The Milwaukee Brewers turned the NLCS into a four-game statement, and the clean sweep over Los Angeles stood out as one of the postseason’s biggest shocks. Milwaukee had the pieces to push the Dodgers, but closing out the defending champions without giving away a single game made the run even more impressive.
John Smoltz, who covered the series from the broadcast booth and later joined Ben Verlander’s Flippin’ Bats podcast, dug into what went wrong for Los Angeles. His answer wasn’t a simple one.
“Well the easy and lazy statement would be that they (Dodgers) got old,” Smoltz remarked.
“But that’s not fair. Getting old had nothing to do with hitting, it might have had something to do with defense… The Dodgers had to slug, they didn’t slug.
They had to hit with runners in scoring position, they didn’t. They had three straight innings where they could have tied the game or taken the lead, they didn’t.”
Smoltz also made sure to give Milwaukee its due.
“Credit deserves on the other side, but when you’re champions and you’ve been there, done that, that experience flip flops to you. They pitched well, but they didn’t pitch good enough.”
The Dodgers are still a dangerous team, but the bat never came through when the series tightened up. That was the real issue, according to Smoltz: Los Angeles just didn’t do enough damage offensively, while Milwaukee’s deep, flexible pitching staff kept shutting down chances.
There’s work ahead for the Dodgers before next season, even if the franchise is still built to contend again. For now, though, the spotlight belongs to Milwaukee, which has claimed the National League’s spot in this year’s World Series.
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