.2 scoreless innings for the series. Once upon a time, Ashby looked like a shell of his former self coming off a shoulder injury. Now he’s one of the nastier lefty relievers on the planet and had about as good an argument for series MVP as Bauers did.
Milwaukee was able to tack on an insurance run in the ninth with a Hamilton homer off of Edwin Díaz, who pitched the final three innings of the game for the Dodgers. Though it was ultimately inconsequential, it was odd to see Díaz throw more than two innings for the first time since 2016 in a one-run elimination game. The homer was the lone blemish on his line. Hamilton had two hits after a failed attempt to bunt for a hit in the third, something Murphy told the fellas at the postgame desk he believed helped Hamilton get good pitches to hit later in the game.
That kind of minutiae has helped propel a very talented Brewers team, which has more wins than any other team in baseball over the last two seasons, within range of its first ever World Series title. Two weeks from now, we will either have a first-time champion in the Brewers or Rays, or watch the Guardians win their first World Series in nearly 80 years. The Dodgers, who should still hold their heads high after two consecutive titles, went 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position on Thursday. After a 100-win season, and despite a punishing rotation, they simply weren’t whole and healthy when the postseason arrived, and were outplayed in every facet by a balanced Milwaukee club. Sometimes that’s baseball.
