Alden GonzalezOct 17, 2025, 11:30 PM ETCloseESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.Follow on X
LOS ANGELES — Mookie Betts stood on the Dodger Stadium field Friday night, a commemorative World Series cap on his head and a wide smile on his face, and made what felt like an apt comparison moments after the Dodgers completed a National League Championship Series sweep of the Brewers.
When it was over, and the Dodgers had clinched a second straight pennant on an Ohtani-fueled 5-1 victory in Game 4 of the NLCS, his teammates once again struggled to make sense of it.
“Some human, huh?” Dodgers utility man Enrique Hernandez said of Ohtani, the NLCS MVP despite being almost nonexistent for the first three games.
“No one puts more pressure on himself than Shohei,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. Focusing on pitching, Dodgers hitting coach Aaron Bates believes, “actually took his mind off the hitting a little bit.”
“I played left field that time,” Hernandez said, “and I didn’t get to punch all those people that he punched out.”
The Dodgers responded to their 2024 championship, their first in a full season in 36 years, by doubling down on a star-laden roster, coming away with another impressive group in free agency. They entered the ensuing season with expectations of challenging Major League Baseball’s regular-season wins record. A 23-10 start only strengthened that belief.
The Dodgers breezed past the Cincinnati Reds in the wild-card round, dispatched the Philadelphia Phillies in four NL Division Series games then completely stifled the No. 1-seeded Brewers, limiting them to four runs on 14 hits in 36 innings. Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Ohtani combined for an 0.63 ERA in the NLCS. In 10 playoff games, they are a combined 9-1 with a 1.40 ERA.
“We knew going into October that the strength of our club was going to be our starters,” Friedman said. “For them to do what they did eclipsed even our expectations.”
Ohtani took the ball on 12 days’ rest, allowed a leadoff walk to Brice Turang then struck out Jackson Chourio and Christian Yelich on back-to-back 100 mph fastballs, an early sign to teammates and coaches that he had brought his best stuff with him. Another strikeout, on a sweeper to William Contreras, followed.
Ohtani came out for the seventh inning after throwing 87 pitches, allowed the first two batters to reach and exited to a standing ovation from a sold-out crowd of 52,883. “MVP” chants serenaded him when he came to bat again in the bottom of the seventh — and Ohtani responded with a 113.6 mph line drive that cleared the wall near straightaway center field, cementing a masterful production.
“That was probably the greatest postseason performance of all time,” Roberts said. “There’s been a lot of postseason games. And there’s a reason why he’s the greatest player on the planet.”
“There’s only one person who can do that in the world, and in the history of this game, and it’s him,” Hernandez said of Ohtani. “He is who he is for a reason.”
But the Dodgers won just two more times than they lost over their next 110 games. For much of the season, they were basically mediocre. Their rotation was hurt, their bullpen was a mess, and their lineup was inconsistent. Around their lowest point, while in Baltimore during the first weekend of September, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts called a team meeting in an effort to inject confidence in his players. They responded by winning 15 of their last 20 regular-season games, looking every bit like the juggernaut so many expected.
The Brewers did not record their first hit until Chourio led off the fourth inning with a ground-rule double. Ohtani followed by getting Yelich to ground out and striking out Contreras and Jake Bauers. Ohtani came to bat again in the bottom of the fourth, with two outs, none on and the Dodgers holding a three-run lead. He swung so hard at a Chad Patrick cutter that he sent it 469 feet, clearing the right-center-field bleachers. Ohtani followed with a string of four consecutive strikeouts in the fifth and sixth innings, all on splitters.
“It’s like we’re the Chicago Bulls,” Betts said, “and he’s Michael Jordan.”
Ultimately, though, it was doing both that set him free.
“It let him go be an athlete in the box,” Bates said. “It let him just play baseball.”
The 2025 Dodgers are the first team since the 2009 Phillies to return to the World Series one year after winning it, and Los Angeles is just the fifth to ever win nine of its first 10 postseason games, joining the 2014 Kansas City Royals, 2005 Chicago White Sox, 1999 New York Yankees and 1995 Atlanta Braves.
The Dodgers are the only team to benefit from a performance like this.
CloseESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.Follow on X
Shohei Ohtani’s 3-homer night sends Dodgers to World Series (1:28)Shohei Ohtani becomes the third player with a three-home run game in a league championship series-clinching game; each of his Game 4 homers exceeded 400 feet. (1:28)