NEW YORK — The Mets have magic. The Dodgers have dominance.
The Mets have MVP candidates. The Dodgers have MVPs.
The Mets have OMG. The Dodgers are OMG.
The chasm between them couldn’t have been clearer Thursday night, as the Dodgers won 10-2 and took a commanding 3-1 lead in the National League Championship Series. Los Angeles has won all three of its games by at least eight runs. Game 4 was the most revealing, as Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts turned an energized Citi Field into a library by combining for two homers, five hits, five RBIs, three walks and seven runs.
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“It’s been fun being able to see him perform really well, obviously being in the situation where I’m on base,” Ohtani said of Betts. “So, he looks really good and locked in. My job at that point is to make sure that I score on anything that Mookie really hits.”
Ohtani and Betts have made it seem inevitable that, pretty soon, all the purple Grimaces in the tri-state area will be sent into a winter hibernation. Ohtani sucked the air out of the stadium before fans had even settled into their seats — demolishing a leadoff home run on the second pitch out of the left hand of veteran Jose Quintana and ending the trend that he couldn’t hit with nobody on base. The home run snapped an 0-for-22 stretch for Ohtani without runners on base to begin the postseason. With the Mets apparently choosing to avoid any more damage from the Japanese phenom, Ohtani reached base via a walk in three of his next four plate appearances.
“Freddie [Freeman] talked to me to make sure that I joined the party earlier than later,” Ohtani said. “So I was able to do that this time in my first at-bat.”
Betts added: “It’s going to be tough to walk him all the time.”
Yeah, no kidding, particularly when the guy hitting behind him is this locked in. Betts, after beginning the postseason hitless in his first nine at-bats, has returned to superstardom. He went 4-for-6, collected a playoff-career-high four RBIs and crushed a towering two-run shot to left field in the sixth — his third homer this postseason — that completely took the Mets out of the game. Betts’ biggest hits of the night came immediately after the Mets made pitching changes, drawing on his clutch gene to power the Dodgers in Game 4.
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Betts now has seven career playoff homers, and he’s the third Dodgers player with at least four hits and at least four RBIs in a postseason game — joining Chris Taylor and Steve Garvey.
“It’s just so tough for starting pitchers,” said Freeman, who watched Game 4 from the dugout to rest his sprained ankle. “Right out of the gate, you’re facing Hall of Famers. It’s amazing when they’re swinging the bat as good as they are right now. It’s fun to hit behind them.”
Like Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, or Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal, L.A.’s latest legendary tandem was relentless against Mets pitchers in Game 4. Ohtani relied on patience as he drew his walks, and Betts leaned on his timely hitting to force Quintana out of his start with five earned runs in just 3.1 innings. That Ohtani, Betts and the rest of the Dodgers stepped up for 10 runs while Freeman was sidelined on Thursday is a testament to how complete the offense is right now.
The Dodgers spent more than $1 billion this offseason for this exact reason: overwhelm, exhaust and suffocate the opponent to the point of making any idea of a comeback for the resilient Mets a moot point. The Dodgers have outscored the Mets 30-9 across the first four games in the NLCS.
“You’ve got to give them credit because that’s a really good lineup and they can do a lot of different things,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “This is a team that controls the strike zone as well as anybody in the league. Not only do they do that, but when they force you in the zone, they can do some damage. And they’ve done that. They did it again today.”
As players and managers like to say, everything is magnified at this time of the year. So it takes another level of patience and confidence to be able to handle the quick turnarounds and additional media responsibilities of the postseason.
Ohtani, experiencing the playoffs for the first time in his seven-year career in the big leagues, zipped around the clubhouse in a frenzy after the Dodgers’ Game 4 win. Sitting on the chair at his locker, he quickly toweled off his jet black hair, jogged back into the bathroom, and hustled back to his locker to collect his belongings: a backpack that he threw over his shoulder, a hat that he wore backwards, and a pair of headphones that he held in his hand. Then he rushed behind an MLB staff member out of the clubhouse and into the news conference room to talk about his night at the plate and the Dodgers being one win away from the World Series.
As for Betts, playing in his eighth career postseason, he was operating at a more leisurely pace. As he walked down the Citi Field tunnel on his way to sit in front of countless cameras and reporters, he stopped to hug his family and fist bump a lucky fan who was exiting the stadium. If Betts seemed calm after the game, it was because he spent the rest of his free time swinging in the cages. Freeman joked that if all of that cage work has worked so well for Betts, the first baseman might soon try that approach too.
“A lot of stuff has clicked and hasn’t worked and some of it has worked,” Betts said of his preparation. “Today it worked. But tomorrow is a new day, and I’ll come work and try and find the same feel.”
Not much was working for the team from Queens. As for why the Mets are backed into a corner, facing the worst-case scenario where they face elimination for the remainder of the series, they failed to capitalize on their chances on Thursday. There was heartbreak in the sixth inning when they loaded the bases with nobody out and didn’t score a single run. Then there was embarrassment in the eighth inning as the Dodgers continued to pile on and the stadium all but emptied with six outs still to go.
The Dodgers, playoff veterans, did the equivalent of stuffing the new kid at school into a locker. It’s hard to see these Mets getting out of Citi Field with any games left to play.
Deesha Thosar is an MLB reporter for FOX Sports. She previously covered the Mets as a beat reporter for the New York Daily News. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Deesha grew up on Long Island and now lives in Queens. Follow her on Twitter at @DeeshaThosar.
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