reliever

The Dodgers’ offseason began at 8:07 Thursday night. Heavily favored to win a third straight World Series, they were swept into winter by the Milwaukee Brewers.

The final score doesn’t really matter, but for the record it was 6-4 Brewers. It wasn’t really that close.

The Dodgers led in every game of the National League Championship Series. They didn’t win any of them. No team has ever done that while getting swept in a best-of-seven series. So while the Dodgers didn’t three-peat, they made history just the same.

“They were relentless with everything that they did,” Dodgers infielder Max Muncy said of the Brewers. “They just strung together good at-bat after good at-bat. That’s usually what we do.

“We didn’t do it this series and they did.”

The Dodgers’ starting rotation, the most expensive in history, gave up 16 hits and 13 runs in 18 innings for a 6.50 earned-run average. The bullpen was nearly as bad, posting a 4.50 ERA in 16 innings.

The Brewers’ relievers, on the other hand, were spectacular. Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy went to his bullpen 14 times and just twice did a reliever give up a run. All four victories against the Dodgers and all seven Brewers wins this postseason have gone to a reliever, with the bullpen posting a 1.33 ERA in 40⅔ innings.

“Pitcher after pitcher came in and executed,” Muncy said. “When one of their pitchers faltered, the next guy came in and picked up the slack.”

And each time the Dodgers took a lead, the Brewers waited no more than two innings to cut into the deficit. Milwaukee trailed 4-0 after two innings Thursday. By the top of the fifth, the score was tied. An inning later, the Brewers went ahead to stay, becoming the first team with six comeback wins in their first eight postseason games.

“They respond,” Murphy said of his players. “We’ve talked about it all year long. You have a bad week, you have a bad game, you have a bad at-bat, you bounce back.”

“I love the Dodgers. I love their players. They’ve got legendary players,” he continued. “But we came in with a group that would not be denied. They were hungry, very hungry.”

The two-time defending champion Dodgers, meanwhile, appeared to be full. They hit with runners in scoring position as often as they hit into double plays, going four for 27 and stranding 24.

“We had our opportunities. We just didn’t get the job done,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “We won two [titles]. We came up short on the third.

Milwaukee’s Garrett Mitchell, right, celebrates with Cooper Pratt after hitting the go-ahead home run in the sixth inning of a 6-4 win over the Dodgers in Game 4 of the NLCS on Thursday night.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“There’s a lot of hurt at the end of the season. Sometimes you just get beat. That’s just kind of how it goes. You have to give credit to the Brewers. They played really good baseball.”

A year ago the Dodgers swept the Brewers in the NLCS. This fall the results were reversed.

“The sadness is we just didn’t accomplish our goal,” Muncy said. “The goal every year is to be the last team standing. This year we had a chance to do something historic, and we didn’t accomplish it. And every single time you’re not the last team standing, it’s heartbreak and it’s failure and it’s not what you’re looking for.”

The Dodgers’ clubhouse was closed for more than 35 minutes after the game, partly to process that heartbreak but also to give manager Dave Roberts and veteran infielder Miguel Rojas, who announced his retirement, a chance to address the team. When the doors finally opened, nearly every player was sitting in front of his locker, most still in uniform, waiting to explain what seemed to be inexplicable.

How did the greatest team money can buy wind up so flat when the stakes were so high?

“We’ve been grinding all season long,” said right-hander Tyler Glasnow, who retired the first 10 Brewers in order, but lasted just one more inning. “No one slacked off at all. Everyone just came in and worked hard. They just played a lot better than us. They were hitting on everything. It wasn’t our year.”

“Not every time it’s gonna be us,” left fielder Teoscar Hernández added through a forced smile. “It’s not fair for us to be doing the same thing over and over every year. Teams are going to learn from their losses the same way we’re gonna learn from this one.

“So hopefully we come back next year stronger.”

Speaking of next year, no one would.

Half the players on the Dodgers 26-man NLCS roster are on expiring contracts. The core of the team — Mookie Betts, Freeman, Muncy, Kiké Hernández and Teoscar Hernández along with pitchers Blake Snell and Glasnow — are 33 or older. The Dodgers could look very different when spring training starts — if spring training starts — in February.

