Ohtani inevitable as Dodgers complete sweep of Brewers

The Milwaukee Brewers came into tonight’s game trailing the Los Angeles Dodgers 3-0 in the National League Championship Series. Players and fans alike knew that if the Brewers were going to come back, it would be a historic event. Well, the Brewers and their fans did see history tonight, but unfortunately, it came from the man who started on the mound and hit out of the leadoff spot for the Dodgers, the man like whom this game has never seen, the man who truly brought his case for “Greatest of All Time” in front of the masses tonight.

The Brewers did manage to get a leadoff baserunner off of Shohei Ohtani when Brice Turang started the game by drawing a walk. But Ohtani started his historic night by striking out the next three batters.

Then Ohtani went out and hit a ball 117 mph and 446 feet into right field. I guess that’s what $700 million will get you.

The next couple of hitters also reached when Mookie Betts and Will Smith hit back-to-back singles, and Brewers starter Jose Quintana was in serious early trouble. He did manage a strikeout of Freddie Freeman, but Tommy Edman lined a single up the middle, too, and the Dodgers had a second run with runners still on first and third and one out. Teoscar Hernández made the second out but got the third run home when he grounded softly to first. Max Muncy hit a ball hard but got under it, and the Brewers had the third out, but they were in a 3-0 hole. Given the team’s recent offensive performances, it felt like 15.

Jake Bauers hit a ball 105 mph to start the second inning, but to continue a trend in this series, it was an out anyway on a grounder to Freeman. The game paused briefly after Sal Frelick fouled a ball hard off his foot, but he stayed in the game and popped out for the second out. Caleb Durbin grounded out, and while this part of the batting order at least put the ball in play, they went down in order too.

Quintana got the first two outs of the bottom of the second before Ohtani drew a walk on a close 3-2 pitch, but Betts flew out to center and Quintana got through the inning unscathed. Blake Perkins became Milwaukee’s second baserunner of the night when he drew a leadoff walk in the third, but Joey Ortiz struck out, and in a nice encapsulation of how it’s been going lately for Milwaukee, Turang hit a line drive to left that looked like a hit but was caught, and Perkins, who was running on the pitch, got doubled off at first.

The Dodgers were back at it in the bottom of the third when Smith and Freeman hit back-to-back singles to start the inning and put runners on the corners with nobody out. That was all for Quintana, who had a miserable night. Chad Patrick was the first man out of the bullpen for Milwaukee, and his first batter was Edman, who started by whacking a couple of hard foul balls but struck out looking. Teoscar struck out, too, and Muncy grounded out to first, and Patrick cleaned up the mess admirably.

Chourio, the leadoff batter in the fourth, very nearly snuck one over the short, 330-foot wall in the left-field corner but settled for a ground-rule double when it bounced on the warning track. Yelich was next, and he at least advanced Chourio to third with a hard grounder to short (a ball hit 109 mph, another hard-hit non-hit for Milwaukee). That gave Contreras a golden opportunity to drive in a run, but he waved at a 2-2 sweeper way off the plate and struck out. Bauers struck out, too, and the leadoff double (and runner on third with one out) did not score. Something went deeply wrong with the Milwaukee offense.

Patrick struck out Kiké Hernández and Andy Pages looking to start the bottom of the fourth. But with two outs, Ohtani hit a home run beyond the crowd in right-center, 469 feet away. Unreal.

A Betts flyout ended the fourth. Frelick started the fifth with a pop-out to shallow center. Ohtani then struck out Durbin and Perkins, and while the Brewers were going away meekly, it was difficult not to feel like we were watching something historic.

Back for the bottom of the fifth, Patrick retired Smith for the first time on the night when he popped out in foul territory. Freeman hit a hard fly ball to left, but Chourio caught it as he backed onto the warning track. Edman then crushed a ball into right, but Frelick made a fantastic leaping catch on the warning track on a ball that looked certain to be over his head.

The Brewers, desperate, sent Isaac Collins to the plate to pinch-hit for Ortiz to start the sixth, and he became Ohtani’s ninth strikeout victim. Four pitches later, Turang became the 10th. Chourio swung at the first pitch and flew out to center. Six shutout innings, one hit, 10 strikeouts, and two homers over 445 feet for Ohtani.

