LOS ANGELES -- The last out of the Dodgers' season had been made more than an hour before, and Miguel Rojas was still wearing his jersey, cap, eye black and cleats. Moments after a 6-4 loss that cemented a sweep to the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series on Thursday night, Rojas announced his retirement as a player.
The Dodgers' quest for a three-peat ended suddenly, leaving a mix of sadness, uneasiness about what's next, and closure. The Brewers defeated them so thoroughly that little was left to second-guess. "At the end of the day, we got beat," manager Dave Roberts said. "We got outplayed in all facets." The group won 100 games and claimed its 13th division title in 14 years, but fell eight wins short of another championship. The looming lockout adds uncertainty about when the team will reconvene.
"For three years straight, we left it all out there," Max Muncy said, his eyes welling up. "The train finally ran out of steam, I guess. It just sucks." A year after dominating the Brewers in a sweep, the Dodgers were outclassed. Milwaukee worked counts, chipped away at deficits and never relented, and its relievers suffocated hitters late in games.
In the finale, Shohei Ohtani hit a 428-foot home run in the second inning to give the Dodgers a 4-0 lead, but the Brewers answered with doubles, steals and walks before Garrett Mitchell delivered the go-ahead homer. "They never stopped applying pressure," said outfielder Teoscar Hernandez. The Dodgers' offense had struggled through July and August, and it produced a .520 OPS in the NLCS, 272 points lower than Milwaukee's.
Source: ESPN General · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing