LOS ANGELES — For the second October in a row, and for the second season in which they have employed Shohei Ohtani, the Los Angeles Dodgers are bound for the World Series. Ohtani carried the club as it claimed the National League pennant with a 5-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers to complete a sweep in the National League Championship Series. Ohtani stole the show on Friday at Dodger Stadium. He swatted three home runs while striking out 10 in six scoreless innings.
Welcome to the party, Shohei Ohtani
A miserable postseason slump brought something out of Ohtani that Dodgers officials had hardly seen from their two-way superstar in his two seasons in the organization: a visible edge.
The questions about whether his pitching was affecting his hitting didn’t help matters. So, Ohtani took a different approach to breaking out of his offensive drought. He alerted Dodgers hitting coaches Thursday night that he would like to take batting practice on the field, something he had not done at Dodger Stadium since signing there. One Dodgers staffer even got them to play his Michael Bublé walk-out music before Ohtani stepped into the cage and slugged home run after home run.
Those who have been around Ohtani figured it was a good sign. In Game 4, Ohtani’s bat came to life — on a day he was pitching, no less. He completed a scoreless top of the first inning on the mound that featured three strikeouts, then walloped a Jose Quintana slurve nearly over the pavilion seats in right field for his first home run since Game 1 of the NL Wild Card Series against the Cincinnati Reds.
Shohei Ohtani hit 100 mph on the radar gun several times while holding the Brewers scoreless over six innings. (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
Three innings later, he sent a ball out even farther, sending a Chad Patrick cutter past the pavilion seats a projected 469 feet.
Ohtani’s heroics continued even after he left the mound in the seventh inning, connecting on a Trevor Megill fastball on the inner half of the plate and sending it out to left-center field. The 113.6 mph rocket off his bat paled in comparison to the mammoth distances of his first two homers, traveling a mere 427 feet.
Oh, and his final pitching line? Ohtani delivered six shutout innings in which he gave up two hits, walked three and struck out 10.
If Ohtani gets hot … watch out.
The last gasp for the Brewers became a whimper
For the past week, as his hitters struggled to contend with the unrelenting Dodgers rotation, Brewers manager Pat Murphy lamented his club’s approach. The Dodgers, he said on more than one occasion, brought out the worst in his team. Gone was the relentless but patient gang of woodpeckers that ran away with the NL Central. In their place was a group of undersized hitters attempting to be sluggers.
For a moment in Friday’s seventh inning, the Brewers of old returned. Christian Yelich led off with a walk, and William Contreras stroked a single up the middle. The simplified approach ended Ohtani’s evening and brought in lefty reliever Alex Vesia. Murphy countered with right-handed hitting first baseman Andrew Vaughn, whose arrival mid-summer catalyzed Milwaukee’s offense.
The rally soon fizzled. Vesia induced a pop-up from Vaughn with a fastball on the hands. Outfielder Sal Frelick rolled into a double play. Inning over.
Heading into the postseason, the knock on the Brewers was the team’s inability to hit the ball over the fence. In falling to the Dodgers, Milwaukee may have over-corrected. To their manager, they tried to be something they weren’t.
It’s all about the starting pitching
He’s baseball’s prized two-way star for a reason. Ohtani didn’t just shock the sport with 1,342 feet worth of home runs. He also delivered six scoreless innings and struck out 10, becoming the latest Dodger starter to dominate the Brewers this series.
Ohtani carved up the Brewers with 19 swings-and-misses and filled up the zone with all seven of his pitches. His fastball topped out at 100 mph. Milwaukee hardly stood a chance.
In the big picture, Los Angeles soared to its second straight NL pennant thanks to supreme starting pitching. The four-headed monster of Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Ohtani combined to scatter nine hits over 28 2/3 innings while racking up 35 strikeouts. Their rotation ERA in the NLCS? A casual 0.63.
“I really have never seen anything like it before,” second baseman Tommy Edman said after Game 3. “Four aces in a playoff rotation.”
José Quintana combusts as season comes to a close
The Brewers waited as long as possible before exposing veteran southpaw José Quintana to the Dodgers’ lineup. The first three innings explained why. The Dodgers’ offense really came to life for the first time this series. Ohtani went deep in the team’s first at-bat, but Quintana gave up five more hits before exiting with none out in the third. His line could have been a lot worse, but rookie Chad Patrick stranded runners at the corners.
In the end, though, Milwaukee was hampered by injuries to its pitching staff in the final weeks of the season. Without Brandon Woodruff, the team elected to be creative in its deployment of arms. Sometimes that worked, as it did in a bullpen game against the Chicago Cubs in Game 5 of the NL Division Series. But the flip side showed up in these two games in Los Angeles, with opener Aaron Ashby stumbling in Game 3 and Quintana getting blitzed in Game 4.
The pitch that flipped the series? We’ll never know
The most consequential pitch of this series — if such a thing can be said about one pitch culled from 36 innings — occurred in the final inning of the first game. It was a 1-2 sweeper thrown by Dodgers reliever Blake Treinen. The bases were loaded, with two outs. Silent for eight innings against Dodgers ace Blake Snell, the Brewers had roared to life against closer Roki Sasaki and cut a two-run deficit to one. The pitch cut into the batter’s box, on a collision course with Milwaukee second baseman Brice Turang.
Except Turang flinched.
It is hard to criticize him for the instinctive move. You try standing in the box and wearing a pitch. But Turang understood the missed opportunity. He turned toward his dugout and shook his head. He admitted, after the game, that he wished he had let the baseball hit him. Instead, he struck out on the next pitch, a fastball well above the strike zone. Treinen raised his arms in triumph. The Brewers had missed their chance.
As Brewers fans lament the end of an excellent season, little moments like this will linger. The flinch did not decide the series. But it operated as a moment of sliding doors, when a different fate besides a sweep might have been possible.
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