LOS ANGELES -- Joc Pederson's blooper hit the grass in shallow center field, and Julio Urias raised both arms in disgust. It was the third inning of the fourth game of the National League Championship Series, and the Los Angeles Dodgers were already trailing the Atlanta Braves by three runs. Gavin Lux, a 23-year-old second baseman playing the outfield out of necessity, had sprinted forward, but he didn't fully commit. He stopped early, fielded the baseball on a hop and watched another run cross the plate. For the second straight night, the Dodgers' offense found itself in an early hole.
This time, there would be no awakening.
This time, there would be no comeback.
One night after Cody Bellinger's improbable home run lifted a lifeless team to a Game 3 victory, the Dodgers languished to a 9-2 defeat on Wednesday, giving the Braves a 3-1 lead in this best-of-seven series.
The Dodgers won 106 regular-season games in 2021 -- 18 more than these Braves -- and led the sport in run differential. But they have looked especially vulnerable ever since the postseason began. They needed a walk-off homer to get past the St. Louis Cardinals in the NL Wild Card Game, went the distance against the San Francisco Giants in the NL Division Series and had to overcome a three-run deficit with five outs remaining to capture their first victory in the penultimate round.
Now the Dodgers find themselves in an eerily familiar place from 2020, facing the same deficit against the same team in the same round, a comforting coincidence.
"We did it last year," Urias noted in Spanish. "Why not this year?"
The easy rebuttal lies in the unlikelihood of a similar outcome -- no team has ever overcome 3-1 series deficits in back-to-back postseasons -- but there's a more important aspect at play: This is an inferior Dodgers team to last year's, a reality that didn't truly show up until the Braves exposed it.
The top half of the third inning seemed emblematic of the Dodgers' recent misfortunes.
When Max Muncy dislocated his left elbow in the regular-season finale, Bellinger -- the Dodgers' best defensive center fielder -- was suddenly needed at first base. That forced Lux to spend most of the Dodgers' most important postseason games in center, a position he only began to learn six weeks earlier. Lux's misread in Game 4 -- 24 hours after a deep fly ball bounced off his glove -- exacerbated an uncharacteristically bad start by Urias, a 20-game winner placed in a compromising position by another key injury.
Clayton Kershaw's season-ending injury on the first day of October, a recurrence of the forearm inflammation that robbed him of two months earlier this season, left the Dodgers without an entrusted fourth starter to begin this postseason. It forced Walker Buehler to pitch on short rest for the first time in his career in NLDS Game 4, Max Scherzer to tackle the ninth inning in NLDS Game 5 and Urias to pitch in three games over a span of seven days. By the time he took the mound on Wednesday, Urias seemed to be running on fumes. He noticeably lacked command, and he surrendered three home runs within the first three innings, one less than he allowed in 42 prior postseason innings.
It was too much to overcome for a Dodgers offense that didn't produce with runners in scoring position in Games 1 and 2, didn't perk up until the very end of Game 3 and once again struggled to muster sustainable rallies in Game 4. It pushed the Dodgers to a Game 5 that will represent their fourth time facing elimination this postseason. They'll try to scrap together another bullpen game against Max Fried, the Braves' best pitcher, and hope for the best.
A lot more than just their 2021 season may be on the line.
On the second-to-last day of July, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman engineered a trade that has been hailed as one of the most impactful in the sport's history. He acquired the best starting pitcher available (Scherzer) and the best position player (Trea Turner) available -- but it was so much more than that.
In Turner, he added another dynamic offensive weapon who matched elite bat-to-ball skills with difference-making defense and game-changing speed, a combination rivaled by Mookie Betts and few others. In Scherzer, he added a legitimate ace who was also being pursued by the division rival San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants, a dynamo who could elevate teams both on the mound and in the clubhouse. And yet Friedman, speaking from Truist Park in Atlanta moments before Sunday's Game 2, seemed uncomfortable celebrating it.
"We traded four really good young players and two of whom were going to be a part of what we do this year, next year, who so many of our guys put so many hours into," Friedman said. "That part's hard."
Friedman, who spent his first 11 years in professional baseball with the budget-conscious Tampa Bay Rays, has preached the importance of balancing immediate winning with long-term sustainability since arriving in L.A. in October 2014. It's an approach that initially triggered widespread criticism in such an advantageous market, but it ultimately helped make the Dodgers a powerhouse. Eventually, however, the desire to maximize a window began to outweigh an insistence on pragmatism.
