LOS ANGELES — In the end, it was all too much – coming back from a 3-0 deficit, winning a third consecutive World Series championship.
Shohei Ohtani came back to life after two months of ugly at-bats, unfamiliar criticism and questions about whether he even belonged in the Dodgers’ lineup. His three-run home run in the second inning on Thursday night gave the Dodgers a four-run lead – unheard of in this postseason of run suppression.
That wasn’t enough to keep their season alive against a relentless Milwaukee Brewers team that just kept coming, taking a 6-4 win in Game 4 on Thursday to complete a four-game sweep of the two-time defending champions and advance from the National League Championship Series to their first World Series in 44 years.
After falling behind on Garrett Mitchell’s home run off Tanner Scott in the sixth inning, the Dodgers put the tying run on third base with one out in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings but couldn’t move him another 90 feet. Their dreams of a three-peat were buried under another collection of failed at-bats with a runner in scoring position. They went 2 for 11 in those situations in Game 4 and 5 for 43 in the postseason.
“As a manager and anyone participating in the game, you always wonder … could we have done something different that could have changed the game?” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I think at the end of the day, we got beat. We got outplayed in all facets. Those guys played flawless defensively. They pitched better than we did. They hit better than we did. They slugged more than we did. You’ve got to sometimes just tip your cap.
“I personally told our guys that there’s no apologies, there’s no ‘Sorry’s. We gave it everything we had, and it wasn’t good enough. That’s part of life.”
The New York Yankees of 1998-2000 are still the most recent team to ‘three-peat’ as World Series champions. A National League franchise still hasn’t done it.
“It’s hard to win one. We won two,” Freddie Freeman said. “We went for three and we came up short on a third. Special stuff the past two years. We just came up short this year.”
After losing Game 3 on Wednesday night to become the 42nd team in MLB history to fall behind 3-0 in a best-of-seven series, the Dodgers said all the right things about becoming just the second to climb out of that hole and win the series.
“Four one-game winning streaks,” Dodgers utility player Kiké Hernandez said.
“We’ve won four in a row a number of times this year, ten times, I think,” Manager Dave Roberts said.
Ohtani gave them reason to believe.
With the Brewers rolling out a ‘bullpen game’ in Game 4, opener Shane Drohan was gone after a leadoff single by Kyle Tucker in the second inning. Former Dodger Dustin May replaced him and gave up another single to Teoscar Hernandez, struck out Max Muncy then gave up an RBI single to Andy Pages – the only Dodger who seemed able to hit with a runner in scoring position this postseason.
Kiké Hernandez flew out, bringing Ohtani to the plate with two outs. He struck out against Drohan in the first inning but had finished Game 3 with a 113.5 mph exit velocity on an eighth-inning single – the kind of hard contact missing from Ohtani since mid-August and one of the signs that convinced Roberts to move him back to the leadoff spot for Game 4.
May threw Ohtani a 1-and-1 cutter in at his knees and Ohtani crushed it. It left his bat at 113.1 mph and traveled 428 feet into the right field pavilion. The emotion that burst out of Ohtani was just as explosive. As the crowd roared, he bounced down the first-base line, screaming and gesturing at his teammates in the dugout.
It looked like things were finally turning the Dodgers’ way in this series.
“It’s hard to not say yeah to that,” Muncy said. “He gets that moment, it’s like that’s the swing we’ve been waiting for. We got a nice lead, we got Glas on the mound, we’re confident behind him and they just kept stringing together one good at-bat after another after another after another. They were just kind of relentless.”
The Dodgers’ first home run in the NLCS ended the longest home-run drought of Ohtani’s career at 25 games and 116 plate appearances.
The only thing that seemed longer was how long the Dodgers were going to have to work to make that four-run second inning stand up.
It began disappearing in the fourth inning.
Starter Tyler Glasnow retired the first 10 Brewers in order and struck out six of the first eight. He didn’t have another strikeout. It was nothing but contact from the Brewers after that.
A walk and back-to-back ground-rule doubles – the second by Jake Bauers – cut the Dodgers’ lead in half. An inning later, Glasnow walked the No. 8 hitter, Sal Frelick, who stole second and scored on a single by the No. 9 hitter David Hamilton.
Glasnow was replaced by Evan Phillips who walked three in a row (one intentionally after Hamilton stole second) to force in the tying run.
The four aces the Dodgers thought would give them the upper hand in this postseason did not. Tarik Skubal, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Glasnow combined for a 6.50 ERA in the series against the Brewers. Only Skubal allowed fewer than three runs in his start.
Tanner Scott came on for the sixth inning. He didn’t give up a home run to a left-handed batter all season. The Brewers’ first batter in the sixth, left-handed Garrett Mitchell, has just two home runs off left-handed pitchers in his 286 career regular-season games.
Scott left a full-count fastball over the heart of the plate and Mitchell, a former UCLA and Orange Lutheran standout, sent it over the center field wall for his second home run off a left-handed pitcher in three at-bats (Blake Snell in Game 3).
The Brewers’ bullpen took over from there. The Dodgers got Kyle Tucker to third base after his one-out double in the sixth, Pages to third after his leadoff double in the seventh and Will Smith to third when Brewers right fielder Frelick fumbled his double in the right field corner.
The six at-bats with a chance to push across the tying run ended in three strikeouts, two ground outs and a shallow pop up to center field.
Hamilton made it a two-run lead with a solo home run in the top of the ninth. It was just the fifth hit of the game for the Brewers.
More to come on this story.