In what many are calling the best postseason performance in baseball history, Shohei Ohtani hit three home runs and struck out 10 Friday evening to lead the Los Angeles Dodgers to their second consecutive World Series appearance.
The Dodgers, who defeated the New York Yankees in last year’s Fall Classic, completed a four-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series with a 5-1 victory at Dodger Stadium.
Ohtani pitched six scoreless innings and limited the Brewers to two hits with three walks. He was selected as the series MVP.
The World Series is set to start Friday, Oct. 24 at Dodger Stadium if the Seattle Mariners win the American League Championship Series. The series will start in Toronto if the Blue Jays advance.
The Mariners lead the ALCS three game to two, with Game 6 scheduled for Sunday in Toronto.
Ohtani became the first player in Major League Baseball history to hit three home runs in a game in which he struck out at least five batters, according to MLB.com. He also became the first pitcher with 10 or more strikeouts and no runs allowed in a series-clinching game.
“That was probably the greatest postseason performance of all time,” Dodger manager Dave Roberts said. “There’s been a lot of postseason games. And there’s a reason why he’s the greatest player on the planet.
“What he did on the mound, what he did at the bat, he created a lot of memories for a lot of people. … To do it in a game-clinching game at home, wins the NLCS MVP, pretty special.”
Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy said it was “maybe the best individual performance ever in a postseason game.”
After the game Ohtani recalled “times during the postseason where (teammates Teoscar Hernández and Mookie Betts) picked me up,” he said through an interpreter. “And this time around it was my turn to be able to perform. And I think just looking back over the course of the entire postseason, I haven’t performed to the expectation, but I think today we saw what the left-handed hitters could do.”
Ohtani was 3-for-29 for a .103 batting average with 14 strikeouts in the previous seven postseason games going into Friday’s eventual NLCS finale. He went 2-for-11 with five strikeouts over the first three games of the championship series.
The Dodgers are the first defending champs to make it back to the World Series since the 2009 Philadelphia Phillies. The Dodgers now have the opportunity to be the first team to win consecutive World Series since the New York Yankees’ three-peat in 1998, ’99 and 2000.
