At this time one year ago, the Los Angeles Dodgers were about to embark on what would be a sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series. 

This year, they are not dealing with the same Brewers.

The Dodgers find themselves down 2-0 to Milwaukee in the NLCS, following a 7-4 loss on Monday at American Family Field in Milwaukee. The series will now shift back to UNIQLO Field at Dodger Stadium, and Los Angeles is in grave danger of having its chances to three-peat as World Series champions spoiled by the team it handled easily at this stage in 2025.

If the Dodgers are going to pull themselves out of the mud in this series, a few things are going to have to happen:

Sure, Los Angeles scored four runs on Monday, but it's not because the offense was highly productive.

The Dodgers notched just three hits in 28 tries, and their points came from a mix of sacrifice at-bats and early errors by the Brewers. Eventually, the Dodgers were shut off from adding to the scoreboard, and the Milwaukee pitching staff struck them out nine times.

In Sunday’s Game 1 loss, Los Angeles notched seven hits in 31 at-bats and struck out eight times while only scoring one run. Throughout the postseason, the offense has been anemic, and that will not fly against this Brewers pitching staff. 

Los Angeles’ batting order has to come alive, and it can use a spark from its superstar, Shohei Ohtani.

It has been evident for months that Ohtani is not healthy. His various ailments have taken him off the pitcher's mound, and they have dismantled his capabilities with a bat in his hands.

At some point, though, Ohtani needs to come through for his team if they are going to get back in this thing.

Ohtani went 0-for-4 on Monday with two strikeouts. Through the Dodgers’ six postseason games so far, he has logged an abysmal .150 batting average (3-for-20), a .261 on-base percentage, a .150 slugging percentage and a .411 OPS with seven strikeouts.

Ohtani’s postseason output has been reflective of a precipitous drop-off from a regular season campaign in which he notched a .275 batting average and an .889 OPS with 30 home runs despite the injuries he has dealt with.

Ohtani’s greatness cannot be undermined, but right now, it is nowhere to be found. He needs to find his swing when the Dodgers return home.

It is not enough that the Dodgers have had trouble with Milwaukee’s bullpen; they also had to deal with its hitters on Monday.

The Brewers notched 12 hits off the bats of six different hitters in Game 2, and catcher William Contreras was the star of the show with a 3-for-4 performance that included a game-tying home run in the bottom of the fifth inning.

When the Dodgers swept Milwaukee in the 2025 NLCS, the Brewers failed to score more than one run in each of the four games. That is not the case now.

While Game 1 of this series was a low-scoring affair, the Brewers demonstrated on Monday that their offense will not be ice cold. If anything, the tables have turned.

Los Angeles’ pitching staff is going to have to shift to a higher gear in order to keep Milwaukee’s batters in check. If not, this could get very ugly for the back-to-back World Series champions.