Brewers and Dodgers Set Up an NLCS Rematch as the Rays Sweep the Yankees

Three division series ended on Wednesday night, and two of them sent the same pair of teams back to the same stage. MLB.com reported from Petco Park that the Milwaukee Brewers beat the San Diego Padres 3-1 in Game 4 to win their series three games to one, a few hours after the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Atlanta Braves 4-1 in Atlanta to do the same. For the second straight year, the Dodgers stand between Milwaukee and the World Series.

In the American League, the Tampa Bay Rays finished a three-game sweep of the New York Yankees with a 4-3 win at Yankee Stadium, and now wait for the winner of the White Sox and Guardians, whose series resumes on Thursday.

How did the Brewers beat the Padres in Game 4?

Milwaukee won the way it won a franchise-record 103 games in the regular season: a little from everywhere. Left-hander Robert Gasser, a former Padres prospect who missed most of the previous two seasons after Tommy John surgery, worked four innings and left with a 2-1 lead. Garrett Mitchell drove in a run in the third and led off the fifth with a triple that led to the go-ahead run. Jackson Chourio, 22, lined a one-out single through a drawn-in infield for his 17th postseason RBI, passing Ryan Braun for the franchise record, and Sal Frelick's sacrifice fly in the sixth made it 3-1. The series had begun with the Game 2 walk-off against Mason Miller that we reported at the time.

The scare came in the eighth. Manny Machado drove a ball toward Petco Park's short center-field wall and Mitchell ran it down; by Statcast's count, MLB.com said, it would have been a home run in 19 of 30 major league ballparks. "I thought that was way gone," said reliever Abner Uribe. Trevor Megill then closed it out for his second save of the series.

The win also ended a 12-game postseason road losing streak, which had tied the longest in major league history. Milwaukee's previous road win in the playoffs came in Game 3 of the 2018 NLCS at Dodger Stadium against Walker Buehler, and it was Buehler who started for the Padres on Wednesday.

How did the Dodgers get past the Braves?

With a single from a man who had barely hit. Andy Pages missed most of the final month of the regular season with a fracture in his left hand and had gone hitless in his first seven at-bats of the series. MLB.com's account from Truist Park says he came to the plate in the seventh with the bases loaded after Atlanta reliever Didier Fuentes walked two batters in a row, worked a full count against Robert Suarez and punched a fastball into left-center for a two-run single that broke the tie for good. "He hit a 100 mph heater back through the middle," said Braves manager Walt Weiss.