The Brewers officially ended the Dodgers' streak with a ridiculous 6-4 comeback in Game 4 to complete the NLCS sweep.

Shohei Ohtani's 428-foot three-run homer gave the Dodgers a 4-0 lead, but the unlikely champions Brewers wiped it all out to complete a NLCS sweep.

Garrett Mitchell's reaction to the Brewers' 3-0 lead over the rivals and back-to-back homers

Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Garrett Mitchell talks with Ken Rosenthal after the game about his team's 3-0 NLCS lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers and the back-to-back homers that sparked the Game 3 win.

The 2026 NLCS was a complete mismatch, but not in the way many fans expected.

Despite winning 103 games in the regular season and fielding a lineup of players unexpectedly having the best years of their careers, many believed the Milwaukee Bears were underdogs entering this series. But through the first three games, it was the Los Angeles Dodgers who looked like a small-market matchup against the big-budget Brewers.

Riding a combination of surprisingly good pitching, exceptional, er, unexpected results on balls in play, home runs, and a tendency to convert every ball put in play into outs, Milwaukee took a 3-0 lead in Game Four on Thursday night.

Want to know how to win in October? The 2026 Milwaukee Brewers are offering the plan

In game one, they beat Tarik Skobal 2-1. In game two, they went 6-14 with runners in scoring position without a single hit ball. In Game Three, they scored five straight runs after trailing entering the seventh at home on Coast with a 6-2 victory.

Then, Game 4 gave Milwaukee a chance to reach its second World Series and first since 1982. For the Dodgers, it was the first of four win-or-go home games as they tried to salvage their streak and win a third straight championship.

At least for a few minutes, it looked like they were headed for a Game Five on Friday night.

Against Milwaukee starter Shane Drohan, the Dodgers mounted a quick rally. Kyle Tucker led off with a single, forcing Brewers manager Pat Murphy to go to his bullpen and bring in Dustin May. Teoscar Hernandez singled in Tucker, and after Max Muncy hit a hit, Andy Paige ended up with a runner in scoring position and singled up the middle to give Los Angeles a 1-0 lead.

May flied out Quique Hernandez and brought up Dodgers' struggling superstar Shohei Ohtani. Ohtani, who hadn't driven in the postseason, hadn't hit a home run in nearly two months, and was clearly dealing with a number of health issues, immediately destroyed a 1-1 pitch with 113 mph and 428 feet to make it 4-0 Los Angeles.

With a rare display of emotion afterward, you could see how much it meant to Ohtani and the Dodgers.

But as always, in this NLCS, the Brewers' superteam offensive machine turned to right field. In the fourth, Bryce Turang drew a one-out walk and William Contreras hit a ground-rule double into left field. Jake Bauers, until recently one of the worst hitters in professional baseball, followed that up with another ground-rule double to right. While the Dodgers had trouble with runners in scoring position, the Milwaukee Bucks took advantage of every opportunity. And why not? With superstar players like Baers and Contreras, he was 9% better than league offensive average in 2026.

They also drew in the fifth. Sal Frelik drew a walk, then stole second. Offensive standout David Hamilton continued his exceptional streak by driving in Frelick with a single, raising his season batting average to .500.

Dodgers relievers Evan Phillips and Alex Vecia then walked three Milwaukee hitters, including Bauer, to tie the game at 4-4 heading into the bottom of the fifth inning. But that's what undefeated superteams do, they come back from 4-0 in two innings behind the best players in baseball, Jake Bauers and David Hamilton.

Sure enough, the Brewers' bullpen immediately went to work, sorting through JoJo Romero Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman in just 12 pitches.

in the sixth? Aggressive looter came into action. Facing elite lefty reliever Tanner Scott, Garrett Mitchell crushed a homer into right field, played small ball instead of trying to hit for power and just made contact. Mitchell had two major league hits against lefties over the years, then hit back-to-back homers off Blake Snell and Tanner Scott. A 4-0 Dodgers lead was erased in minutes by the unstoppable force of Milwaukee's unbeatable offense.

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In the sixth, the Dodgers got a one-out double from Kyle Tucker, but the Dodgers did what they do best: blew a no-hitter with runners in scoring position. They did it again in the seventh. Andy Paige led off the inning with a double against terrific reliever Aaron Ashby, and Los Angeles played small ball, advancing him to third with a single. But Ashby got Ohtani to ground out on three pitches and Mookie Betts grounded out to short to end the inning. At that point, LA was once again 2-9 with RISP, the Brewers were 2-5.

Amazingly, the Dodgers did it again in the eighth. Will Smith doubled to left and advanced to third on an error by Sal Frelik. Once again, Los Angeles tied the game in the third base with only one out, and once again, the greatest bullpen ever assembled in the history of professional baseball failed. Kyle Tucker singled up the middle and Teoscar Hernandez hit a fly ball about two and a half feet out. 2-11 with RISP. As one Dodgers commentator wrote, "some of the most pathetic at-bats" you'll ever see.

David Hamilton, once again one of the worst hitters in professional baseball, delivered an exclamation point with Edwin Diaz's home run in the ninth inning. why not The Dodgers outplayed Milwaukee, because of course they did, but when you have stars like Hamilton, nothing really matters.

Milwaukee's bullpen has allowed just two runs in nearly 40 innings the entire postseason. A unit that had a 3.40 ERA in the regular season is approaching zero in the playoffs. The Dodgers tied the game in three straight innings at third base, and it wasn't hard even for Aaron Ashby, the greatest pitcher who ever lived. Fittingly, in the ninth, Ashby endured a 110-mph fastball from Tommy Edman and a 108-mph fastball from Quique Hernandez that was caught for one out. Because Ashby knew that allowing hard balls was as simple as playing the game the right way. That's how you get to the World Series, and Milwaukee did.

The Brewers have shown how you screw up baseball, develop superstars like Garrett Mitchell, sign the best free agents available like Jake Bauers, use Cy Young caliber pitchers like Shane Drohan, Dustin May, JoJo Romero and Aaron Ashby to eliminate talented offenses, and instead listen to your manager tell you to play the ball right or play the ball. Enter the house.

It's the right way to play, and the Brewers do it in spades. After playing the game the right way in 2024 and 2025, the Dodgers stopped playing the game the right way in 2026, and it cost them.

For Los Angeles, it's a disappointing end to what looked like a dynasty. In 2024 and 2025, the breakouts, clutch hitting and quality hitting went their way. In 2026, they all came back to bite them in a series. Still, Milwaukee proved why it should always be a heavy favorite to win the World Series: They simply have better players who can hit .500 when it matters, rather than playing their entire careers.

Sarcasm aside, that's how baseball works. Teams that win get hot at the right time, and all the payroll and talent in the world can't predict which team will get hot at the right time. There's no explanation for it, it's not a process or an approach, there's nothing to learn from it, it's not meaningful or predictive, the postseason is a tournament, and tournaments have strange results.

Milwaukee now advances to face the winner of the Guardians-Rays series, while the Dodgers begin a long offseason targeting their next highest-paid stars: David Hamilton and Jake Bauers.

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