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The Los Angeles Dodgers are on the brink of losing out in their National League Division Series for the second postseason in a row. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts mouthed a beauty of a cliché after the game Monday night when he said his team’s “back is to the wall.”
“We have no more margin,” he said, stating the obvious.
In last year’s NLDS, his club left Dodger Stadium tied with the San Diego Padres at a game apiece and never saw their home field again. This year, the Dodgers are leaving Dodger Stadium down 2-0 in the best-of-five series after their 4-2 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks in Game 2.
One more defeat and the Dodgers, despite another 100-win regular season, go home, and the D-backs will move on to the NL Championship Series for the first time since 2007.
The Dodgers regularly beat up on their NL West division rivals during the regular season. But when the calendar then turns to October, the team turns into a pumpkin.
The Padres and the D-backs have taken full advantage of that metamorphosis. There’s no pressure on the D-backs, said Arizona reliever Paul Sewald, who closed out the Dodgers without a whimper in the ninth inning on 11 pitches, three up three down.
“We weren’t supposed to win [the Wild Card Series] in Milwaukee, we weren’t supposed to win here in Los Angeles,” said Sewald, who was a critical trade deadline pickup for the D-backs from Seattle. “There’s nothing for us to worry about.”
There’s plenty, though, for the Dodgers to worry about. In 2022, the team won a franchise-record 111 games, claiming the West by 22 games over the Padres. This season, they won 100 games and beat the second-place D-backs by 16 games.
Yet the team can’t seem to figure out how to put it all together in the NLDS after the Wild Card bye, the six days off between the end of the regular season and the start of the division series.
The Dodgers’ two starting pitchers in the first two games of the series totaled two full innings. Clayton Kershaw recorded one out in Saturday night’s 11-2 loss before allowing six runs on six hits, prompting Roberts to pull the plug. Kershaw recorded a 162 ERA in what might be his last game in a Dodgers uniform.
In Game 2, Bobby Miller went to two outs in the second before Roberts replaced him with runners on first and third, trailing 3-0. The move stanched the bleeding, but it was too late.
“I just thought he wasn’t sharp,” Roberts said about his early yank of Miller. “At that point in time we couldn’t afford to go down, 4-0.”
That’s because the Dodgers offense has been anemic, producing four runs on ten hits in the two games. Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, the top two hitters in the lineup, are 1-for-13. During the regular season, they hit like NL MVP candidates.
Sound familiar? Last year against the Padres, the pair was 7-for-28. This year, Betts alone is 0-for-7, a combined 2-for-21 over his last two playoff series.
This has to change quickly. Or else…
“Some of our guys have been here before as far as facing elimination,” Roberts said. “We just have to pitch better, take better at bats, and win Game 3. If we win Game 3 we’ll just pick up the pieces and go from there.”
