All aboard the high-stress baseball express, bound for Dodger Stadium and a win-or-vacation game against the momentarily vulnerable but now very much living, breathing Dodgers.
One moment, the Padres had pushed the game’s biggest bats to the brink, riding a tailwind of energy and emotion. The next, the bully up the block had forged new life.
Now, anything is possible. Jubilation. Dread. Exhilaration. Deflation.
Buckle up and pack the antacids.
The Dodgers pounded away at the Padres, then pounded away some more in an 8-0 runaway win Wednesday that set up a deciding game in the National League Division Series on Friday at Dodger Stadium.
More than the game count changed in the best-of-five roller coaster.
That unbridled energy the Padres owned and the Dodgers longed to find? It switched uniforms and dugouts. Prepare stomachs for some barrel rolls in a fighter jet.
“I know they’re not scared of this moment,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of his team in the hours leading up to first pitch. “… It’s going to be a battle. We’re expecting it. We’re not going to run from it.”
They didn’t.
When a team like the Dodgers stumbles, you cut off the oxygen and snuff out second chances. You finish the job before a final-game bounce or two can douse a season.
The Dodgers, even wounded, are dangerous enough to find their collective swing, mop things up for nine innings and kick all your polished baseball and hip-tight clubhouse vibes to the curb.
You had them cornered. Freddie Freeman’s ankle. Miguel Rojas’ cranky groin. Rent-a-pitcher signs popping up in the dugout. They were down.
They’re not out.
“I’m already excited for Friday,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “How fun is that going to be?”
One major trending-arrow change of fortunes for the Dodgers: Mookie Betts seems to be finding his stroke after previously needing a GPS.
Betts’ 0-for-22 playoff slump ended Tuesday with a home run off the outstretched glove of Padres left fielder Jurickson Profar. A game earlier, Profar had floated into the Dodger Stadium crowd to steal what would have been another.
Two batters into Game 4, Betts reversed a 98-mph fastball from Dylan Cease that landed somewhere other than where Profar was leaping for a solo shot to center.
The Dodgers reminded those who had forgotten why they had the most feared offense in baseball, stringing together singles from Kike Hernandez, Shohei Ohtani and Betts in the second to fatten the lead to 3-0.
The gap stretched to 5-0 an inning later when Will Smith followed Max Muncy’s double down the right-field line with a 432-foot blast to center.
The Dodgers found the bounce in their spikes that had gone missing, while the Padres suddenly were hunting for a spark.
Air rushed from the balloon in a way the Padres had not experienced yet in this series when a double-play ball that would have ended the inning in the seventh squirted underneath shortstop Xander Bogaerts for an error.
It led to a sacrifice bunt and another run.
Then Gavin Lux parked a two-run shot over the wall in right as the score ballooned to 8-0.
That head of steam the Padres built? It’s gone.
The Padres will lean into the sense that they remain built, in a roster-construction and mental-makeup sense, to march into Chavez Ravine, still crash the Dodgers’ party and put Randy Newman on mute.
When you have a group wired like Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Jurickson Profar, pressure often translates to fuel. They do not run away from the flames. This bunch rushes toward the heat.
The Dodgers, meanwhile, know one more win could slow the narrative that they’re the woeful underachievers who own the spring and summer before the car crash of fall.
And now, they own fresh fuel of their own.
The thought of coming back from the abyss in San Diego and finishing off the team they’ve grown to despise must sound too delicious for those in blue to imagine.
Each team has won on the other’s home field in this series, reinforcing that all possibilities remain perched along the dugout rail.
If Ohtani and Betts hammer balls into the Los Angeles night, advantage Dodgers. If Tatis is doing the tattooing and the Padres bullpen stays stingy, the script flips.
The Padres hand the ball to Yu Darvish with a season bulging with potential on the line. Darvish handcuffed the Dodgers in Game 2, a fountain-of-youth performance with just three hits and a run spread across seven innings.
“He’s been fantastic,” Shildt said. “Confidence level, he’s got 203 wins in his career (and 204 after Game 2). Pitched a long time. Pitched on big stages. Clearly we’re going to have one on Friday.”
The bigger migraine becomes the Dodgers bullpen. On Wednesday, as the visitors were pounding out 12 hits, the Padres finished with more strikeouts (8) than their hit total (7).
So, bring on the all-or-nothing stakes.
Bring those Rolaids, too.
