In the run-up to this week’s National League Division Series, it was the quietest player on the Dodgers roster who delivered the most profound speech.
This series, soft-spoken veteran Chris Taylor told his teammates in a hitter’s meeting before Game 1 on Saturday, would be all about intensity.
“Every time we play these guys, they always have high intensity and a lot of energy,” Taylor said of the San Diego Padres, recounting the message of his address to a reporter a day later. So, he implored the club, “We need to match that.”
Entering Game 3 on Tuesday, the bar to do so had reached the stratosphere.
Over the previous 48 hours, the psychological dynamic of this rivalry matchup dramatically shifted.
Dodgers fans threw objects at Padres players during Game 2, prompting one of their relievers to suggest moving a potential Game 5 out of Chavez Ravine. That same night, San Diego third baseman Manny Machado zipped a baseball toward manager Dave Roberts in the Dodgers dugout, causing a two-day news cycle that ratched up Monday following critical comments from Roberts and a Major League Baseball review of video of the incident.
In the hours before Game 3, pregame news conferences for both teams featured more talk about mindset and motivation than game plans and strategy.
And by first pitch at Petco Park, it all led to one question: Which team would handle their raw emotions better, and effectively channel them over the rest of this best-of-five series?
The answer came nine innings, 11 runs and one disastrous bottom-of-the-second sequence later.
The Padres defeated the Dodgers 6-5 — giving San Diego a two games to one advantage in the NLDS, and putting the Dodgers’ season on the brink.
The Dodgers had started Tuesday’s game well, taking a rare first-inning lead on a Mookie Betts home run; one that narrowly missed a Jurickson Profar robbery attempt in left field that was eerily similar to his Game 2 snag at Dodger Stadium, and ended a 23 at-bat hitless streak in the postseason for Betts that stretched all the way back to 2022.
For once, the Dodgers weren’t staring at a deficit out of the gate.
Instead, they face-planted trying to make the first turn.
The six-run second inning began in ominous fashion, with starting pitcher Walker Buehler being assessed a pitch clock violation and automatic ball after struggling to hear his PitchCom device amid deafening chants of “Manny! Manny!” for Machado at the plate.
Machado capitalized on the count leverage, rolling a 2-and-1 single through the infield. Then, the 13-year veteran made a heady (albeit controversial) play on the bases, taking a circuitous route to second on a potential double-play grounder to get in the way of Freddie Freeman’s throw from first.
Buehler induced another potential double-play grounder from Xander Bogaerts in the next at-bat, but shortstop Miguel Rojas squandered it. Instead of flipping the ball to second baseman Gavin Lux for at least one sure out, Rojas attempted to shuffle there himself. However, playing with an adductor injury that later forced him from the game, Rojas got to the bag too late, and then watched Bogaerts beat out his throw to first.
One run scored. No outs were recorded. And as Buehler’s pitch count in the inning climbed, his effectiveness quickly waned.
Buehler got his next batter, former Dodgers outfielder David Peralta, to two strikes, before throwing an inside fastball that was yanked down the line for a two-run double. The same thing happened to the following hitter, Jake Cronenworth, who hit an elevated fastball with two strikes for a single, setting up Kyle Higashioka for a sacrifice fly.
With the score 4-1 at that point, Fernando Tatis Jr. delivered the exclamation point.
In another two-strike count, Buehler threw another fastball in the heart of the strike zone. Tatis, fresh off a two-homer display in San Diego’s Game 2 win, was all over it, going to the second deck in left field for a stadium-erupting blast and a 6-1 lead.
It was the kind of inning that has doomed the Dodgers so often in recent Octobers, full of defensive miscues, poor pitching and — once the tide started to turn— an inability to steady themselves before it was too late.
These Dodgers did show some fight to get back in the game, taking a big bite of the Padres’ lead on Teoscar Hernández’s grand slam in the top of the third inning.
However, they made 16 straight outs after that, stranded their lone late-game baserunner in the eighth, then came up empty in the ninth, wilting offensively in the face of a dominant Padres bullpen and 47,744 raucous fans.
Now, the Dodgers’ season is in uncomfortably familiar territory, in danger of a third-straight NLDS elimination entering Game 4 on Wednesday night.
