Milwaukee Brewers celebrate series win over Chicago Cubs in NLDS
The Milwaukee Brewers celebrate their playoff series win over the Chicago Cubs on Saturday, Oct. 11, 2025, at American Family Field, to advance to the National League Championship Series.
For the third time, the Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Dodgers will square off in the playoffs, and it’ll mark the second time the franchises have met in the National League Championship Series.
So what happened in the 2018 NLCS and then the 2020 Wild Card Series?
What happened in the Brewers-Dodgers NLCS series in 2018?
Los Angeles won the series, four games to three, and advance to the World Series, where they ultimately lost in five games to the Boston Red Sox.
Here’s how the NLCS went down:
Oct 12: Brewers 6, Dodgers 5. Known as the game where Brandon Woodruff hit a home run against Clayton Kershaw, Milwaukee held on for dear life in a bullpen game. Jesús Aguilar’s homer leading off the seventh made it 6-1 Brewers, but the Dodgers scored three runs in the eighth, and Chris Taylor hit an RBI triple in the ninth with two outs against Corey Knebel to make it 6-5. But Knebel struck out Justin Turner to end it. Manny Machado hit a home run for the Dodgers.Oct. 13: Dodgers 4, Brewers 3. Ah, but Turner would get the last laugh. The Brewers took a 3-0 lead in the sixth, but it was 3-2 when Turner hit a go-ahead, two-run homer in the eighth against Jeremy Jeffress, wasting a strong start from left-hander Wade Miley.Oct. 15: Brewers 4, Dodgers 0. Jeffress put two runners on in the ninth with nobody out but escaped the jam and preserved the shutout, making a winner of Jhoulys ChacÃn after he allowed three hits in 5â…“ innings. Orlando Arcia hit a two-run homer in the seventh for the Brewers, and Milwaukee took a 2-1 series lead.Oct. 16: Dodgers 2, Brewers 1. The 13-inning nail-biter is the one that truly got away. Milwaukee had the leadoff man on base in the sixth, seventh and eighth but couldn’t score, and another bullpen game worked deep into the night. Finally, the Brewers buckled when Junior Guerra uncorked a wild pitch with two outs in the 13th, and Cody Bellinger singled in the winning run. Guerra had worked three perfect innings before that. In the 10th, Machado spiked Aguilar at first base, causing benches to clear momentarily, leading to a fine from MLB and igniting Brewers fans, who boo Machado to this day.Oct. 17: Dodgers 5, Brewers 2. This was the game with the starting pitcher switcheroo, where the Brewers started Miley but immediately switched to Woodruff after one batter in a surprise bit of cloak-and-dagger. Milwaukee took an early 1-0 lead on a Lorenzo Cain double, but the Dodgers slowly but surely built their lead from there to take a 3-2 series lead.Oct. 19: Brewers 7, Dodgers 2. Back home, the Brewers forced a winner-take-all battle for a trip to the World Series. Though David Freese (already a Brewers playoff villain from his days in St. Louis) led off the game with a homer against Miley, the Brewers came back with four runs in the first. Aguilar finished with three hits (two doubles) and three RBIs. Freese drove in both Los Angeles runs.Oct. 20: Dodgers 5, Brewers 1. Christian Yelich homered in the first inning to give the Brewers a 1-0 lead, but it was short-lived glory when Bellinger’s two-run homer in the second gave Los Angeles the lead for good. Yelich would have tied it in the fifth with a double, but outfielder Christ Taylor made a memorable sliding catch. In the top of the sixth, Yasiel Puig’s homer to center off Jeffress cemented Milwaukee’s fate. The Brewers sent one batter over the minimum to the plate in the final four innings, with seven strikeouts. Los Angeles won the series, 4-3.What happened in the Brewers-Dodgers series in 2020?
