Entering this week, the Dodgers seemed to be rolling toward the postseason.
They had won 14 of 17 games. They had clinched the National League West division crown. They separated themselves for a top-two NL seed. And they had finally gotten the entirety of their roster –– from a previously slumping offense to a once-scuffling bullpen to a star-studded rotation –– synced up and playing well at the same time.
There was, of course, one caveat to all that success.
The team had gotten an exceedingly soft late-season schedule, having not faced a fellow contender in almost a month.
Thus, this week’s visit of the San Diego Padres felt like something of a pre-October test, if not a preview of a potential postseason matchup.
And with a 4-2 rubber-match loss on Thursday night at Chavez Ravine, it was one they concerningly failed in their last true tune-up before the playoffs.
The Dodgers, of course, will downplay the significance of this week’s results. They won 7-0 with a bullpen game on Tuesday night. They felt Wednesday’s 5-1 defeat was closer than the final score reflected. In the big-picture, Thursday’s setback didn’t hurt them either –– especially after they clinched a first-round playoff bye pregame thanks to the Atlanta Braves’ loss to the Cincinnati Reds.
There was also a matter of motivation, with the Padres clinching their own postseason spot by winning each of the last two games.
Nevertheless, dropping this series continued an increasingly troublesome trend for the two-time defending champions.
On the season, the Dodgers are just 25-28 against above-.500 teams currently on track to make the playoffs this year (excluding the sub-.500 Astros and Rangers, who are currently tied atop the AL West).
In the last two months, that mark includes an eye-popping 2-14 rut in such matchups.
Over that period, there were series sweeps at the hands of the Red Sox, Cubs and Braves. There was just a lone win in a dispiriting four-game series with the Milwaukee Brewers.
And still, no outcome felt more foreboding than this one.
After a four-run rally in the bottom of the second on Tuesday, the Dodgers’ once-resurgent lineup scored just six more times over its next 25 innings –– even with Shohei Ohtani returning from the injured list on Wednesday, and recording a multi-hit effort Thursday that included a consolation RBI double in the ninth.
Though they manufactured plenty of traffic and prevented each of San Diego’s starters from completing even five innings, they wasted countless opportunities by going 4-for-25 with runners in scoring position.
It didn’t matter that the team got a pair of quality, though hardly dominant, starts out of Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Wednesday (six innings, two earned runs –– albeit with two more unearned) and Tyler Glasnow on Thursday (6.1 innings, three earned runs –– the last of which scored after he left the game).
Or that their own bullpen was, by and large, excellent; only done in during a three-run seventh-inning rally from the Padres on Thursday that was aided by some shoddy Dodgers defense (another area where the team suddenly regressed against a higher level of opponent).
Instead, their red-hot offense reverted back to its mediocre mid-summer form.
And now, after several weeks of increasingly auspicious form, the Dodgers have renewed questions to answer about their inability to beat other playoff-bound teams.
If it doesn’t change soon, it could portend an unexpectedly short October.
