The Dodgers Led Every NLCS Game and Still Got Swept, an MLB First

Milwaukee won Game 4, 6-4, at Dodger Stadium and heads to its first World Series since 1982.

Tyler Glasnow set down the first 10 Milwaukee Brewers he faced Thursday night, and the Dodgers were up 4-0 after two innings at Dodger Stadium. That was the good part.

Milwaukee tied it by the fifth, went ahead on Garrett Mitchell's sixth-inning homer and won 6-4. That finished a four-game sweep of the National League Championship Series and ended the Dodgers' run at a third straight title. They'd led in all four games, and the Los Angeles Times reported that no club in major league history had ever done that in a best-of-seven series and still been swept.

The leads were real, just never long. Andy Pages' single made it 1-0 in the second inning of Game 1 before Brice Turang homered. In Game 2 the Dodgers kept retaking the lead, the last time with two runs in the fifth, according to Sporting News' rundown of the series. Milwaukee tied it in the bottom half and pulled ahead in the sixth.

Will Smith's double put the Dodgers up 2-1 in the sixth inning of Game 3, and then Jake Bauers and Mitchell went deep. Game 4 brought Shohei Ohtani's first home run in 58 days, True Blue LA noted. Glasnow retired 10 straight and lasted one more inning, the Times reported, and every Dodgers lead in the series drew a Milwaukee answer within two innings.

The closest thing to a precedent, Sporting News pointed out, citing The Athletic, is the 2015 Mets. They held a lead in all four of their World Series losses to the Kansas City Royals. Those Mets at least won a game.

The numbers behind the collapse are blunt. The Dodgers' rotation, the most expensive ever assembled, allowed 13 runs over 18 innings, a 6.50 ERA, according to the Times. With runners in scoring position the lineup went 4 for 27 and stranded 24. It hit into as many double plays as it had hits in those spots.

Milwaukee's bullpen did the opposite. Manager Pat Murphy called on a reliever 14 times in the series, and only twice did one give up a run. "They just strung together good at-bat after good at-bat. That's usually what we do," Dodgers infielder Max Muncy said, according to the Times.

There's a revenge plot under all of it. A year earlier, the Dodgers swept Milwaukee in the NLCS on the way to their second straight championship. MLB.com noted that no team had ever been swept by a club and then swept that same club the following postseason. "I think the Dodgers figured out that we came in here with a little different attitude this year," Murphy said, according to MLB.com.

The lead-in-every-game record is what people kept passing around online Friday, and it's easy to see why: the Dodgers had the lead and lost it four games running. Milwaukee heads to its first World Series since 1982, with Game 1 set for Oct. 23.

The Dodgers head into a long winter with half of their 26-man NLCS roster on expiring contracts, the Times reported, and a core, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman among them, that's 33 or older. "Not every time it's gonna be us," outfielder Teoscar Hernández said, according to the Times. "So hopefully we come back next year stronger."

Source: latimes.com, retrieved October 16, 2026. Other sources: sportingnews.com, mlb.com.