Not even a Shohei Ohtani resurgence is enough as Dodgers fall to Brewers in unthinkable NLCS sweep

LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani took two small steps toward home plate.

For an entire second, the sporting supernova believed he would get at least one more opportunity to reorient the most disappointing month of his professional life. As the baseball thundered off Kiké Hernández’s bat toward left-center field at 107.9 mph, Dodger Stadium, too, felt a flicker of hope. The optimism was warranted: It was the hardest ball Hernández had struck all season. If pearl met grass, Ohtani would come to the plate as the tying run in this knife’s-edge NLCS Game 4.

There was a window, it seemed, as left fielder Jackson Chourio raced into the gap.

Surely, Ohtani yearned for that shot, a shot to once again spark his sluggish goliath of a ballclub, currently trailing the relentless Milwaukee Brewers three games to zero. The road back to glory, even with an L.A. victory on Thursday, would be long and steep and imposing. But only with another moment of magic from the injured and beleaguered four-time MVP could the Dodgers even begin to consider the impossible.

Ohtani froze.

Chourio leapt into the air. The line drive clattered into his mitt. He let out a joyous roar, never breaking stride. Milwaukee’s finest poured out of the first-base dugout onto the diamond, grabbing one another in disbelief. Chavez Ravine — the parts not from Wisconsin, anyway — snapped to a hush.

Ohtani strode back toward the dugout, toward winter, toward questions, toward home.

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The 2026 Los Angeles Dodgers, the most expensive baseball team ever assembled, ended their season with a 6-4 loss on Thursday. Approximately $433 million, suddenly, shockingly, on vacation. Ultimately, the Dodgers proved too old, too tired, too slow. Their star-studded pitching staff was not quite sharp enough to overcome those shortcomings. Their slug-reliant offense melted with runners in scoring position. Game 4 then, a nail-biting delight of a contest, was a beautiful microcosm of that dynamic.

As always, the story revolved around Ohtani. Injured and depleted for this entire postseason, he’d been reinserted in the leadoff spot by manager Dave Roberts after looking somewhat rejuvenated in Game 3.

“I think the player still has to give you hope — like to believe in, to bet on,” Roberts explained regarding his renewed faith in Ohtani after dropping him to sixth in the lineup on Wednesday. “I feel good about him taking five at-bats and giving us our best chance to win and produce runs today.”

In his second at-bat of Game 4, producing runs is exactly what Ohtani did. 

With the Dodgers already up a run in the second inning, with two on and two out, the lefty slugger absolutely unstitched a bottom-rail cutter from Dustin May into the right-field bleachers. Ohtani watched it fly for a half-beat as May crumpled to his knees, then turned back toward his dugout, threw his arms apart, pumped his fist and let loose a cathartic yell. It was quite the emotional display from the typically even-keeled character. Call it whatever you want — redemption, release, sporting absolution — but the box score called it a homer, Ohtani’s first since Aug. 18.

“It was just good to see him hit a ball hard,” Mookie Betts said postgame. “When it went over the fence, I think from that point, we knew we were going to be in a good spot.”

And for about an hour, with a four-run cushion, that’s where Ohtani, Betts and Co. were: a good spot.

For just the second time all series, Milwaukee failed to score in the half-inning following a Los Angeles run. Dodgers starter Tyler Glasnow retired the first 10 batters he faced, notching six strikeouts. The skeptical home crowd bought in. A tangible buzz began to build. With two-time Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal slated for Game 5 and October icon Yoshinobu Yamamoto set for Game 6, a roadmap started to reveal itself. Maybe the Dodgers could actually do this.

Milwaukee had other plans.

In the fourth, NLCS MVP Jake Bauers laced a full-count ground-rule double to plate a pair. One inning later, the Brewers tied things up on a David Hamilton RBI single and a bases-loaded walk drawn by, of course, Bauers. Meanwhile, Los Angeles’ lineup threw things back into cruise control, collecting just one total baserunner across the third, fourth and fifth. Tension and doubt, its evil cousin, inched back across the crowd.

Milwaukee center fielder Garrett Mitchell then gave that crowd a souvenir, clocking a go-ahead heat-seeker in the top of the sixth off reliever Tanner Scott. It was Mitchell’s second left-on-left long ball in the past two games. He hit one in the regular season.

At that point, 12 outs remained between the Brewers and the pennant. Twelve outs stood between the Dodgers and the unthinkable.

Trailing by just one run, Los Angeles’ collection of high-priced hitters placed a runner at third base in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings. Each time, they failed to score.

Bespectacled Brewers reliever Aaron Ashby had a lot to do with that. In the seventh, with one out and the tying run at third, the flamethrowing southpaw sat Ohtani down on three straight pitches. The final perplexer, a devastating slider in the right-handed batter’s box, left Ohtani flailing at air.

“The Brewers were overall strong and a very good team, and they really exposed some of the parts of me as a player, and I give some credit to themm” Ohtani said postgame via interpreter Will Ireton.

While strolling back to the dugout after that Ashby at-bat, not to hit again this season, Ohtani banged his helmet with his right hand in frustration. As he did so, Betts’ walk-up song bumped from the speakers: “It’s a whole lotta money in this motherf***er.”

Sure is, not that Ashby cared. The next inning, he elicited a harmless pop-up from Kyle Tucker, the highest paid soul in the sport, with the tying run once again on third. 

And there went the 2026 Dodgers, an incomprehensibly woeful 5-for-43 with runners in scoring position in this postseason, once again unable to cash in.

“We just didn’t come through in a couple of those situations. That’s a part of the game,” Betts lamented afterward. “Everybody’s trying. Everybody’s doing their best. Sometimes your best isn’t good enough.”

The truth for the Dodgers, cemented by Hernández’s unlucky laser in the ninth, might be even more humbling than that. 

Baseball itself, in the year since Los Angeles’ dominant sweep of these Brewers in the 2025 NLCS, evolved enough to make the Dodgers’ style of play look antiquated, even dusty. During the regular season, Los Angeles had the third-slowest team bat speed in MLB and the second-lowest hard-swing rate. They ranked 25th in team sprint speed; Milwaukee ranked 1st. 

From Aug. 18, the date of Ohtani’s last regular-season long ball, the allegedly contact-merchant Brewers hit just three fewer homers than the Dodgers. Even where the 100-win Dodgers shined, the 103-win Brewers topped them. The only team with a higher average fastball velocity than Los Angeles in these playoffs? Milwaukee. The game is quicker now, and the Dodgers, so long the cutting-edge force in the sport, failed to keep up.

Not even the brief reappearance of a full-bore Ohtani was enough to bridge the gap. That he ended the season on-deck, with his teammates unable to get him that fifth at-bat Roberts had planned for, only dumped salt in the wound. So close, yet so far. Four wins away — or eight, in fact.

While the 2026 team is finished playing ball, don’t expect the Dodgers, and all they mean, to exit the conversation. Beneath the specter of a looming labor fight, Los Angeles’ gilded roster will remain in the spotlight even once autumn flips to winter. But their being bested in this particular series has less to do with larger debates about the game’s future or economics and more with the simple fact that a superior Brewers team kicked their doors in. On the field, this was not an underdog story or an upset.

Sure, Los Angeles was richer.

Milwaukee was better.