Dodgers must prepare for the entire world rooting against them in NLCS vs Brewers

The Los Angeles Dodgers don’t just walk into an NLCS; they walk into a narrative. With their payroll, their star wattage, and their expectation of annual October relevance, the Dodgers are both the sport’s model and its favorite villain. Every "neutral" barstool in America seems to find a second team the moment Los Angeles shows up, whoever’s on the other dugout step. 

This time, that means the Milwaukee Brewers inherit the country’s underdog energy. There is a pretty big crowd that loves pennant races, but loves watching giants trip even more. The Dodgers know this dynamic well. They’ve built rosters to rise above it. But ignoring it would be malpractice, because it shapes the tenor of every inning and the pressure inside every at-bat.

Dodgers must weather a national rooting interest for the Brewers

Milwaukee, meanwhile, is the small-market counter-programming LA can’t escape. The Brewers don’t swagger; they accumulate. They play the long game, survive the rough patches, and weaponize cohesion. That’s catnip for a national audience ready to cast this as big-budget brawn versus savvy and sweat.

Even with the best record in baseball, the Brewers get to wear the slingshot. Make no mistake: that framing matters. It energizes every road crowd, turns every Dodgers mistake into a roar, and gives the Brewers permission to lean into chaos and make the series chippy, sticky, and uncomfortable. The Dodgers must be ready for all of the noise, literal and metaphorical.

A big-market superteam stocked with MVPs against a roster built to squeeze wins out of margins. The Dodgers bring Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernández and a room full of players who’ve already felt the heat of a deep October run last year. 

Milwaukee brings an edge forged by a season that never quite followed the brochure — from getting blasted and chased out of New York (outscored 36-14) to open the year, to riding a patchwork rotation through the dog days, to standing atop the NL Central with home field in their pocket. One side is engineered for dominance; the other has been rehearsing survival since Day One.

For the Brewers, that’s the lane to take: pressure the Dodgers into playing tight. Extend counts. Scrape a run, then another. The Brewers don’t need to match star power; they need to own the moments between the stars. It’s the same recipe that fueled their sweep of LA earlier this year. And as the series turns, their job is to keep the game on their terms: ugly when it needs to be, opportunistic always.

For the Dodgers, the assignment is abundantly clear. Shorten games with clean defense. Force Milwaukee to chase the scoreboard instead of dictating it and the pace of the game. Mostly, remember who they are when the volume spikes and the country leans against them. Los Angeles has spent a decade translating regular-season certainty into October answers, sometimes brilliantly, sometimes painfully. This is another exam in that same language.

There’s a romance to David vs. Goliath that baseball never gets tired of telling, even when the “David” just finished with the best record in the sport. That’s the paradox waiting for both clubs now. The Brewers will happily carry the banner for the restless neutral; the Dodgers will happily carry the burden of expectation.