The Milwaukee Brewers are going to the World Series. A year after being swept out of the National League Championship Series by the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Brewers returned the favour in full, beating Los Angeles 6-4 in Game 4 on Thursday night at Dodger Stadium to take the best-of-seven series 4-0 and reach the World Series for the first time in 44 years.
It did not look like it would end that way for long stretches of the clincher. The two-time defending champions built a 4-0 lead in the second inning, Dodger Stadium was rocking, and the Brewers’ first pennant since 1982 seemed a long way off. Then Milwaukee did what it had done all series: chipped away, answered every punch and kept coming.
How the Dodgers’ 4-0 lead disappeared
Los Angeles looked in control early. Andy Pages delivered a one-out RBI single in the second inning, and Shohei Ohtani, back in the leadoff spot, followed with a towering three-run homer with two outs for a 4-0 advantage. Ohtani’s blast was the highlight of his night; the rest was quieter, as he struck out three times while playing through knee and biceps discomfort that the Dodgers will address in the offseason.
Jake Bauers started the comeback in the fourth with a two-run ground-rule double that cut the deficit in half. In the fifth, David Hamilton’s RBI single made it 4-3 and ended the night of Dodgers starter Tyler Glasnow, who was charged with four runs on three hits and two walks over 4.1 innings while striking out six.
Reliever Evan Phillips then loaded the bases with two outs on a pair of walks, and Alex Vesia came in and walked Bauers on four pitches to force in the tying run. The Dodgers had led 4-0. Now it was 4-4, and the Brewers had all the momentum.
Mitchell’s go-ahead homer and Hamilton’s seal
Milwaukee went ahead for good in the sixth, when Garrett Mitchell — a Southern California native and UCLA alumnus — greeted reliever Tanner Scott with a leadoff home run to make it 5-4.
“I’ve always dreamt of moments like these as a kid,” Mitchell said.
The Dodgers kept threatening and kept coming up empty. They wasted a one-out double from Kyle Tucker in the sixth and a leadoff double from Pages in the seventh. In the eighth, a double combined with an error put Will Smith on third base as the tying run with one out. Aaron Ashby, the fourth of Milwaukee’s pitchers, retired Tucker on a shallow fly ball and struck out Teoscar Hernández to end the threat.
Hamilton, who hit just four home runs in the regular season, added insurance with a two-out homer in the ninth off Edwin Diaz.
A bullpen game that smothered the champions
Brewers manager Pat Murphy turned to a bullpen game with catcher William Contreras guiding the staff, and it worked to perfection: four Milwaukee pitchers held the Dodgers scoreless over the final seven innings. JoJo Romero tossed two innings, and Ashby handled the final three frames for his second save of the postseason.
“Playing with that chip on our shoulder,” Ashby said. “You don’t ever know what to expect going into a series like that last year. You don’t know how bad it can be, and then it was as bad as it was. And we came out and we survived, and we came back this year, and those guys played their tails off.”
Christian Yelich, the Brewers’ veteran captain, said the message inside the dugout never wavered even after the Dodgers’ four-run second.
“We got down early tonight and we were like, it’s going to be a great story,” Yelich said. “We’re going to come back and win this. Like, stay together, start chipping away. And that’s exactly what they did.”
Bauers did it again: the 11-pitch homer that flipped Game 3
If Game 4 was the clincher, Game 3 on Wednesday night was the game that broke the Dodgers’ will. Milwaukee won that one 6-2, and once again Bauers stood at the centre of it.
Jackson Chourio announced the Brewers’ intent immediately, hitting Blake Snell’s first pitch over the right-field fence for a 1-0 lead. Since pitch data was first fully kept in 1988, only five hitters had homered on the very first pitch of a postseason game; Chourio made it six. The blast came one year to the day after Chourio’s first-pitch homer off Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 2 of the 2025 NLCS — a game Yamamoto recovered from to throw a complete game in the Dodgers’ sweep.
“It kind of set the tone for the day,” Bauers said, “and let everyone know that we’re here to win this game.”
Snell settled in and dominated, striking out nine and retiring 14 straight heading into the seventh on just 81 pitches. But Brewers starter Robert Gasser had held Los Angeles scoreless through five, and after Abner Uribe walked three Dodgers in the sixth and Will Smith lined a two-run double off the top of the left-center-field wall, the champions had their counterpunch and a 2-1 lead. Reliever DL Hall stranded both runners to keep the damage at two.
Then came the seventh, and another Bauers epic. Two days after his 12-pitch walk against Yamamoto in Game 2, Bauers saw 11 pitches from Snell — three sliders, three fastballs, three changeups and one curveball — fouling off the eighth, ninth and 10th. The 10th nearly ended it, as Bauers hooked a drive just inside the right-field foul pole. The 11th was a belt-high fastball that caught too much of the plate, and Bauers unloaded: 412 feet at 109 mph into the bleachers in right-center field, a two-run homer that turned a one-run deficit into a one-run lead.
“Hat’s off to him,” Snell said. “I mean, what an at-bat. I threw everything I had.”
One batter later, Mitchell doubled the lead with a 428-foot shot to right that ended Snell’s night. The Brewers added two late runs, and closer Trevor Megill slammed the door with a four-out save.
Bauers, a 31-year-old onetime journeyman in his third Milwaukee season, came off a career year in which he drew 94 walks (fifth in the NL), posted a .389 on-base percentage (second) and hit 26 home runs. According to ESPN Research, he is the second player since 1988 to reach base twice in the same postseason after plate appearances of at least 11 pitches.
“Incredible at-bat,” Murphy said. “Incredible.”
The comeback team kept coming back
The Game 4 rally was Milwaukee’s fifth comeback win of the postseason, tying the 1996 Yankees and 1980 Phillies — both eventual champions — for the most by a team in its first seven playoff games. Across the final two games of the series, the Dodgers scored in four separate innings; all four times, the Brewers answered immediately with runs of their own.
“I think it’s what it’s all about in the game — to be that locked in that you respond every time,” Murphy said. “It’s resiliency. It’s a belief. It’s all those things. Our guys have done it.”
The sweep also carries a slice of history: if it stands as the final tally, the Brewers would become the first team to be swept out of the playoffs one year and sweep the same team in the following postseason.
Roberts: “We got outplayed in all facets”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, whose club was chasing a third straight World Series title after championships in 2024 and 2025, offered no excuses after the clincher.
“At the end of the day, we got beat,” Roberts said. “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.”
He added that he told his players there were “no apologies, no sorries” after a run of back-to-back titles ended in a sweep.
“I personally told our guys that there’s no apologies, there’s no sorries. We gave it everything we had, and it wasn’t good enough. That’s part of life,” Roberts said.
After falling behind 3-0, the Dodgers faced long odds that history says are nearly impossible. In MLB history, 42 teams had fallen behind 3-0 in a best-of-seven postseason series; 32 were swept, and only two ever forced a Game 7 — the 2020 Astros, who lost it, and the 2004 Red Sox, the only team to complete the comeback. Kiké Hernández summed up the mood after Game 3: “We didn’t expect to be in this position. This one sucks.”
What’s next: a World Series opener on 23 October
The Brewers will open the World Series at home on 23 October against the winner of the American League Championship Series between the Cleveland Guardians and the Tampa Bay Rays. Cleveland holds a 2-1 lead in that series after a 3-2 win on Thursday.
Milwaukee’s only previous World Series appearance came in 1982, when the franchise was still an American League club and fell in seven games to the St Louis Cardinals. Forty-four years later, the Brewers are back — and, as Mitchell put it after Game 3, the job is not finished yet.
FAQ
When do the Brewers play in the World Series?
Milwaukee opens the World Series at home on 23 October against the winner of the American League Championship Series. The Cleveland Guardians led the Tampa Bay Rays 2-1 after winning Game 3, 3-2, on Thursday.
When was the Brewers' last World Series appearance?
The 2026 NLCS sweep of the Dodgers sends Milwaukee to its first World Series since 1982, when the franchise — then an American League team — lost in seven games to the St Louis Cardinals.
How did the Brewers beat the Dodgers in Game 4?
Trailing 4-0 after a second inning that included a Shohei Ohtani three-run homer, the Brewers rallied behind Jake Bauers’ two-run double and a bases-loaded walk, David Hamilton’s RBI single, Garrett Mitchell’s go-ahead homer off Tanner Scott in the sixth and Hamilton’s two-out homer in the ninth, winning 6-4.
Could the Dodgers have come back from 3-0 down?
History was against them. Of the 42 teams that had fallen behind 3-0 in a best-of-seven postseason series, 32 were swept and only two forced a Game 7 — the 2020 Astros, who lost it, and the 2004 Red Sox, the only team to win after trailing 3-0.