From 4-0 to 4-4: Brewers Erase Dodgers' Early Lead in Game 4 as the Pennant Hangs in the Balance

LOS ANGELES Thursday, October 15, 2026

Live, evening of Thursday, October 15: this game was tied 4-4 in the top of the sixth inning at publication time, and this story describes the game exactly as it stood then. It is not a final recap, and no final result is claimed here. For how the night began, see Previously's Game 4 preview, and for the homer that started the scoring, our live Ohtani report.

For about two innings on Thursday night, the Los Angeles Dodgers looked like a defending champion refusing to go quietly. Then the Milwaukee Brewers — one win from their first World Series since 1982 — methodically took the whole lead back. Milwaukee leads this National League Championship Series three games to none, and Game 4 at Dodger Stadium has become the whole season in miniature: the Dodgers' best punch, landed early, and the Brewers simply absorbing it and answering, run by run, until there was nothing left of it.

The four-run second

Los Angeles did its damage in the second inning, and it did it in a bunch. The Dodgers scored four times in the frame to take a 4-0 lead, the rally headlined by Shohei Ohtani, whom manager Dave Roberts had moved up to the leadoff spot for Game 4 after Ohtani hit sixth in Game 3. The lineup card was a statement — Roberts putting his best hitter first, asking him to set a tone — and Ohtani delivered the swing that made Dodger Stadium believe, briefly, that this series had a fifth game in it.

Milwaukee's pitching plan was never going to be conventional. The Brewers opened with a bullpen game, Shane Drohan starting, and former Dodger Dustin May — a 2020 World Series champion with Los Angeles — entered in the second inning, pitching against the club he once won a ring with, in the building where he won it. That the Brewers were improvising on the mound while the Dodgers teed off early only makes what followed more striking: Milwaukee's patchwork held the line after the second, and its lineup went to work.

The comeback, two at a time

The Brewers scored twice in the fourth inning to cut the lead to 4-2, and the texture of the game changed with it. A 4-0 lead invites a crowd to relax; 4-2 invites it to do math. Then came the fifth, the inning that may define this series either way. Sal Frelick walked and stole second. David Hamilton singled him home to make it 4-3, and that hit finished Dodgers starter Tyler Glasnow after four and a third innings — a short start on the night Los Angeles needed length most.

What followed was an inning of walks. Reliever Alex Vesia issued the Dodgers' fourth walk of the inning with the bases loaded, forcing in Jake Bauers and tying the game 4-4. Bauers, quietly, had driven in three of Milwaukee's four runs on the night. There was no Brewers barrage, no cheapie over the short porch — just plate discipline, pressure, and a Dodgers bullpen that could not find the strike zone when the pennant was sitting right there. Erasing a four-run lead without a home run is its own kind of statement about which team has played steadier baseball this week. The recap of how Milwaukee got here is in our Game 3 recap.

Bottom of the fifth: the answer that wasn't

If the Dodgers were going to punch back immediately, the bottom of the fifth was the moment, with the top of the order due up. Instead, JoJo Romero struck out Ohtani looking, got Mookie Betts to ground out, and struck out Freddie Freeman. Three of the most accomplished hitters of their generation, retired in order, minutes after the lead vanished. The stadium noise told that story better than any statistic: the sound of a crowd doing the math on what a loss means.

What is at stake from here

The history is the heavy part. In Major League Baseball, only one team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in a best-of-seven series — the 2004 Boston Red Sox, in the American League Championship Series against the Yankees. No National League team has done it, and the Dodgers, the back-to-back defending champions, need to be the first merely to keep their season alive past this weekend. Milwaukee, meanwhile, is playing for a pennant it has not won since 1982, when the Brewers were an American League club and Harvey's Wallbangers fell one game short in the World Series.

That is the balance this game hangs on as it moves into its late innings, tied 4-4: one more Milwaukee win at any point and the Brewers are National League champions; one Dodgers win and the series gets a Game 5 and the faintest outline of a miracle. Either way, the four-run lead is gone, the bullpens are into it, and every pitch from here is a pennant pitch. Previously will update this story when Game 4 goes final — and the rest of tonight's baseball and sports coverage is on the Previously sports front.