LOS ANGELES — You don’t tug on Superman’s cape.
The buzzing of doubt was thick around Shohei Ohtani after a 1-for-18 National League Division Series and a 2-for-11 start to the NL Championship Series, enough to make Ohtani sound a little annoyed by the tone of the questions at a press conference on Wednesday.
He swatted those doubts away Friday as only he can.
Making his first pitching start since Game 1 of the NL Division Series, Ohtani struck out the side in the top of the first inning then led off the bottom of the first by slamming a 446-foot home run. He didn’t give up a hit until the fourth inning, hit a second home run even farther, added a third home run and struck out 10 while taking a shutout into the seventh inning as the Dodgers beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 5-1, on Thursday night, completing a sweep of the NLCS.
If Ohtani’s 6-for-6, three-home run night to create the 50/50 club last year might have been the greatest offensive game ever, Thursday’s two-way domination has to be considered for status as the greatest postseason performance.
“Sometimes you’ve got to check yourself and touch him to make sure he’s not just made of steel,” said first baseman Freddie Freeman, last season’s World Series MVP. “Absolutely incredible. Biggest stage, and he goes out and does something like that. It’ll probably be remembered as the Shohei Ohtani game.”
With it, the Dodgers are going to the World Series for the fifth time in the past nine years, the Brewers having offered minimal resistance in the NLCS. The Dodgers are the first defending champion to make it back to the World Series since the Philadelphia Phillies won it all in 2008 then lost to the New York Yankees in the 2009 World Series.
“It was really fun on both sides of the ball today,” Ohtani said through his interpreter. “As a representative (of the team), I’m taking this trophy, and let’s get four more wins.”
The Dodgers will try to become the first team to win consecutive World Series titles since the Yankees in 1998-2000 when this year’s Series starts next Friday – in Toronto if the Blue Jays win the American League pennant, or in Los Angeles if the Seattle Mariners do (The Mariners lead the ALCS 3-2 with Game 6 scheduled for Sunday night in Toronto).
“This is a one-dream, one-team operation,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Before this season they were saying the Dodgers are ruining baseball. Let’s get four more wins and really ruin baseball.”
It will be the Dodgers’ 23rd trip to the World Series. Only the Yankees have been there more often (41 times).
They arrive at a World Series appearance that seemed to be fore-ordained by their $400 million payroll and accumulation of talent with as much momentum as ever. They have won nine of 10 postseason games and 24 of their past 30 overall.
The six-day layoff before Game 1 of the World Series figures to provide more of a challenge to that momentum than the Brewers did despite their status as MLB’s winningest team during the regular season. Dodgers pitching held the Brewers to four runs on 14 hits in the four-game sweep.
Ohtani walked Brice Turang to start the game, luring the Brewers into believing he might be human. He struck out the next three to sew doubt and didn’t give up a hit until Jackson Chourio led off the fourth inning with a ground-rule double.
Ohtani took care of that threat with a ground out and two more strikeouts. He walked the first batter in the seventh inning and gave up a single, ending his night on the mound at 100 pitches with no runs, only two hits and three walks allowed. He left the mound to a stadium-shaking ovation.
“We’re like the (Chicago) Bulls and he’s Michael Jordan,” shortstop Mookie Betts said.
His first home run was part of a three-run first inning for the Dodgers. Betts, Will Smith and Tommy Edman had singles to produce one run and another scored on Teoscar Hernandez’s slow ground out to first.
Lightning struck again with two outs in the fourth when Brewers reliever Chad Patrick fell behind, 3-and-1, to Ohtani. He threw a cutter that was actually off the plate inside. It was nearly hit off the planet.
Ohtani crushed it, sending it over the pavilion roof in right field, an estimated 469 feet (which didn’t seem to do it justice). The ball left his bat at 116.9 mph, topping the 116.5 mph of his first home run and leaving teammates in the dugout throwing their arms to the sky in amazement. The ball bounced off the pavilion roof and into a bush near some tables where startled fans were eating.
In the seventh inning, Ohtani made it a threesome, sending a 99-mph fastball from Trevor Megill out to left center. The three home runs covered 1,342 feet – a little over a quarter-mile. A pitcher had hit three home runs in a game (any game, regular or postseason) just once before – Jim Tobin of the Boston Braves in May 1932.
“That was special,” Freeman said. “We’ve just been playing really good baseball for a while now, and the inevitable kind of happened today – Shohei. Oh my God. I’m still speechless.”
Much more to come on this story.
Freddie Freeman was in disbelief at Shohei Ohtani’s performance when he caught up with @LaurenShehadi
pic.twitter.com/KkcpVZD9V1 — TNT Sports U.S. (@TNTSportsUS) October 18, 2025
