Milwaukee came from four runs down in Los Angeles, won 6–4 on Thursday and secured the National League championship behind a decisive Garrett Mitchell homer and nine final outs from Aaron Ashby.
Milwaukee Brewers 6 · Los Angeles Dodgers 4
Game date: Oct 15, 2026 · America/Chicago
Published: Oct 16, 2026
Professional · Baseball · MLB
LOS ANGELES — Milwaukee will play in the World Series for the first time in 44 years. The Brewers erased a four-run deficit Thursday night, defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 6–4 and completed a four-game National League Championship Series sweep that ended the defending champions' pursuit of a third consecutive title.
The winning play came in the sixth inning, when Garrett Mitchell drove a go-ahead solo home run against Tanner Scott. Milwaukee had been behind 4–0 early. It had been down in the series a year earlier, too, when the Dodgers swept the Brewers out of October. This time the postseason ended at Dodger Stadium with Milwaukee celebrating on the field and Los Angeles watching.
The final score alone understates the turnaround. Shohei Ohtani launched a three-run homer as the Dodgers built a 4–0 advantage through two innings. A decisive Game 4 had appeared to be moving in Los Angeles' direction, particularly with the home club facing elimination and needing to extend the series. Milwaukee's response required patience more than one enormous inning.
The Brewers started working their way back rather than swinging for a four-run homer. William Contreras reached with a ground-rule double in the fourth, and Jake Bauers followed with a two-run ground-rule double. A deficit that had looked dangerous became manageable. Milwaukee still needed to sustain pressure against a Dodgers staff accustomed to getting the ball to elite late-inning relief options, but the fourth inning changed the leverage of every remaining plate appearance.
In the fifth, Milwaukee completed the comeback. Sal Frelick drew a walk and stole a base, David Hamilton delivered an RBI single, and Bauers worked a bases-loaded walk that tied the game. The rally was revealing: extra-base power mattered, but so did base running, strike-zone decisions and making Los Angeles find the plate with traffic on the bases.
Mitchell then supplied the moment that flipped the scoreboard for good. His sixth-inning swing turned a 4–4 tie into a 5–4 Milwaukee lead and gave the club's bullpen a narrow margin to protect. The Brewers were not finished creating separation. Hamilton, batting ninth, homered in the ninth inning to extend the advantage to 6–4. That final insurance run mattered against an opponent with enough power to change the result on a single swing.
Aaron Ashby handled the final three innings and recorded the save. His assignment was substantial: protect a one-run lead against Los Angeles deep into a game that carried a pennant. The task changed to a two-run lead after Hamilton's ninth-inning homer, but Ashby still had to finish the job. Jackson Chourio secured the final out in the outfield, triggering the celebration that Milwaukee had not experienced since its previous World Series trip in 1982.
The Brewers entered October carrying more than an underdog story. Milwaukee won 103 regular-season games, the highest total in the majors this year. Winning that many games establishes an expectation: regular-season dominance is supposed to translate into an opportunity to win a championship. Getting from the best record to a pennant, however, requires surviving a fundamentally different format in which four defeats can erase six months of excellence.
LOS ANGELES — Milwaukee needed only one inning to take back the lead. By the end of the night, the Brewers had taken something considerably larger from the Dodgers: nearly all their room for error.
DOPE Sports Network Staff · Oct 14, 2026
William Contreras had already answered one Dodgers lead when he stepped into the middle of another Milwaukee comeback. His fifth-inning home run brought the Brewers even. His sixth-inning single put them ahead. By the time Aaron Ashby recorded the final out, Los Angeles had exhausted eight pitchers without finding a way to stop Milwaukee from coming back.
DOPE Sports Network Staff · Oct 14, 2026
Milwaukee's four relievers in NLCS Game 2 allowed the Dodgers no hits and no walks over five innings. That line is the simplest way to locate the difference between a game the Brewers repeatedly had to repair and a finish they could control. Once the bullpen took responsibility for the remaining outs, Los Angeles stopped producing baserunners through either of those routes.
Milwaukee's sweep became particularly striking because the Brewers trailed in all four games before winning them. In other words, the series was not simply a demonstration of scoring first and holding leads. It was a demonstration of how many different situations Milwaukee could solve without giving away its season. The club generated power when necessary, competed through difficult at-bats and trusted its bullpen to finish games against one of baseball's most accomplished lineups.
Jake Bauers was named NLCS Most Valuable Player. His role in the clincher did not depend on a late dramatic home run: the ground-rule double helped start the comeback, and his bases-loaded walk tied the game. That is the kind of production that can get buried beneath replayed highlight swings, but it was central to Milwaukee overcoming the four-run hole.
For the Dodgers, the sweep halted their bid for another championship and ended a season that had carried expectations of extending their recent postseason dominance. Ohtani's early homer gave Los Angeles the beginning it needed in Game 4. The Dodgers could not translate that start into the sustained scoring or pitching stability required to keep their season alive.
For the Brewers, the view now moves home. Game 1 of the World Series is scheduled for Friday, October 23, with Milwaukee awaiting the American League champion. Cleveland entered Friday with a 2–1 ALCS lead over Tampa Bay; that series remains unresolved. The opponent and the circumstances will change, but Milwaukee's starting point is now established: for the first time since 1982, the Brewers have four more wins between them and a world championship.
