Dodgers left to ponder state of team core as cracks emerge in NLCS sweep

LOS ANGELES -- The Dodgers' last two seasons ended with champagne flowing, beer spraying and the air thick with cigar smoke.

But this year, in the home clubhouse at Dodger Stadium, there was no chaos to be had: just a solemn roomful of players reflecting on what could have been, as the celebration got underway on the visitors' side of the ballpark.

A three-peat was not an impossible dream, but it was always going to be improbable. On Thursday night, the Dodgers woke up.

The back-to-back champions were swept out of the NL Championship Series, ending their title defense. The 6-4 loss in Game 4 sent the Brewers to the Fall Classic for the first time since 1982, while the Dodgers' bid for the fifth three-peat in World Series history -- and the first by a National League team -- will have to wait for another day.​

Manager Dave Roberts, Miguel Rojas and Mookie Betts were among the Dodgers who shared a few words with the team in the aftermath of the loss.

"It’s not the way that I wanted to end it, because we always wanted to win the last game of the season," said Rojas, who is retiring after this season. "But in baseball nothing is guaranteed, even though you have a really good team and a lot of talent.”

Twice before on the road to back-to-back championships, the Dodgers stood with their backs against the wall. They came back from being down 2-1 to the Padres in the 2024 NLDS and 3-2 to the Blue Jays in the 2025 World Series, but they did not have another comeback left in them. The 2004 Red Sox remain the only team to come back from being down 3-0 in a best-of-seven postseason series.

As special as the Dodgers' run to back-to-back championships was, that feat can't ease the sting of how this season ended. Per the Elias Sports Bureau, this was the eighth time that two teams met in the postseason after one had swept the other the previous postseason. The Brewers joined the 1923 Yankees as the second team to win that rematch -- and became the first to sweep their opponent in return.

"Sometimes you just get beat," Freddie Freeman said. "You’ve got to give credit to the Brewers. They played really good baseball."

There are commonalities between the last three years of Dodgers baseball. Each year, they made significant offseason additions. Each year, their roster was ravaged by injuries during the season. And each year, the team they brought into the postseason had its flaws.

In 2024, their rotation was paper-thin. In '25, their bullpen was dangerously volatile. The Dodgers overcame those flaws to win the eighth and ninth titles in franchise history, but they could not overcome an offense that consistently could not come up with the big hit during the '26 run.

In spite of this issue, the Dodgers took care of the Braves in four games in the NLDS. But in the NLCS, the Brewers not only further suppressed the offense, they neutralized the edge the Dodgers may have had: the rotation.

The Brewers hung a loss on top Trade Deadline acquisition Tarik Skubal after five innings of two-run ball. They grinded out Yoshinobu Yamamoto after 2 2/3 innings, his shortest career postseason start. They took Blake Snell deep three times when the southpaw had not surrendered a homer in 10 previous starts this season. They eroded a 4-0 deficit against Tyler Glasnow. The Dodgers' starters allowed a combined 13 earned runs in 18 innings for a 6.50 ERA.

"Seeing what the Dodgers have done the last two years, you’d think it’s easy, but it’s really not," Skubal said. "The hardest thing to do is win a World Series. It’s the hardest thing in baseball. I expected that. If it was easy, a lot of teams would be doing it.”

• Will LA target Skubal in free agency? Here are the questions facing Dodgers this offseason

Meanwhile, the bats remained cold. Ironically, Kyle Tucker, who disappointed in the first season of a four-year, $240 million contract, was the Dodgers' most consistent hitter this postseason, slashing .333/.419/.519. But the team went through an ill-timed slump, combining to go 5-for-43 with runners in scoring position. Shohei Ohtani, dealing with lingering right biceps and left knee injuries, broke out with a massive three-run homer in Game 4 -- but it ended up being too little, too late against the relentless Brewers.

"Overall, I mean, we had a lot of chances," Betts said. "That's really what we can ask for, is giving ourselves opportunities, And sometimes we come through, sometimes we don't."

With the rotation neutralized and the offense diminished, this year's much-improved bullpen was leaky in the NLCS. In Game 4, Tanner Scott gave up a go-ahead home run to Garrett Mitchell in the sixth inning, and Edwin Díaz, the other big offseason acquisition who disappointed in the regular season but showed up in the postseason, gave up a solo shot to David Hamilton while covering the final three innings.

At times, the Dodgers looked like a team coming off two long seasons that began overseas (Seoul in 2024 and Tokyo in '25) and ended in the World Series. Their position-player group -- the oldest in the Majors with an average age of 30.9 years -- may have begun to show its age.

“This is a special group, special clubhouse," Max Muncy said. "It’s kind of hard to put into words how much this hurts right now. We all know what we did out there, we didn’t play well. But for three years straight, we left it all out there. The train finally ran out of steam, I guess."

Much of L.A.'s core will remain intact for the foreseeable future, so the competitive window is not closing -- but this may be a transition period from one era of Dodgers baseball to another. Infusing more youth into the group will become important moving forward. Bringing up prospects could mean there will be some subtractions from the existing position players.

This may have been the last ride for some of these Dodgers. Others will go on to contend with this team for years to come. But no matter what comes next, they shared something special in L.A.

"It never feels good to lose," Roberts said, "but when you get beat, you can handle it a little bit better. … The thing about sports that we all love is no matter how much you prepare, you want it, there's no guarantees. That's the great thing about sport, is the unknown."