This series had far less drama. The Brewers hadn’t had a winning record at any point during the COVID-shortened 2020 season, getting into the reformatted playoff lineup as the No. 8 seed at 29-31. The Dodgers, meanwhile, were far and away the best team in baseball (43-17) and went on to win the World Series. The Brewers didn’t put up much of a fight in the 2-0 series sweep.
Sept. 30: Dodgers 4, Brewers 2. Starter Brent Suter issued two bases-loaded walks in the opening inning, and a Mookie Betts RBI double made it 3-0 in the second. Arcia’s two-run homer in the fourth made it a one-run game, but the only other run in the game came from the Dodgers on a homer by Corey Seager. It was the final game of Ryan Braun’s career after he left with an injury and couldn’t play in Game 2.Oct. 1: Dodgers 3, Brewers 0. Made somewhat ironically famous by the decision to start little-known Ryon Healy in the cleanup spot, the game lacked much punch, with the Brewers securing only four hits (all singles) and putting a runner on second base just twice during eight masterful Kershaw innings. All the Dodgers runs came in the fifth against Woodruff on two-out hits by Austin Barnes and Betts.How did the Dodgers fare against the Brewers in 2025?
You may have heard. The Brewers went 6-0 against the Dodgers this season.
The Dodgers hadn’t been swept in a season series of at least six games since 2006, when the St. Louis Cardinals turned the feat over seven meetings. Before that, it was the 1994 Atlanta Braves (six games).
But in 2025, Milwaukee won all six meetings against Los Angeles. The wins all came in July (the penultimate series before the all-star break and the first series back after the time off), part of an 11-game winning streak that served as the prologue to a franchise-record 14-game run in August.
July 7: Brewers 9, Dodgers 1. Yoshinobu Yamamoto didn’t make it out of the first inning when the Brewers plated five runs, including three on a home run swing by Andrew Vaughn in his very first at-bat as a member of the Brewers. Meanwhile, Freddy Peralta pitched six shutout innings. Yelich also homered.July 8: Brewers 3, Dodgers 1. It was an outing that springboarded Jacob Misiorowski to the national consciousness and maybe to an all-star berth. He allowed one earned run on four hits (with the run on Shohei Ohtani’s leadoff homer) in six innings, with 12 strikeouts as he out-dueled Kershaw. Vaughn and Isaac Collins had a tying and go-ahead single in the fourth, and the score remained 2-1 until an insurance run from Sal Frelick on a homer in the eighth.July 9: Brewers 3, Dodgers 2. Jackson Chourio singled in the 10th inning for a walk-off winner, one frame after Trevor Megill struck out all three Dodgers to keep a run off the board. The Brewers were down to their last out in the ninth, but Vaughn singled in the tying tally against Tanner Scott. José Quintana allowed just two hits in six innings but did issue a bases-loaded walk to Ohtani.July 18: Brewers 2, Dodgers 0. Straight out of the all-star break, Quinn Priester struck out 10 batters and allowed just three hits in six scoreless innings, and Brewers relievers faced the minimum the rest of the way. Caleb Durbin provided the offense, with an RBI double off an otherwise very tough Tyler Glasnow in the fifth and a homer against Kirby Yates in the seventh.July 19: Brewers 8, Dodgers 7. Both teams scored four runs in the third, with Peralta and Emmet Sheehan struggling. But Collins homered in the top of the fourth, Vaughn added a huge insurance run with a seventh-inning single, and Joey Ortiz (!) homered in the eighth, which loomed large when the Dodgers homered twice in the bottom half. Megill worked a 1-2-3 ninth.July 20: Brewers 6, Dodgers 5. The ninth was a much bigger adventure this time around. The Dodgers loaded the bases against Abner Uribe in the ninth, then scored a run on a Vaughn error, but Betts lined out to center for the final out. Collins broke a 4-4 tie in the sixth with a two-run single, and the Brewers overcame homers from Ohtani and former Brewers farmhand Esteury Ruiz, the only home run he hit this season.