MILWAUKEE -- What a delightful gift the baseball gods bestowed on us in the National League Championship Series. Tonight at 8 ET, it will begin with the hardest-throwing starting pitcher in the game's 150-year-plus history facing off against a two-time defending Cy Young Award winner. The Milwaukee Brewers won the most games in Major League Baseball this year and had the best run differential. The Los Angeles Dodgers won the second-most games and had the second-best run differential. Both teams play clean, compelling, exciting, disciplined baseball. This is not the World Series. It just feels like it.
For a sport that is on the verge of shutting down over the winter for a labor battle with no end in sight, it is downright salvific. If these are going to be among the last games for a long while, best they serve as a constant reminder that every day the labor discord keeps baseball off the field is another day the parties are actively choosing to rob fans of excellence like Brewers vs. Dodgers.
This series has everything. Shohei Ohtani is the biggest star in the game and one of the world's most recognizable sports figures. Jacob Misiorowski is a Slender Man-shaped marvel who slings 105-mph fastballs. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the best postseason pitcher on the planet. William Contreras is the hottest hitter on it. Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts are future Hall of Famers. Jackson Chourio and Brice Turang have the goods to be. Tarik Skubal could've been a Brewer. He is a Dodger. The bullpens are sick, the gloves varying shades of precious metals, the baserunning daring, the fundamentals sound.
And that's even before taking into consideration the narrative elements of what's ahead. The Dodgers are widely loathed. They spend the most money on players, and they win, and for all the discourse about the unfairness of their local television contract and deferring money decades down the road, the real consternation started when they began capturing championships, which they've now done twice in a row. The Brewers, meanwhile, have not won a World Series in their 58-year history. They haven't made one since 1982. They are among the model organizations in baseball, marvels at team-building on a budget, the objective affirmative to the question of whether it's possible to win with low spending in a small market.
"I'm grateful for the opportunity to compete against the Dodgers because they obviously have proven to be a dominant baseball organization," Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. "And you can complain or explain or say it's this or say it's that, but the opportunity to get in the ring and do that is pretty special.
"When you're writing the last words of the Milwaukee Brewers' championship, you'd want it to go through the Los Angeles Dodgers. It's the way it has to be, if it's an incredible story."
All of it together makes for as ideal of a seven-game series as one could draw up. Since MLB expanded its postseason to include the division series in 1995, the teams with the two best records in the game have faced one another only seven times. Only three of those featured the teams with the two best run differentials as well. The last time it happened was five years ago when the 107-win Giants faced the 106-win Dodgers in the division series round. What begins tonight is rare, and it is special, and it is happening because each proved its postseason bona fides to match its regular-season superiority.
The best playoff series so far this October has been Milwaukee against the San Diego Padres, in which the Brewers slew the hottest team in the game. The Dodgers conquered Atlanta just as they had their previous seven postseason opponents. Nothing would impede this collision course, particularly after the last go-round.
Of course, the 2025 NLCS also pitted the Brewers against the Dodgers, and it looked like a certified banger in the making. Then the Dodgers tromped into Milwaukee, stole two games and finished a dominant sweep at Dodger Stadium. The Brewers batted .118 and scored four runs in the entire series. The embarrassment resonated, serving as a reminder that as many things as the Dodgers and Brewers have in common, Los Angeles' playoff success stands in stark contrast to Milwaukee's bungled opportunities.
"I really don't think there's anything we can use from last year to this year," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. "They're a really good ball club. Similar guys that we're used to seeing, very similar to what we're used to seeing. There's going to be no secrets."
Both teams know what they are. The Dodgers have created a baseball operations machine -- and can complement it by giving Kyle Tucker a $60 million-a-year contract and batting him seventh. They can give up three prospects to acquire Skubal at the deadline and not think twice about it. Milwaukee was likewise in the Skubal sweepstakes ... and was unwilling to give up the sort of package Detroit sought in a trade, even if it would've meant keeping him from the Dodgers, because the margin of error for a team that doesn't sign free agents is perilously slim.
"Certainly when you're talking about a seven-game series," Roberts said, "to see Tarik on the other side ... the series would look a lot different."
The Brewers are fine with it. This is their lot. Murphy is not going to spend any time this year painting them as the underdogs. He regrets doing so last October, not because it isn't still true -- though they won 103 games to the Dodgers' 100 and have home-field advantage, Los Angeles is the betting favorite -- but because it's insulting to suggest the Brewers are lesser-than.
They aren't. With their lineup, bullpen, defense and Misiorowski and Logan Henderson ready to start four games, none of the other 28 teams in baseball is as equipped as the Brewers to dethrone Los Angeles.
"We have a fantastic product," Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold said. "I think this is just an energy-filled group that plays really, really hard. It's a fun brand of baseball to watch. They compete. Murph sets that tone by having pulled guys throughout the season if they're not playing up to those standards. I think if you're tuning in now, you're going to see a high-quality team from our side and from theirs. They are exceptionally talented over there. We know that. We face them a lot, and I think we'll be ready for it."
No one will know until the Dodgers punch them in the mouth, which could happen at any time. As they've evolved into the villains of baseball, they have not lost the qualities that won them the past two titles and have put them in a position for the first three-peat since the New York Yankees of 1998-2000. The Dodgers don't care who hates them. They don't care who they're playing, even if it is a formidable -- and perhaps even superior -- unit like the Brewers. They believe they are better than everyone in the world and will continue believing as much until proven otherwise. Which is where the Brewers come in. They are, for the next week, America's team. It's a burden to carry, but it's the sort that makes the spoils even sweeter. A World Series is the only goal. A World Series having subjugated the Dodgers is the ideal path to achieving it.
Neither is thinking about the impending lockout, the financial advantages and disadvantages, the past. This is about now. About two excellent teams testing their capacity for greatness. About enjoying the competition. And we are all luckier for it. This is as good as baseball gets. Don't miss it.