Milwaukee Brewers end the Dodgers’ quest for a third straight title, sweeping LA to earn a trip to the World Series

By Kyle Feldscher, CNN

(CNN) — Major League Baseball will have a new champion this fall.

The Milwaukee Brewers are headed to the World Series after a dominating sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the reigning two-time champions. The high-priced Dodgers aimed to make history as the first National League team to ever win three straight titles, but Shohei Ohtani and company ran into a blue-and-yellow buzzsaw this week.

Milwaukee pulled off a four-game sweep of the Dodgers, capping their domination with a 6-4 victory at Dodger Stadium on Thursday.

“We’re just happy for our fans, for everybody that’s been a part of this organization and stuck with us over the years,” captain Christian Yelich said after the game. “We’ve come close a bunch of times to get to this point. We’ve still got a ways to go, we still got some big games in front of us.”

The Brewers were baseball’s best team in the regular season and were looking for revenge after the Dodgers swept them in dominant fashion on their way to the 2025 title. This year, it’s the Dodgers who are left wondering what just happened and the Brewers going on to pull off a bit of history: The Brew Crew are looking for their organization’s first title and Milwaukee has only been to the Fall Classic once in team history, losing in seven games in 1982.

In front of a stunned Dodgers Stadium, the Brewers fought back on Thursday from an early 4-0 deficit. Ohtani seemed to shake off months of doldrums, hitting a three-run home run in the second inning that put the defending champs up with a big lead.

Sometimes in the playoffs, a four-run lead can feel like more than enough. But the Brewers were not fazed by Ohtani’s jubilant celebration after his moonshot and began to chip away.

The Brewers scored two runs in the fourth and two more in the fifth to tie the game. Then it was center fielder Garrett Mitchell who hit a long drive to deep right field in the sixth, carrying the fence and landing in the first row of seats, that gave Milwaukee the lead.

Mitchell’s blast seemed to knock some of the fight out of the Dodgers, who were able to get the tying run to third base three times in the ensuing innings but couldn’t quite get the big hit needed to even the contest. The subdued crowd in Chavez Ravine was often drowned out by the paltry number of Brewers fans in attendance.

Their best chance came in the bottom of the eighth when longtime catcher Will Smith laced the ball into the right field corner. It bounced around, eluding Brewers right fielder Sal Frelick and Smith was able to get to third with a stand-up triple.

There was just one out and the Dodgers’ latest expensive signing, Kyle Tucker, coming up next. Tucker was jammed by an Aaron Ashby pitch, flying out to short center field for the second out. Teoscar Hernández followed, looking to author yet another signature playoff moment for the Dodgers. It never came – instead Hernández was left baffled by an Ashby curveball, striking out and stranding Smith.

Ashby, who pitched the final three innings of the game, said he felt very calm on the mound.

“I think I was just praying for a little peace in the chaos. Because with this crowd, with this team, things can happen fast. I guess just trying to be calm and felt a lot of peace out there,” he told the Fox broadcast.

Just an inning later, David Hamilton added an insurance run, belting a solo home run to make it 6-4 in the top of the ninth.

It was a strange way for this dominant run for the Dodgers to end, a comparative whimper after two years of massive success. LA had long been expected to waltz to another title with the game’s second-most-expensive roster paired with the kind of analytics baseball has embraced over the last two decades.

Instead, it will be the comparatively thrifty Brewers representing the National League in the World Series, which promises to be a battle of the little guys. The Brewers’ roster cost about $143 million to assemble, good for 19th in MLB this year. They’ll play either the Cleveland Guardians or Tampa Bay Rays, two of the cheapest teams in the league.

The Guardians payroll is the lowest in the league at $74 million; the Rays are 25th at $98 million.

After being swept by the Dodgers last year, it was a moment of catharsis for the Brewers and their fans.

“You don’t ever know what to expect coming into a series like that last year. You don’t know how bad it could be and then it was as bad as it was,” Ashby said. “We came out and we survived, and we came back this year and those guys played their tails off. I’d die for any of these dudes”

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