The good news is that the Dodgers’ primary doomsday scenarios (San Diego winning or getting swept à la 2023) are either extremely unlikely to happen or mathematically impossible.
A champion contender taking a commanding 2-0 NLDS series lead, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat? What a game. Oh wait. I’m thinking of the almost criminal—if it were against the law— mismanagement of the Padres’ super bullpen by Craig “Likely needs to update his resume ASAP” Stammen on Sunday.
Where one side of the
bracket that was expected to be a five-game dogfight now looks to be all but over before it really got started, the other side of the bracket that was all but handed to the Dodgers now looks to be a dogfight.
The bad news is that the only scenario left is arguably the most annoying, and oddly enough, it feels like the Dodgers somehow snatched defeat out of the confused jaws of victory.
Echoes of 2022 or The Bye Week was for that?!?
As an aside, when do the pitchforks start coming out for Blake Snell?
The phrase “Playoff Kershaw” justifiably rankles feathers within the Dodgers community. Whether it was fair or not, the fact remains that Kershaw was often put into a position to get lit up. And he wasn’t consistently awful. While Jack Flaherty and Bobby Miller also had their playoff duds, they either were passable at times or never got another chance.
Not so with Blake Snell, who somehow seems to have unjustifiably dodged criticism. With Game 2’s execrable performance, Snell has laid an egg in his last three consecutive postseason starts.
- Game 1, 2025 World Series: L, 5 IP, 8 H, 5 ER, 3 BB, 4 K, 1 HBP, HR
- Game 5, 2025 World Series: L, 6 2/3 IP, 6 H, 5 ER, 4 BB, 7 K, 2 HR, 2 WP
- Game 1, 2026 NLDS: ND, 3 2/3 IP, 3 H, ER, 5 BB, 5 K
Those are some ugly pitching lines. Yes, Snell did pitch 1 1/3 IP in Game 7…and nearly gave up what would have been Vlad Guerrero, Jr.’s last home run at Rogers Centre until Game 150 of the 2026 campaign.
If one were looking for a positive, at least he didn’t cough up five runs again this time. That happenstance is likely due to Dave Roberts mercifully pulling the plug on Snell’s evening rather than any heroics on Snell’s part. As things stand, Snell is probably done this series, which, all things considered, is probably a good thing.
Overall, my mind just goes back to a dud of a Game 2 with a left-handed starter who underperformed, with Robert Suarez shoving with the game on the line, the Dodgers’ offense underperforming, and the Dodgers coughing up home-field advantage?
Last night? No, Game 2 of the infamous 2022 NLDS, where a hungrier opponent outplayed a suddenly flat Dodgers squad to win what turned out to be the final game at Dodger Stadium in 2022.
This current team has so many 2022 vibes, I’m half expecting baseball texts from my deceased father. If the current iteration of the Dodgers is not careful, last night’s dud could be the final game at Dodger Stadium both this year and for a long time with the impending lockout in December.
The same old song.
Let’s not belabor the point; I saw this outcome as a possibility:
Conversely, I can see how [the 2026 Dodgers] would fall flat on their face. You did too; it was called the Summer Swoon. What if everyone I just mentioned plus Shohei Ohtani couldn’t hit water from a boat? That failure, especially with runners in scoring position, would likely do it.
The team has gone 0-9 with runners in scoring position, while leaving 13 runners on base in two games. The Dodgers have only scored by home run this series. Don’t need a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to figure this one out.
This essay is not to take anything away from Atlanta, but it’s more an indictment that the Dodgers had a 2-0 lead just waiting for them, begging for them to take it, only to get stifled by persistent issues that were never adequately addressed.
If the last couple of nights have given any semblance of a theme, it’s this: too much emphasis on hero ball, not enough emphasis on passing the baton to put up a crooked number. I lost track of how many meatballs were spit on and how many swings at pitches well outside the zone occurred. Take your walks, people! Also, if there has been a pitching change, maybe look at a couple of pitches rather than swinging first pitch.
It feels odd to criticize the Dodgers for self-centered play, but Game 2 showcased every wart that I have been complaining about for six months.
- Leaving scores of runners on base? Check.
- Not taking the extra base? Check. (Mookie Betts not stealing third base only to have two tailor-made sacrifice flies happen back-to-back will irk me for a while.)
- Relying too much on beating the B squad? Check.
- Relying too much on the home run? Check.
- The pitching not being bailed out by the offensive offense? Check.
- Lousy situational hitting? Check. Check. Check.
For lack of a better way to describe it, it feels like the Dodgers broke an unspoken compact. The team was generally bad for two months this summer and last summer. Yes, that mindset arguably ruins baseball, but in exchange for subpar play, the team is supposed to be ready for October.
Yes, the team won by the literal skin of its teeth last year against an upstart Toronto Blue Jays team that went from first to worst faster than you can say “flash in the pan 2021 San Francisco Giants.” Still, the losses last year felt more like “oh, this team is tired,” versus “oh, this team is flat.”
At least the 2022 team gave us a fun summer and a rollicking regular season campaign of 111 wins. This current team did not give us a fun summer. It felt more like a slog and an inevitability. The point is that if the team is going to sleepwalk through the summer, it’s to ensure that games like Game 2 do not happen.
So you’ve coughed up Home Field Advantage … again.
The Dodgers now head to Atlanta, where they did not play particularly well this year, getting swept in all three games. Truist Park will likely be rowdy as the Braves effectively worked the only gambit they had: do another bullpen game, as the Dodgers frittered away home-field advantage…again.
I had it in my head the Dodgers had been absolutely terrible at Truist Park since COVID, before checking and realizing the following:
- 2026 – 0-3
- 2025 – 2-1
- 2024 – 2-2
- 2023 – 2-1
- 2022 – 2-1
- 2021 – 1-2 / 0-3 (NLCS)
Overall, the Dodgers are 9-9 in the regular season and 0-3 in the postseason at Truist Park. Ironically enough, in my travels, where I have been the bane of the Mariners (5-0 lifetime) and Giants (8-16 lifetime), when it comes to Atlanta, I have never been present for a Dodgers victory.
Kershaw coughed up a lead in a game where Atlanta had four errors, and Trevor Bauer was ineffective in 2021. Bryce Elder kept the Dodgers at bay until Atlanta walked off the Dodgers in 2023. The good news for everyone involved is that I will be nowhere near Atlanta for the remaining two games of this series.
The bad news is while poor Stephen Nelson will have the radio call, there is not a single restaurant in the area that I can recommend. I was generally underwhelmed by the entire Battery neighborhood. If you’re going to make an entertainment district and somehow mimic the charms and hours of Fresno, California, did you really make an entertainment district at all?
Yoshinobu Yamamoto versus Chris Sale should be a duel of the ages. The problem is we saw that duel play out on August 27, when Sale made a first-inning home run stand up in a complete-game shutout. In order to retake control of this series, the Dodgers need to take advantage of their supposed depth to do something that they haven’t done all year: win in Atlanta.
They’ll have two tries to do it.