“There’ll come a time when we think about next year,” Muncy said. “But that’s not right at this moment.”

The Dodgers have an extra-long winter to get through first.

MILWAUKEE — The Dodgers spent $163 million on the back end of their bullpen the past two years. The Milwaukee Brewers did not.

So two games into the National League Championship Series, guess which team’s relief corps has been lights out and which one has been lit up? (Spoiler alert: it’s not the team with all the money.)

Milwaukee sent a parade of four relievers to the mound for a second straight game Monday, and for a second straight game they didn’t give up a run, retiring the last 15 Dodgers in order in a 7-4 win that gives Milwaukee a commanding 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series, which moves to Dodger Stadium for Game 3 on Wednesday.

The Brewers’ bullpen has pitched 9 2/3 innings in the series, yielding just two hits — both off Abner Uribe — and three walks. That’s it. Both wins have gone to relievers, DL Hall in the opener and JoJo Romero in Game 2.

Dodger relievers, meanwhile, have pitched 9 1/3 innings in the two games, giving up four runs on nine hits. Reliever Brock Stewart took the loss Monday.

In a series that’s rapidly shaping up as a battle of the bullpens, the Dodgers clearly aren’t getting what they paid for.

“I don’t have an answer,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shrugged when asked why the Dodgers relievers have struggled while the Brewers have shined. “I know that they’ve got good arms; so do we. I think they’re just finding ways to win pitches better than we are.”

Slugger Max Muncy has a theory on the same question.

“They’re really good,” he said.

The Brewers’ 48 bullpen wins was the most in baseball during the regular season and its 3.40 ERA was best in the National League. And it has been even better in the postseason, giving up just one earned run in 28 2/3 innings against the Dodgers and San Diego Padres. In the divisional era (since 1969), only the 1991 Minnesota Twins have a lower bullpen ERA through six playoff games and with a reliever earning the victory in all five of Milwaukee’s postseason wins, the Brewers have done something only the 2014 Kansas City Royals had done previously.

“There’s a reason they’re where they’re at right now and the bullpen’s a big piece of that,” Muncy said. “If there is a positive, you can say that a lot of our guys are starting to get looks at their back-end guys. But when they’re as good as they are, I don’t know how much that helps.

“They’re all throwing 100 [mph] plus and they all have really nasty stuff.”

Especially Aaron Ashby, who has pitched in both games, holding the Dodgers to a walk in 3 2/3 innings, striking out three. He’s the Brewers’ best-paid reliever, earning $5.5 million this season.

The Dodgers have three relievers making at least twice that — and one of them, Blake Treinen, didn’t even make the postseason roster. One of the others, Tanner Scott, gave up twice as many runs in his first postseason appearance as the Brewers’ bullpen has given up this month.

Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Abner Uribe celebrates after completing the seventh inning of Game 2 of the NLCS.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“They attack the hitters,” Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernández said of Milwaukee’s relievers. “They throw strikes. They got good stuff. They throw hard. We’ve just got to do a better job.”

Hernández then echoed Muncy in pointing out the Dodgers have now seen six of Milwaukee’s nine relievers, with Ashby and Uribe throwing in both games. And while the Dodgers haven’t done anything against them yet, that familiarity could help going forward.

“We know what we’re going to get,” Hernández said.

Brewers manager Pat Murphy conceded the point — sort of.

“Familiarity, as the numbers tell us, does provide an edge,” he said. “So what we try to do is make sure they don’t face the same guys the next time they pitch if they’re one-inning guys.

“Can’t always do that.”

Sometimes you can, though. Uribe, who has appeared in all six Brewers games this postseason, has already faced eight Dodger hitters in the series, but only one of them, Andy Pages, twice. And when he does face someone a second time, Murphy said with a smile, who’s to say he’ll him pitch the same way?

“Uribe might have something up his sleeve based on how those other times went,” he said. “Like, well, I never gave him this.’”

That would count as a surprise. However the dominant performance of the Brewers’ bargain-basement bullpen would not. Because even in baseball, the Dodgers are finding out, there are some things money can’t buy.