Jake Bauers claimed MVP honours at a tournament held in his Southern California home region. His two-run double in the fourth inning on Thursday restarted Milwaukee's attack, and the Brewers held that advantage through a 6-4 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers — completing a four-game sweep of the National League Championship Series.

Bauers, a 31-year-old first baseman, contributed a walk in the fifth inning that brought home the tying run, part of the sequence that carried Milwaukee into its first World Series appearance in 44 years. He told reporters afterward that the outcome had never been in question, saying the entire dugout shared that conviction throughout the night.

Bauers — who spent a portion of the 2021 campaign with the Seattle Mariners — expressed confidence heading into the contest, and his performance across the series backed that up: four hits in 14 at-bats, one home run, and six runs batted in earned him NLCS Most Valuable Player honours. Three walks drawn and an OPS of .983 rounded out his plate appearance line for the series.

Growing up in Newport Beach, Bauers attended Marina High School in Huntington Beach, a coastal community roughly 40 miles down the coast from Dodger Stadium.

Bauers described how observing the Dodgers carry themselves through the 2025 NLCS sweep of Milwaukee — a run that delivered consecutive World Series titles — had reshaped his thinking. He reflected that his own team's response to eliminating the Cubs in the NLDS had, looking back, amounted to treating an intermediate step as though it were a finished accomplishment.

Bauers noted that experience provided motivation to keep competing until no games remained. Across his seventh year in the majors, he posted the best offensive numbers of his career under Brewers manager Pat Murphy — a .266 average, 26 home runs, 86 RBIs, and an OPS of .874.

Bauers drew attention across Games 2 and 3 of the NLCS through a series of extended at-bats. A 12-pitch plate appearance produced a walk against Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Game 2, setting the table for Christian Yelich's two-run single that handed Milwaukee the advantage in what turned into a 7-4 victory with the lead trading hands multiple times.

Bauers capped an 11-pitch battle against Blake Snell — a pitcher who has taken home the Cy Young Award on two occasions — with a home run that put his team in front, part of a 6-2 outcome in Game 3 at Los Angeles. He noted afterward that staying prepared for the moment had been his focus, adding that Murphy had been emphasising that mindset throughout the season.