Sho Time in LA: Dodgers Sweep Brewers To Advance to World Series

The Dodgers beat the Brewers by a final score of 5-1 on Friday night, securing a sweep of the NLCS and advancing to the World Series for the second consecutive year. If you just look at the scoreline and the sweep, you might think that this game was devoid of interest. I won’t lie to you – it was definitely not as dramatic as the wild Mariners-Blue Jays game from earlier in the night, and that series has had far more twists and turns than this one. But forget the lopsided final score, and forget the lopsided series. Friday night was a show – or, I should say, a Sho.

Shohei Ohtani made his second start on the mound of the playoffs, and after a leadoff walk to Brice Turang, he looked every bit the impossible, ace-plus-slugger hybrid we’ve come to expect. His stuff was sharp tonight, with his fastball scraping triple digits and his vicious sweeper up several ticks but maintaining its ludicrous movement. That leadoff walk didn’t even phase him; he took a deep breath, a few paces on the mound, and then turned Jackson Chourio into a cardboard cutout. Biting sweeper, two increasingly diving sliders, with Chourio taking an emergency hack to stay alive, and then a 100.3 mph fastball, pumped right through the zone, to remind everyone that, yeah, this Ohtani guy can spin it.

The next batter, Christian Yelich, got ahead in the count 2-0; Ohtani regrouped with an outrageous flotilla of sliders (90 mph), cutters (95), and fastballs (100) on the low-and-away corner that eventually flummoxed Yelich into a called strikeout. William Contreras? Thanks for entering the batter’s box, sir, better luck next time. Ohtani struck him out on three pitches, the last two of which were demonically breaking sweepers that weren’t even in the same zip code as Contreras’ bat. Then Ohtani sprinted off the mound and disappeared into the dugout.

He did so because he had to lead off the bottom half of the inning. It’s easy to forget how ridiculous this guy is, one of the best hitters in baseball who makes ace-caliber starts every six days on the side. He’d been mired in a deep slump at the plate for the last two rounds of the playoffs, though the team results haven’t shown it. Opponents game plan around him extensively, walk the bases loaded to avoid facing him, hold lefties in reserve, whatever it takes. In Game 4, the Brewers gave Jose Quintana his first start of the playoffs, and while the reason is a little bit more complicated than “he’s a lefty for Ohtani,” it’s not that much more complicated.

Milwaukee’s hand-picked Ohtani neutralizer worked the count to 3-2, and then he tried to front door a breaking ball. For the last few weeks, that’s been a good plan against the presumptive NL MVP. Friday night, it was not. Ohtani, who has been too far in front of slow stuff and too far behind the heat, was just right here, connecting for a towering, 446-foot home run that brought the stadium to its feet.

The rest of the Dodgers are professionals, too. I’m not going to try to spin you some story about them being inspired by Ohtani’s breakthrough. They’re just really good, and they’ve been working Milwaukee over throughout this series, though they haven’t always put up a bunch of runs. Three of the next four hitters singled, pushing the score to 3-0 by the time Quintana escaped the first. After a clean top of the second, Ohtani batted again in the bottom half and worked a hard-earned walk, laying off of three increasingly nice secondaries that approached but did not touch the low-outside corner. In Game 4, it seemed, Ohtani just couldn’t be beaten.

It’s not like the Brewers weren’t trying. Blake Perkins worked a walk. Turang stung a pipe shot fastball to left field on a sharp line. But it wasn’t Milwaukee’s night; it was Ohtani’s. That laced line drive was easy pickings for a charging Enrique Hernández. Perkins, a good baserunner with plus-plus speed, jammed on the brakes as soon as he could, but it just wasn’t enough; Hernández doubled him off of first to keep the good times flowing in Chavez Ravine.

Ohtani had been up and down on the mound to start the game, with walks and strikeouts alternating, but that great defensive play seemed to lock him in. Chourio began the fourth with a double against a nasty sweeper – sometimes good players just beat you – but Ohtani was unbothered. He got a groundout and then struck out the next two Brewers to escape the jam, with his stuff looking sharper with every batter. He struck out six out of the next seven Brewers, in fact, but we’ll get to that later, because first, Ohtani had to bat again.