It began in July 2017 and continued at the next deadline, with trades for starting pitcher Yu Darvish and then shortstop Manny Machado, both high-end players who would depart via free agency within months. In February 2020, the Dodgers sent Alex Verdugo and two prospects -- one of them a promising shortstop named Jeter Downs -- to the Boston Red Sox for Betts, who signed a 12-year, $365 million extension five months later.
The following February featured another shocking blockbuster: Trevor Bauer signed to a deal that would pay him up to $85 million over the course of two seasons -- five months before the sexual assault allegations that necessitated the Scherzer trade and ensured that Bauer's signing would go down as one of the most disgraceful transactions in Dodgers history.
The cost for Scherzer and Turner was a premium catcher, Keibert Ruiz, and a talented starting pitcher, Josiah Gray, both of whom will be central members of the Washington Nationals next season.
"It's easy to say, 'It's amazing, you guys got Scherzer and Turner,'" Friedman said. "We traded really good players for them."
And the bills have arrived. Earlier in the season, the Dodgers added Albert Pujols and Steven Souza Jr. because none of their young position players looked ready to fill bench roles in the major leagues. Later, they traded for Danny Duffy and signed Cole Hamels -- neither of whom was healthy enough to contribute -- in a desperate attempt to bolster starting pitching depth that had quickly thinned out. By the end of the season, the 2021 Dodgers had cycled through more players than any other team in franchise history.
"There were times early this year where, with our injuries, we felt some of the effects of past trades," Friedman said. "I get the 'now' being the focus of everything that we do, but it comes at a real cost."
Turner, controllable through the 2022 season, batted .338/.385/.565 over the last two-plus months of the regular season and vaulted himself near the top of the NL MVP discussion. Scherzer, a free agent in waiting, posted a 1.98 ERA over his last 11 regular-season starts and looks like the favorite for the NL Cy Young Award.
Friedman was asked if those contributions provided comfort in a belief that he did the right thing, regardless of whether Scherzer returns or the Dodgers win it all.
He offered a half-smile.
"Ask me after we've played our last game."
Justin Turner had sprinted eight steps up the first-base line in Wednesday's seventh inning when his hamstring grabbed him. Turner, 36, had been playing through a sore hamstring and a stiff neck while struggling through a .118 batting average this postseason. Early indications after Wednesday's games were a Grade 2 strain.
"I think that will be it for him," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. "Obviously very disappointing."
Last year, when the Dodgers began their postseason in the bubble of Arlington, Texas, Turner huddled the team together to talk about the challenge that awaited. When they fell behind 1-3 in the NLCS -- against a Braves team very similar to this one -- Turner served as a central member of the text-message chain that rallied everybody together. Over the last eight seasons, his impact with the position player group has been just as profound as the tone set for the pitchers by Kershaw. Their seasons ended within 20 days of each other.
The Dodgers are nowhere near whole, and they've been pushed this season like hardly ever before -- first by the Giants in the division, then by the Giants in a first-round series, and now by a Braves team hardened by the disappointment of last October.
"I mean, every ballclub that's here has gone through a lot of baseball," Dodgers outfielder AJ Pollock said when asked if his team was especially tired at this juncture. "I wouldn't say that's it. Obviously we've just got to execute. You can be tired and execute."
The Dodgers' offense navigated through the 2021 season as one of the most impressive, efficient groups in baseball history, and it seemed to only grow stronger with the acquisition of Trea Turner in late July. But the roster has batted a collective .231/.305/.356 in the postseason and accumulated three runs or fewer in six of their 10 postseason games. Any one encouraging performance has been followed by several letdowns, harkening back to the mind-numbing inconsistencies of 2018.
That year, the Dodgers lost in the World Series for the second straight time. Two years later, they came back to win it all, ending a drought that had lingered for 32 years. Over a nine-year stretch, from 2013 to 2021, the Dodgers claimed eight division titles, won at least 94 more games than anybody else and advanced into three World Series. But they have won only one championship, perhaps the most unconventional in the sport's history. And now, it seems, another loss might trigger the start of what feels like another chapter.
When the 2021 season concludes, Kershaw, Scherzer, Kenley Jansen, Corey Seager and Chris Taylor will all venture into the free-agent market, all while the organization has started to feel the effects of the trades that eroded its farm system. The Dodgers will probably still be good, but, with the Giants and Padres looming, it's hard to envision them continuing their dominance. For the first time in years, a team that became the industry standard in organizational development has legitimate holes to fill -- perhaps quite a lot of them.
But these are problems for another day.
One more, at least.
"I'm thinking about, and I expect our guys to think about, tomorrow," Roberts said Wednesday night. "And tomorrow only."