There was no hiding it. Not after they were unceremoniously swept on their home turf. For the first time since 2023, the Los Angeles Dodgers walked off the field in defeat in their final game of the postseason.
The life they seemed to show when slumping Shohei Ohtani launched a second-inning home run to give them the lead in Game 4 on Thursday turned out to be nothing but the last gasps of a body in critical condition. The Milwaukee Brewers' sweep of the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series -- the same fate LA handed Milwaukee just one year ago -- denied MLB an opportunity to see its first World Series three-peat since the New York Yankees of 1998-2000.
Yet while the individual games were largely competitive, on the whole, the Brewers dominated the series -- and the Dodgers knew it.
"At the end of the day, we got beat," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, according to MLB.com's AJ Cassavell. "We got outplayed in all facets. Those guys played flawlessly -- 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."
Dodgers fans who find Roberts' very existence infuriating probably won't like those words of defeat, but in truth there was little Roberts might have done differently to change the outcome. When a team hits .185 with six extra-base hits over four games and posts a collective 5.56 ERA, no amount of managerial maneuvering will make much of a difference.
While the Dodgers were looking to do something historic, the Brewers are hoping to do something special, too. The last MLB team to own the best record in baseball and also win the World Series in a non-COVID shortened season was the Boston Red Sox in 2018. So as dominant as the Brewers have looked for most of the year, don't expect them to walk to a championship.
Unless they play like they did in this series. Then it might just be as easy as they made it look against the Dodgers.
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