Somewhere in Los Angeles, a fan is rewatching the bottom of the fifth inning of Game 4, convinced that if Dave Roberts had made one different call, the Dodgers would be flying to Milwaukee instead of cleaning out their lockers. That fan is wrong. The Brewers won this series because they were the better team for four straight games, and nothing in this NLCS says otherwise.
Start with Game 4, since the sequence people are angry about actually happened. Tyler Glasnow was done after four and a third innings with a 4-0 lead. Alex Vesia walked in the tying run with the bases loaded. Tanner Scott gave up a go-ahead homer to Garrett Mitchell the next inning. That's a bullpen failing in real time, and fans have every right to be furious about it. But it shows the relievers simply couldn't get outs when Roberts needed them to.
The lineup gamble gets treated as the bigger crime, which is strange, because it worked. Roberts moved a slumping Shohei Ohtani back to the top of the order after burying him in Game 3, and Ohtani answered with a three-run homer that snapped a 25-game homerless drought — the longest of his career. For an inning, it looked like the best call anybody made all series. A four-run lead vanished against a lineup that had already shown, three times over, it doesn't go quietly. Ohtani batting leadoff had nothing to do with it.
That's the part getting lost in the hunt for a scapegoat. Milwaukee didn't sweep the two-time defending champions by waiting for L.A. to hand them the series. Across four games the Brewers outhomered the Dodgers by a wide margin, supposed underdogs or not, with a lineup built on moving runners and grinding at-bats. William Contreras and Jake Bauers hit back-to-back doubles. Sal Frelick worked a walk and stole a base to set up a run. Bauers drew a bases-loaded walk to tie Game 4. That's a team trusting its approach in the biggest spot of its season, four times running, against a championship-caliber opponent.
Roberts has won with this roster before, repeatedly, and a manager who's delivered championships doesn't forget how to manage in October overnight. But his choices in this series didn't cost the Dodgers games they should have won. Milwaukee came from behind over and over across this postseason and did it again in the clincher. They were going to find a way no matter what was written on the lineup card.
The Dodgers ran into a team that wanted it more, game after game, with the roster to back it up. Milwaukee earned every bit of this series. Pretending otherwise is just L.A. refusing to admit the better team won.
