LOS ANGELES — These are not the same New York Mets the Los Angeles Dodgers last saw in May. That much was clear long before the Dodgers saw a bullpen game blow up in their face and stared at a six-run deficit. That much remained true throughout Monday afternoon, when a chance to grab firm control of this National League Championship fluttered away.
The Dodgers packed for a cross-country flight with several opportunities squandered. They had lined up a bullpen game seeking to press their hot hand with a group of high-leverage relievers. Instead, they hardly used any of the expected names.
The Dodgers could not figure out Mets starter Sean Manaea, whom they had routinely pummeled over the years.
When the Dodgers climbed back into the game, loading the bases twice in the sixth inning, they could not strike the last blow. When another chance popped up two innings later, it came and went with a shallow fly ball to end the threat. A last gasp in the ninth fell short, too. The top five hitters in their lineup reached a combined five times, going 0-for-15 for the afternoon.
Mets 7, Dodgers 3. That will sit as they head to New York with a 1-1 split in the NLCS, breathing life into a Mets team that has spent the past month taking sparks and turning them into a rollicking flame.
“You expect it to be a long series,” Mookie Betts said. “They’re good. They’re not a bad baseball team. They didn’t make it here by luck. It’s going to be a dogfight.”
It is the same position the Dodgers sat in eight days ago, heading to San Diego having wiped plenty of the good feelings that percolated in Game 1. It took a historic run of pitching excellence to survive the ensuing days. The Dodgers can take solace in the fact that these Mets are not the Padres; a single loss in a best-of-seven does not carry the dread that a shorter series brings.
Still, they exited Dodger Stadium with no guarantee they would return this season, their home-field advantage squandered. They can scrub the “if necessary” for any mention of at least a Game 5.
“It’s going to be a fight,” Will Smith said. “We knew it was going to be.”
The Dodgers positioned themselves well entering the day. Jack Flaherty’s seven scoreless innings in Game 1 on Sunday required only two innings from relievers, only one of whom (Daniel Hudson) took part in last week’s all-out bullpen shutdown against the Padres in Game 4 of the Division Series. It had been two days of rest for the remainder of the bullpen, with a chance to run back the same formula again on Monday.
That feat, in retrospect, would have been difficult. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Hudson, one of eight pitchers to throw that night, “just had some things that he couldn’t pitch today” after throwing the eighth inning Sunday. Alex Vesia, another of the eight, is not on the NLCS roster due to an intercostal injury. That left five high-leverage guys available on Monday and only two wound up pitching. One, Ryan Brasier, opened the game and worked around a leadoff homer from Francisco Lindor.
Rather than continue a line of leverage arms Roberts said would eventually run out before 27 outs, they deployed Landon Knack (who completed the ninth of an 8-0 win in the Game 4 victory) in hopes of getting length to make the math work.
“It all is great when it works well and guys are throwing up zeros, but you’re still facing really good ballclubs,” Roberts said. “And there is a margin that you have to guard against.”
It still couldn’t add up. Knack, who hadn’t pitched in a game other than that mop-up outing in two weeks, imploded. A Tyrone Taylor hit doubled the Mets’ early advantage to 2-0. Mark Vientos said in a television interview that he took the ensuing decision to intentionally walk Lindor in front of him “personal.” Over a 10-pitch battle, Knack left several pitches over the plate; Vientos knocked the last one over the fence for a grand slam to give the Mets a 6-0 lead.
“Obviously that whole second inning, the way it all went down, I didn’t set the tone very well for everyone else,” Knack said.
The Dodgers hardly had a chance to counter. Manaea offered no such reprieve. With a new arm slot and attack plan, the left-hander barely resembled the pitcher the Dodgers battered within the division when Manaea was with the Padres and San Francisco Giants. The array of elevated sinkers from a lower angle flummoxed several Dodgers. A large advantage forced a vaunted lineup to settle back into previous passive tendencies.
Opportunities against the Mets bullpen fizzled. Consecutive walks and a Jose Iglesias error loaded the bases and forced Manaea from the game in the sixth, creating a window; Smith, 2-for-23 this postseason, popped up on the third pitch he saw from Phil Maton.
Tommy Edman followed with a two-run single past a diving Pete Alonso at first base to bring the tying run to the plate at 6-3. It was as close as the Dodgers got.
Two batters later, with the bases reloaded in a three-run game, Kiké Hernández got a sweeper over the heart of the plate against Maton – and pounded it into the ground for an inning-ending double play.
When an Edman single and a Max Muncy walk again brought Hernández to the plate in a three-run game in the eighth, the Mets summoned closer Edwin Díaz.
Hernández again thought he had the pitch he wanted.
“He hung it,” Hernández said, a two-strike slider that rotated flatly over the middle of the plate. Hernández lofted it to shallow right for an easy flyout.
“I probably had the two biggest at-bats of the game,” Hernández said. “I didn’t come through.”
Another chance against Díaz in the ninth — Andy Pages singled and Shohei Ohtani walked to create some traffic — ended with three straight strikeouts, the last coming on a wicked Díaz slider that Freddie Freeman waved over in the dirt.
So went a chance for the Dodgers. To go up 2-0, and grasp the series.
“There’s no other words other than we lost,” Betts said. “It sucks, but you can’t expect us — I don’t think anybody is expecting anyone to roll over. … We’re going to New York. We know it’s going to be hectic there. Obviously that’s going to give them a lot of confidence. We have to come out ready to play.”
Muncy put it more bluntly.
“The loss sucks,” he said, “but you can’t sit there and cry about it. You still have a bunch more games to play.”
(Photo of Kiké Hernández out on a double play: Kiyoshi Mio / Imagn Images)