Somewhat surprisingly, Patrick was back out for a fourth inning, as Collins stayed in the game as the left fielder and Andruw Monasterio came in at shortstop, with Perkins to the bench. Patrick struck out Teoscar Hernández, then got Muncy with an assist from Turang on a sharp ground ball. Kiké Hernández flew out to shallow left, and Patrick needed only seven pitches to get through the sixth. It was the end of an extremely impressive outing for Patrick, who in four innings allowed the solo homer to Ohtani but allowed no other baserunners and struck out five.

Ohtani surpassed 90 pitches as he issued a walk to Yelich to start the seventh. Contreras worked back from an 0-2 count (and a close no-strike call on a check swing) and hit a single on a 3-2 pitch. With two on and no out and Ohtani at 100 pitches even, that was it for Ohtani the pitcher. If the Brewers were going to give themselves any flicker of hope, they needed to do something against Alex Vesia, who came on in relief.

With the lefty coming in, Pat Murphy sent Andrew Vaughn to the plate in place of Bauers, but Vaughn popped up and triggered the infield-fly rule for the first out. Frelick hit a hard grounder up the middle, but Betts was in the exact right spot, and he turned a 6-3 double play to end the inning, and any real hopes of a Brewer comeback. It also preserved the zero on Ohtani’s line, to the delight of baseball writers everywhere looking for clean, easy stories.

Trevor Megill relieved Patrick in the bottom of the seventh. He struck out Pages to start the inning, but the next batter was Ohtani, and when he hit a ball out to center field, his third of the game, you kind of just had to laugh. Betts nearly went back-to-back, but Frelick caught it at the wall for the second out, and Smith struck out to end the inning. The Dodger lead was up to five.

Durbin, one of the only hitters to show life in this series, led off the eighth with a double down the left-field line off the new Dodger pitcher, Blake Treinen. Monasterio followed with a walk, but Collins struck out for the first out. Treinen, who had major struggles this season, was removed after the minimum three hitters, replaced by the lefty Anthony Banda.

Banda got a ground ball from Turang, but it was hit too weakly to turn two, and the Brewers were on the board with the RBI groundout. Chourio followed with a two-out screamer into left for a single, but Yelich tapped one back to the mound for the third out. Jared Koenig pitched the bottom of the eighth and allowed a couple of two-out baserunners, but (just) got out of the inning when Kiké Hernández flew out to the warning track in left center to end the inning.

Roki Sasaki was in to face the Brewers as they made their last stand. Contreras started things by lining his second single of the game up the middle. Vaughn hit a ball sharply into right but Pages, who moved over to right when Justin Dean entered defensively, made the catch. Frelick swung awkwardly and hit a ground ball to second base, which resulted in the second out at second base. Durbin nearly hit one out to right, but it was caught on the warning track, and the sweep was complete.

Considering the postseason context, I think it’s safe to call what Ohtani did — six shutout innings, two hits, 10 strikeouts, three homers, and a walk — the greatest individual game in the history of baseball. The Brewers did an admirable job of containing Ohtani in the first three games of the series, but you felt like he was going to do something big at some point. You just didn’t think it would be this big. One final shoutout to Chad Patrick, who, like Jacob Misiorowski yesterday, had a heroic outing that the offense could do nothing to reward. A nod of the head also to Chourio and Durbin, who did what they could while the offense collapsed around them.

There’s a sort of depraved poetry to the way that the Brewer season started and ended with four awful games against the league’s financial juggernauts. At least there was a lot of fun baseball in between. It’s a disappointing end, but whoever controls the switch on this team’s offense turned it off last week and never turned it back on. The struggles on that side of the ball were difficult to watch, but it almost made it less painful to watch the series; after game one, it felt like they had no chance. In a morbid way, that’s far easier to deal with than the sudden, unexpected pain that they had to deal with last year. There’s a lesson about grief in there, I think.

We’ll have plenty of post-mortem coverage in the coming days. For now, I will say that it’s been a pleasure covering this Brewer team this season and interacting with you all.