The Milwaukee Brewers shocked the MLB world by sweeping the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series. Milwaukee winning the series in competitive fashion wouldn't have been all that surprising, but getting the job done in only four games was impressive to say the least. Former MLB star pitcher John Smoltz, who was one of the broadcasters during the series, recently joined Flippin' Bats with Ben Verlander to discuss what went wrong for LA in the series.

“Well the easy and lazy statement would be that they (Dodgers) got old,” Smoltz told Verlander. “But that's not fair. Getting old had nothing to do with hitting, it might have had something to do with defense… The Dodgers had to slug, they didn't slug. They had to hit with runners in scoring position, they didn't. They had three straight innings where they could have tied the game or taken the lead, they didn't.

“Credit deserves on the other side, but when you're champions and you've been there, done that, that experience flip flops to you. They pitched well, but they didn't pitch good enough.”

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The Dodgers are still certainly a good baseball team. They just did not come through when they needed to against the Brewers, especially on offense like Smoltz mentioned. Scoring runs was a struggle against Milwaukee's all-around talented pitching staff.

The Dodgers have some questions to answer in the offseason, but they should be fine. Nevertheless, it will be the Brewers representing the National League in the World Series this year.