Going into game one of the 2025 MLB National League Championship Series (NLCS), as a neutral fan on both sides, I was really intrigued by the matchup. The defending champion, the Los Angeles Dodgers, faced the team with the best record the—Milwaukee Brewers. The Brewers swept all six games against the Dodgers in the regular season, but with the Dodgers’ skill and how they were playing then in the July series, compared to how they are now, it was quite obvious that the Dodgers were going to be more of a challenge this time around. What many, including me, didn’t see coming was Los Angeles crushing the Brewers in a four-game sweep. There are things I noticed watching this series that contributed to the result.
- The Dodgers played complementary baseball
The Dodgers star power wasn’t exactly what overpowered the Brewers defensively. The Brewers pitching, for the most part, shut the Dodgers star players down this series. But it was mostly the bottom part of the lineup for the Dodgers in every game that did most of the damage. The Brewers also made a lot of mistakes in the series, most notably Abner Uribe throwing the ball away on a pickoff attempt that scored a Dodgers run in game three, along with Jake Bauers running into an out at home earlier in the game. Blake Perkins also got doubled off of first on a flyout in game four. Los Angeles also did the small things right by running the bases smart and aggressively, along with getting timely hits and walks.
- Dodgers aces combined with bad plate approaches from the Brewers.
The rotation of Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani was as good as advertised for the Dodgers this series. Snell pitched a shutout into the eighth inning of game one and, in fact, could’ve easily pitched a complete game like his counterpart in Yamamoto did the next day. However, a big thing that helped the four was the Brewers approach at the plate. The Brewers hitters were either too patient or too aggressive, and that resulted in falling behind in counts. The whole series, if a pitch was out of the zone, it was rare for the Brewers to hold up, or if it was in the zone, it was rare for the Brewers to crush it. In game one, if Brice Turang didn’t swing at a pitch way above his head to strike out and end the game with a 2-1 loss while the bases were loaded, Milwaukee could’ve snuck through and stolen game one. The Brewers offense all year thrived on small ball and being aggressive on the base paths. I can vividly remember watching game four and hearing TBS announcers Ron Darling and Jeff Francoeur talking about how, even though the Brewers were down 4-0 in the game, that they could get back in the game and series by doing the approach that got them here. Of course, that’s not what the Brewers did as the offense continued to go down with a whimper.
- Questionable managerial decisions
One of the biggest questions about the Brewers getting swept was some of the decisions by Manager Pat Murphy. The biggest one was the decision of having openers; it messed up the rhythm of the pitching staff and pitchers in the pen were getting overused. Especially Aaron Ashby, who opened game three and gave up a triple from Ohtani and a double from Mookie Betts to give up a run. Uribe, who had a really good season with a 1.67 ERA, gave up two runs each in his two appearances in games one and two, followed by the error in game three.
The Dodgers payroll allowing them to get so many stars helped. However, the fact of the matter is that Milwaukee just simply did not give itself a shot to win this series. In all four games combined, the Brewers scored only one run in each game. Especially against a team like Los Angeles, Milwaukee played its worst at the worst time and they are going home because of it.
