Gulp. Sigh. Damn. It’s happening again.
For the second time in three postseasons, the Dodgers showed up at San Diego’s Petco Park on a cool October evening confident, driven by emotion, stung by skepticism, ready for revenge.
And again, they eat it.
This devastation is not yet as spectacular as the stunning crush of two Octobers ago, but give it time.
After losing Game 3 of the National League Division Series 6-5 to the San Diego Padres, the Dodgers are once again on the brink of an all-too-familiar fate.
Read more: Dodgers can’t overcome disastrous inning in NLDS Game 3 loss to Padres
One more loss and they’ll end a baseball-best season flat on their faces.
One more loss, and more than a billion dollars will be bloodied and bruised and crawling into winter.
One more loss and the Dodgers will once again suffer the worst fate against the worst opponents, once again crushed by an obnoxious little brother who is everything they are not.
Those slick, sulky, damn good San Diego Padres.
The southern rivals take the best-of-five series from two games to one, with a possible ending – probably? — Wednesday night in a Game 4 that pits Padres ace Dylan Cease against a bunch of Dodger relievers.
Doesn’t sound promising.
“We have to win tomorrow night before we can put the pieces together for Game 5,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I don’t know what that’s going to look like.”
It can’t look much worse than it seems now.
In a Game 3 that rang with “Beat LA” chants and was full of an encore energy carried over from the maelstrom of Game 2, the Padres brought the intensity while the Dodgers surrendered it.
The Padres scored six runs in the second inning against a scrappy Dodgers defense and that was that. With the exception of a grand slam swing from Teoscar Hernández, the Dodgers did little to enter the fray.
They still had to be outraged by the way the Padres had staged a show-off to a Game 2 victory that had Dodger Stadium fans incited to idiocy, right?
Wrong. They didn’t act crazy, meekly collecting six hits against five Padres pitchers and not scoring again after the third inning.
They had to defend Roberts’ honor after Padre Manny Machado threw a baseball at him in Game 2, right?
Wrong. They were cautious from the moment starter Walker Buehler received a pitch-clock violation while facing Machado in the second inning. Buehler ultimately struggled like all Dodger starters did, yielding six runs in five innings.
“Yeah, not a great situation,” Roberts said.
To make matters worse, the Padres did not retaliate for the Dodger fans who showered their players with bottles and baseballs in Game 2. The Padres fans were instead the portrait of strength and sportsmanship, roaring and waving yellow towels until at last they cried hoarsely. when Tanner Scott struck out Shohei Ohtani to end the Dodgers’ best last chance in the eighth inning.
Speaking of which, Ohtani struck out twice and recorded just one broken-bat single in a second straight game in which he looked very human. Despite giving up his game-changing homer in Game 1, the Padres clearly aren’t afraid of Ohtani. They are not afraid of anyone.
But still, more is expected from Superman.
“I don’t think the moment will be too big for him,” Roberts defended his star. “I think they’re making some good pitches. Obviously he had a good Game 1 and was kept at bay somewhat…I think he’s still in a good spot. He will be willing to make a mistake.”
So the greatest player in baseball history is now a foul hitter? The Dodgers’ immediate future has become truly unmanageable.
And to think the game started with a home run by – you’re not going to believe this – Mookie Betts! This was a man who was 0 for 6 in this series and three for 44 in 12 playoff games, a man who had a homer stolen by Jurickson Profar in Game 2, a man who thought it had happened again on Tuesday when Profar in the left field corner stands again.
Read more: Shaikin: How ‘Beat LA’ became entrenched in the Dodgers-Padres rivalry lexicon
Betts was so sure that Profar had stolen another one that he was walking toward the dugout before reaching second base when Profar came up empty-handed and the explosion became a reality.
It was the only real nice surprise of the night for the Dodgers. The Dodgers seemed to lose this immediate mojo before the bottom of the second inning even started with that pitch-clock violation, and it only got worse.
Machado singled up the middle and then forced an error when he ran inside the baseline on a grounder to Freddie Freeman and Freeman’s throw to second glanced off his shoulder into left field, setting the stage for a Xander Bogaerts grounder that Miguel Rojas caught but stumbled. attempt to start a double play, allowing a point to be scored.
Then David Peralta doubled down the right field line to score two runs, a flyout by Kyle Higashioka scored another run, then Fernando Tatis Jr. a home run crashed to deep left field to make it six runs.
“There were just balls that we couldn’t convert into zeros. And it increases the stress of the inning,” Roberts said, later adding, “If you give a good team extra outs, it’s hard to roll outs.”
Trailing 6-1, the Dodgers almost seemed defeated before the game even started, and even Hernández’s grandmother in the third inning couldn’t change that.
So here the Dodgers sit again, on the brink of colossal failure, in the same place they were in 2022 when they lost this series to the Padres in four games, and almost the same place they were last season when they got swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks.
“As far as winning a ball game tomorrow, I think we’re in a really good place,” said the ever-optimistic Roberts.
For Dodger fans still waiting for their first regular season championship in 36 years, things have never looked worse.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
