Live in the Fourth: Ohtani Ends a Weeks-Long Drought With a 428-Foot, Three-Run Blast and the Dodgers Lead 4-2

Ohtani finally breaks through — and a game Los Angeles had to have suddenly has a pulse

LOS ANGELES

For three games, the Milwaukee Brewers controlled every big moment of this National League Championship Series. Early in Game 4 on Thursday night at Dodger Stadium, the Los Angeles Dodgers finally produced one of their own. As this story was published, Los Angeles led Milwaukee 4-2 in the middle of the fourth inning, with the game still in progress and the Brewers still leading the series three games to none. Milwaukee can still clinch the pennant tonight. But for the first time in days, the Dodgers are the team in front, and the swing that put them there came from the player they needed most.

USA Today reported that the Dodgers opened the scoring in the second inning, when Andy Pages delivered an RBI single to give Los Angeles a 1-0 lead. The inning did not stop there. Shohei Ohtani stepped in and drove a three-run home run off Milwaukee pitcher Dustin May, stretching the lead to 4-0 and sending Dodger Stadium into its loudest roar of the series. It was one swing, in the second inning of a game that is far from over, but given everything that came before it this week, it landed like a season-saving moment.

A 428-foot answer to a long, quiet October

ClutchPoints reported that Ohtani's home run traveled 428 feet. The distance only tells part of the story. ClutchPoints also reported that this was Ohtani's first home run since August 18, and his first postseason extra-base hit since September 24. For a hitter of his caliber, those are staggering droughts, and they framed everything about the Dodgers' struggles in this series. Los Angeles had not homered at all across the first three games of the NLCS, and its biggest star had been at the center of the silence.

ESPN reported that Ohtani entered Game 4 hitting just .182 in the postseason, with four singles in 22 at-bats. Those numbers explain why his spot in the batting order became a nightly debate. In Game 3, manager Dave Roberts dropped him to sixth, the lowest he had hit in a Dodgers uniform. The move did not produce a breakout, and Milwaukee won again to move within one victory of the World Series. Our recap of that night, Bauers and Mitchell's back-to-back homers in Game 3, shows how complete Milwaukee's control had been.

Roberts bets on his star at the top of the order

The boldest decision of the night may have been made before the first pitch. ESPN reported that Roberts moved Ohtani back to the leadoff spot for Game 4, even with a left-handed starter on the mound for Milwaukee. That is a manager telling his best player, in the middle of a slump, that the team will live or die with him setting the table. It is also a manager refusing to hide his star in an elimination game. Batting leadoff guarantees Ohtani the most plate appearances possible, and in the second inning it put him at the plate with runners on and a chance to change the game. He did.

There is a psychology to October that numbers alone cannot capture. A slumping superstar batting sixth can start to look like a problem a team is managing. The same player batting first looks like a statement. Roberts made the statement, and Ohtani backed it up with the biggest swing of the Dodgers' postseason. Whether it becomes the start of a comeback or a footnote in a Milwaukee celebration depends entirely on what happens over the rest of this night, and you can follow the pennant races across our MLB coverage and the full sports front.

Glasnow was perfect early — then Milwaukee answered

For three innings, the Dodgers got the pitching performance to match the moment. USA Today reported that Tyler Glasnow was perfect through three innings, retiring every Brewers hitter he faced and giving the home crowd real belief that the early lead might hold and grow. In an elimination game, that kind of start matters enormously. It lets a dugout breathe, lets a lineup play loose, and turns every out into a little more noise from the stands.

Milwaukee, to its credit, did what it has done all series: it answered. ESPN's scoreboard showed the Brewers scoring twice in the top of the fourth inning to cut the lead to 4-2, which is where the game stood in the middle of the fourth as this story published. That response is exactly why this series has been so difficult for Los Angeles. The Brewers do not panic, they do not chase the moment, and they have repeatedly taken the Dodgers' best stretches and shrunk them. A 4-0 lead became a two-run game in one inning, and the pressure swung straight back onto the home team.

The history Los Angeles is still fighting

None of the context has changed, even with the Dodgers in front. USA Today noted that only one team in Major League Baseball history, the 2004 Boston Red Sox, has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a postseason series. That is the mountain Los Angeles still has to climb. Winning tonight only earns a Game 5. The Dodgers would still need to win three more in a row against a Brewers team that has outplayed them for most of this series.

Milwaukee's prize is just as historic in the other direction. The Brewers are trying to reach the World Series for the first time since 1982, and for the first time ever as a National League club. One win, at any point in the next four games, gets them there. They will get their next chances in this game itself: as of the middle of the fourth, Milwaukee had six innings of at-bats left to erase a two-run deficit, with a bullpen and a lineup that have produced late heroics throughout this series, including the seventh-inning back-to-back homers that decided Game 3.

So the picture at Dodger Stadium is simple and tense. The Dodgers lead 4-2, their superstar has finally delivered the swing his team begged for all week, and their starting pitcher opened the night perfectly. The Brewers trail by two, have already answered once, and need only to win once to end this. The rest of Game 4 will decide whether Thursday night is remembered as the start of an impossible comeback or the night Milwaukee finished the job. This story will be updated as the game goes final.