The Milwaukee Brewers spent the first two innings of Game 4 of the National League Championship Series looking like a team about to lose its grip on a series it had already won three times. By the end of the night, on October 15, 2026, they were National League champions for the first time in franchise history.
Milwaukee beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 6-4 at Dodger Stadium to complete a four-game sweep and reach the World Series for the first time since 1982 — a wait of 44 years.
A 4-0 hole, undone in three innings
The Dodgers took control early. Shohei Ohtani hit a three-run homer in the second inning, his first home run of the postseason, and Los Angeles led 4-0 with its starter, Tyler Glasnow, on the mound.
The lead did not survive to the sixth. Jake Bauers doubled home two runs to halve the deficit, and in the fifth a David Hamilton single chased Glasnow from the game before a Bauers walk forced in the run that tied it at 4-4.
Garrett Mitchell put Milwaukee ahead in the sixth. Down 0-2 in the count against reliever Tanner Scott, he drove the ball 409 feet for the go-ahead homer. Hamilton, batting ninth, added a two-out solo shot off Edwin Díaz in the ninth for the cushion.
JoJo Romero was credited with the win. Aaron Ashby closed it out with three scoreless innings for the save.
Four games, four Milwaukee wins
The sweep was never comfortable and never seriously threatened:
- Game 1, October 11: Brewers 2, Dodgers 1
- Game 2, October 12: Brewers 7, Dodgers 4
- Game 3, October 14: Brewers 6, Dodgers 2
- Game 4, October 15: Brewers 6, Dodgers 4
Milwaukee arrived in the postseason with 103 regular-season wins, the most in Major League Baseball in 2026. The sweep ended the Dodgers' attempt at a third consecutive World Series title.
"We weren't coming in to play patty-cake," manager Pat Murphy said after the game, according to Fox Sports. Outfielder Christian Yelich, quoted by the same outlet, said of the second-inning deficit: "We're going to come back and win this."
An MVP who nearly stopped playing
Bauers, a first baseman, was named NLCS MVP — the first League Championship Series MVP in Brewers history. He went 4-for-14 with six runs batted in across the four games, hit a go-ahead two-run homer in the seventh inning of Game 3, and drew a 12-pitch walk in the third inning of Game 2 that helped drive Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto from the game.
Bauers has passed through seven organizations. He came close to retiring after the 2023 season and kept playing in part because his wife, then pregnant, needed health insurance, CBS Sports reported.
"There was never a doubt in that dugout what was going to happen," Bauers said afterward, per CBS Sports.
What 1982 means here
The Brewers' only previous World Series appearance came in 1982, when the club played in the American League and lost in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals. This is therefore the franchise's second pennant overall and its first in the National League, which it joined in 1998.
Next
Milwaukee gets a week off and opens the World Series at home on Friday, October 23, on Fox. Its opponent is still undecided: the Cleveland Guardians led the Tampa Bay Rays 2-1 in the American League Championship Series after a 3-2 win on October 15, with Game 4 set for Cleveland on October 16.
Reporting from Fox Sports and CBS Sports.
