The Los Angeles Dodgers looked like the most October-ready team in baseball for most of the year. But it was all gone in an instant after one bad inning doomed them in Game 4 of the NLDS.
After their 5-3 loss to the San Diego Padres, the Dodgers players could do nothing but lament how their 111-win season ended in such abrupt fashion.
Via Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic:
“I think if you lose at all, it’s a sudden end,” Mookie Betts said. “We play the game to win a World Series so to come up short – it sucks. But there’s nothing else we can do now.”
The Dodgers roster is stacked with veterans who've won a World Series, but not lost on them were the years before the first one – the trials and failures before you reach the mountaintop.
“If you don’t win the World Series, it’s just disappointment right now,” Freddie Freeman said. “This was a really good team — a really, really good team. October baseball can be brutal and it happened for us.”
But while disappointed at the unforgiving nature of the MLB playoffs, the Dodgers had to tip their cap toward a Padres side that showed up when the stakes were at their highest.
“They played better than us,” Clayton Kershaw said. “It’s hard to admit sometimes, but that’s the truth of it. They just beat us.”
Questions abound for the Dodgers this coming offseason, ones that likely would have been easier to address with a World Series trophy to cap off a spectacular year. Now they'll have to face them with a much more sober outlook as the LA powerhouse plans before they begin their ascent again next season.
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