This time, Ohtani got the kind of matchup he normally devours. Chad Patrick, a righty fastball-dominant reliever, was putting the screws to the rest of the Dodgers order, with five straight outs, four of them via the strikeout. He tried to tuck a cutter on the inside edge in a 3-1 count. Ohtani was all over it, to say the least. He got his arms extended and smashed it a ridiculous 469 feet to right center, sending the Dodgers bench into absolute delirium.

Per Statcast, it was only the third-longest home run in Dodger Stadium since 2015. I’m not disputing their math, because those systems work pretty dang well, but I’ll add this small addendum: Who cares? It was surely the most magnificent home run of the bunch, and in context it becomes even better. Cloud-scraping isn’t really the right way to describe it; how about a cruise missile or a trebuchet? By the time the ball skipped off the pavilions behind the outfield seating and out of the ballpark altogether, a stunned little hush came over everyone. Did he really just do that? After all the earlier stuff? Is this guy even human?

Right, well, I don’t have any proof that he isn’t, so let’s get back to the strikeouts. Ohtani was absolutely dealing, firing his hilariously over-expansive seven-pitch mix past a variety of overmatched midwesterners. Caleb Durbin struck out swinging on a pitch that he simultaneously leaned into – old habits die hard. Isaac Collins and Turang pinwheeled over splitters in the dirt. Ohtani has so many pitches that he didn’t really break out the splitter until the fifth inning, and the Brewers were absolutely unprepared for it.

The end of the road for pitcher Ohtani came in the seventh inning, as he cruised toward 100 pitches. He walked Yelich and then gave up a clean single to Contreras, the first real rally the Brewers had managed all night. Dave Roberts didn’t think too long; he came out and replaced Ohtani, which was surely the plan all along. Ohtani’s final line: six innings pitched, 10 strikeouts, two hits, no runs, and the entire state of Wisconsin breathing a sigh of relief when he finally departed the game.

Well, he departed the game on the pitching side, at least. I think that Ohtani’s game would have been in consideration for the greatest postseason game of all time if he’d stopped hitting then, too. Six shutout with 10 strikeouts, and also 2-for-2 with two home runs and a walk on the hitting side? There’s no easy way to compare that to a perfect game in the World Series, or to the three-homer spectacular that gave Reggie Jackson the nickname “Mr. October.” But Ohtani wasn’t done.

In the bottom of the seventh, when most starters would be hitting the showers and congratulating themselves on an epic series-clinching effort, Ohtani stepped into the box against Trevor Megill. Megill is one of the best closers in baseball, a 6-foot-8 giant who throws laser-beam fastballs and optical-illusion hard curves in roughly equal measure. Megill raced ahead in the count, 1-2, and tried to throw a fastball in on Ohtani’s hands. Ohtani pulled his hands in, flicked the bat head, and deposited the ball 427 feet away to straightaway center for an unbelievable third home run of the night.

I don’t even know what to say about the rest of the game. Do you care about the rest of the game? Blake Treinen pitched poorly, spoiling the shutout. Mookie Betts hit a few balls hard, but finished with one hit. Patrick was incredible, and it hardly counts as a blemish that the best player in baseball hit a home run off of him. The Brewers finally got on the board in the eighth, but they never brought the tying run to the plate, and Roki Sasaki comfortably closed things out in the ninth.

Those were all sideshows, though. Ohtani was the best pitcher in the game by a mile, and he was the best hitter in the game by several miles, and even though I’m the math guy, I’m sitting here wondering whether Ohtani and 25 high schoolers could have beaten the Brewers tonight (no… right?). I don’t even have to think too hard on it: This is the greatest single-game performance in playoff history. You’re never going to see anything like this again. Drama is overrated. I watch the playoffs to see spectacles, and Ohtani’s game tonight was just that. Bravo.