(News4usonline) -The Los Angeles Dodgers won 111 games during the regular season. The Dodgers had the best record in Major League Baseball. They needed just three wins to advance to the National League Championship Series (NLCS).
The Dodgers failed to come up with two and were turned away from going deep into the postseason by the San Diego Padres. Afterward, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said the team is in shock.
“Shock factor, very high. Disappointment, very high. It’s crushing,” Roberts said. “Each guy gave everything they had all year long, and a tremendous season. The great thing about baseball is the unpredictability, and the tough thing about it is the same thing.”
“Things could have gone either way today to impact the result of the game. It didn’t. We got beat in a series. Nothing I can say is going to make it feel any better. Obviously, we didn’t expect to be in this position,” Roberts added.
Before playing each other in the National League Division Series (NLDS), the Dodgers dominated the Padres during the regular season, winning 14 of the 19 games they played. The postseason is not the regular season, and San Diego has shown as much, first getting by the New York Mets in the Wild Card Series, and now taking out the Dodgers in four games (3-1).
It could be said that the Padres were the hotter team, given the fact that they were able to keep playing once the regular season ended. The Dodgers, on the other hand, had to wait it out. Roberts is not using that as a reason why his team lost the series.
“You know, I think that’s something that we could probably debate, but I think leading up to it, even right now, it’s not something that we want to look at as an excuse,” Roberts said. “That’s kind of the format the way it is, and you do the best you can in the regular season to put yourself in a position to get home-field advantage, to get the bye in the Wild Card round, and it’s up to us to kind of prepare ourselves the best way we can to get through a Division Series, and we didn’t.”
The Dodgers lost this series because of several things. One of them was that the Dodgers could not find a way to hit the baseball. The Dodgers boasted of having the No. 1 team offense in the major leagues. San Diego’s pitching kicked in and dominated Los Angeles. Outside of Game 1 when the Dodgers put five runs on the scoreboard, the bats of Los Angeles went largely silent over the next three games.
“It ended up costing us,” said Roberts. “There was an opportunity to tack on, and we couldn’t do that, and you saw those guys kind of being able to get hits with guys in scoring position to kind of scratch and claw back into the game and tack on. We just couldn’t do that.”
In Game 4, San Diego’s pitchers struck out 13 Dodgers batters in their 5-3 comeback win. For six innings, the Dodgers looked as if they were going to force a Game 5 back at Dodger Stadium. The Padres had better ideas and tagged Dodgers pitchers Tommy Kahnle ( three runs) and Yency Almonte (two runs) for five runs in the bottom of the seventh inning, and that was pretty much your ballgame from there.
Starter Tyler Anderson did his job for the Dodgers. Anderson pitched five innings and struck out six Padres while only allowing two hits with his turn out on the mound. It’s too bad that Anderson was not able to complete what he started.
It’s also unfortunate that the bats from the Dodgers didn’t quite match up with the solid pitching that came from Anderson, Julio Urias, Tony Gonsolin, and Clayton Kershaw. The Dodgers now have to watch the rest of the postseason while the Padres move on to play the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLDS.
“Hugely disappointing how it ended,” Roberts said in his postgame remarks. “I think that right now it just stings a lot more in the moment. I don’t know how long it’s going to take to sort of look back and appreciate what we did do. But you’ve got to give the Padres credit. They outplayed us this series. You’ve got to give them credit. So I think that I don’t want to take anything away from those guys because they earned this series victory.”
Featured Image Caption: Yency Almonte on the mound for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Photo by Melinda Meijer/News4usonline
Dennis is the editor and publisher of News4usonline. He covers the NFL, NBA, MLB, racial and social justice, civil rights, and HBCUs. Dennis earned a journalism degree from “The Mecca” aka Howard University. “I write on what I am passionate about.”