Shohei Ohtani's Game 4 of the 2025 NLCS is the greatest individual performance in postseason baseball history, and people are still arguing about it a year later simply because it's hard to accept.
Here's what he did on October 17, 2025, at Dodger Stadium. He struck out 10 Brewers across six scoreless innings, giving up two hits and three walks. He also went 3-for-3 with three solo home runs, which traveled 446, 469 and 427 feet. The middle one left Dodger Stadium entirely. The Dodgers won 5-1 and swept Milwaukee out of the NLCS, and Ohtani walked off with his first NLCS MVP. He became the first player in MLB history to hit three homers and strike out 10 as a pitcher in the same game. He struck out the side in the first inning before he ever picked up a bat.
Now put the usual contenders next to that. Don Larsen's perfect game is a sacred relic, and he did one thing: he pitched. Bob Gibson owned the 1968 World Series from the mound. Reggie Jackson hit three homers in Game 6 in 1977 on three swings. Every one of those nights is an all-timer, and each one is built on a single thing done historically well. Ohtani did two separate historically elite things in the same nine innings, in a win-or-go-home clincher, and put up both ends of the scoreline himself. There was no lineup carrying him, no bullpen covering for him. He was the pitching staff and the offense.
The context makes it worse for anyone hunting for a tie-breaker. Ohtani was buried in a slump going in, 3-for-29 over his previous seven games with one extra-base hit, and he'd been bumped down the order right before first pitch. He hadn't pitched in nearly two weeks, not since a quality start in the NLDS opener in Philadelphia. His manager, Dave Roberts, said beforehand this was "his opportunity to make his mark on this series." José Quintana, trying to save the Brewers' season, barely got settled before Ohtani deposited that 446-foot shot to open the game. Quintana took the loss. He never had a chance.
There's a real tension in crowning Ohtani here while also grumbling elsewhere that the sport over-indexes on him. Both things are true. The over-coverage gripe is about volume and framing. This is about a single night on the field, and a single night either happened or it didn't. This one happened, and no amount of fatigue with Ohtani discourse changes a box score.
What he did sits in the record book untouched. Baseball spent the next year being cruel to him anyway. Twelve months later, almost to the day, Milwaukee returned the favor in full: the Brewers swept the Dodgers out of the 2026 NLCS to reach their first World Series since 1982, the first club ever to complete a postseason sweep against the same opponent that swept them the year before. Ohtani went home. The team he'd humiliated single-handedly got the last word on the scoreboard.
But it didn't touch the night. Revenge sweeps and lost series are outcomes. What Ohtani did on October 17, 2025, was something nobody in the sport's entire history has managed, and the Brewers winning the rematch doesn't move it an inch. The argument was over the moment his third ball landed. Everyone's just taking their time admitting it.
