One year after the Los Angeles Dodgers swept them out of the postseason, the Milwaukee Brewers returned the favor. The Brewers completed an NLCS sweep of the defending champions with a 6-4 comeback win in Game 4 on Thursday, delivering the exact opposite of their own sweep at the hands of the Dodgers in the 2025 NLCS. The clincher was a pennant for the first time in 44 years, 4 days, and it sends Milwaukee to the Fall Classic for only the second time in franchise history.

The Clincher

It didn’t start like a coronation. The Brewers fell behind 4-0 in the second inning after Shohei Ohtani hit the Dodgers’ first homer of the series.

Milwaukee chipped back, and in the fifth inning a series of walks culminated in Jake Bauers drawing a four-pitch free pass with the bases loaded to tie the game. From there, the Brewers finished the job at Dodger Stadium. 

The series as a whole was a mismatch nobody predicted. The Brewers out-homered Los Angeles 7-1, and the sweep made them the first team ever to sweep an opponent that swept it in a postseason series the year before. 

How the Series Turned

Game 1 set the tone at home. In front of a sellout crowd of 42,617 at American Family Field, the Brewers won 2-1 on a Brice Turang home run and an RBI single from rookie Luis Lara, with the bullpen shutting down the Dodgers after ace Jacob Misiorowski allowed a run in 4 1/3 innings. biztimes

Game 3 was the knockout punch. Jackson Chourio hit Blake Snell’s first pitch over the right-field fence — one year to the day after his first-pitch homer off Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 2 of last year’s NLCS. Later, Bauers’ two-run blast off the two-time Cy Young winner turned a one-run deficit into a one-run lead in the seventh inning, and Garrett Mitchell followed with a back-to-back shot in a 6-2 win. 

A Record Regular Season

October paid off a dominant summer. The 2026 season was a historic one for the club, as the Brewers notched a franchise-record 103 wins, again the best mark in the majors. They clinched in style, demolishing the Cincinnati Reds 20-0 — the largest margin of victory ever on the day a team clinched its playoff spot. The pitching staff, led by NL Cy Young frontrunner Jacob Misiorowski, sported the Senior Circuit’s lowest ERA. 

In the Division Series, the bullpen carried the load. Milwaukee beat the Padres 3-1 in Game 4 at Petco Park, with Trevor Megill closing out San Diego over 3 1/3 innings. That win also snapped a 12-game playoff road losing streak. 

The Long Road Back

This pennant run has deep roots. The Brewers began play in 1969 as the Seattle Pilots and spent their first 30 seasons in the American League before moving to the NL in 1998. 

Their lone previous pennant came in 1982, when five Hall of Famers — Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, catcher Ted Simmons, starter Don Sutton and closer Rollie Fingers — all played pivotal roles. That club rallied past the Angels in the ALCS, the first team to come back from a 2–0 deficit to win the series, before the Cardinals defeated them in seven games in what the media called the “Suds Series.” 

Then came decades in the wilderness. Before the current era, the Brewers had reached the postseason only four times in franchise history. The modern climb began in 2018, when Milwaukee won an NL-best 96 games before falling to the Dodgers 5-1 in Game 7 of the NLCS. The early exits that followed stung: in 2024 the Brewers won the NL Central but were bounced in the Wild Card Series by the Mets, and they suffered the same letdown against Arizona in 2023. 

2025 brought a breakthrough and a heartbreak. Milwaukee won an emotional Game 5 over the Cubs in the Division Series, then ran into the buzzsaw. During the Dodgers’ four-game sweep in the 2025 NLCS, the Brewers scored four total runs. This year, they converted that pain into momentum, clinching a postseason berth for the fourth straight season and eighth time in the past nine years.

The Murphy Effect

Manager Pat Murphy has steered the turnaround, winning NL Manager of the Year for the second straight season in 2025. Murphy famously leaned into an underdog identity last fall, highlighting the Dodgers’ star power and payroll as reasons the Brewers were the underdogs. This October, the underdog story got its ending. 

What’s Next

Milwaukee now waits on the American League, where Tampa Bay and Cleveland battle for the pennant; Tampa Bay seeks a third trip to the Fall Classic in search of the franchise’s first World Series title. Whoever emerges, one franchise will finally get its first ring — and the Brewers have never won a World Series title in their 57-year history. 

For a city that has waited since Yount and Molitor, that may be the only number that matters now.