2022 MLB Playoffs: Dodgers' lifeless offense, Game 3 loss put season on the line

By Pedro Moura
FOX Sports MLB Writer

SAN DIEGO — While Mookie Betts retreated to Petco Park's visiting dugout after driving in the Dodgers’ only run Friday, he pumped his fist four times and repeatedly clapped his hands.

He had produced a sacrifice fly, not the sort of achievement Betts usually celebrates. But he could see as well as anyone that his teammates needed a boost. 

Betts’ exhortations could not enliven the Dodgers, who submitted another lifeless performance in Game 3 of this National League Division Series. Following Betts, requiring only one more sacrifice fly to tie the game, Trea Turner instead popped out in foul territory. In all, the Dodgers one-upped their Game 2 output: In nine at-bats with runners in scoring position, they could not deliver a single hit.

"We’re not stringing together a lot of at-bats to score runs," Betts said afterward. "We’re not hitting with men in scoring position."

The Dodgers’ season, so spectacular for six months, is now on the brink after two miserable offensive performances in three days. With their 2-1 victory, the Padres earned themselves the chance to end the Dodgers’ season Saturday.

Betts’ celebrations were about the only ones performed by the Dodgers and their fans Friday. Ten minutes before first pitch, the Petco Park video board played a clip from Dodgers starting pitcher Tony Gonsolin’s Thursday Zoom session with reporters, in which he said he could not imagine the San Diego crowd generating more noise than the Dodgers are used to daily at Dodger Stadium.

All night, fans wielded the aside as fuel while celebrating the first Padres’ postseason victory in front of them at Petco Park. This town had been starved of success since this jewel of a stadium opened near the San Diego waterfront, and the Padres took extra care to keep tickets to Game 3 in the hands of locals.

Gonsolin was not long for the game. He lasted only four outs, surrendering one run, before Dodgers manager Dave Roberts summoned the first of five relievers. As in Game 2, the Dodgers’ relievers did enough to keep the game close, and their hitters produced plenty of scoring chances. They just did not turn those into runs.

Roberts drew a distinction between his team’s approach in scoring-position situations and the Padres’. San Diego, he said, has been willing to wait out at-bats and hit to the opposite field. The Dodgers have not.

"I think that we're being hyper-aggressive early in counts and not staying on the ball," he said.

Betts began the game with a single and took second base when a bouncing Blake Snell pitch briefly escaped catcher Austin Nola's view. But no other Dodgers put the ball into play until the second inning, so Betts stayed there. 

Snell, boasting better stuff than even his lofty norm, struck out five of the first seven Dodgers to bat. 

Come the third inning, he briefly lost his way against the final two hitters in the lineup. Trayce Thompson walked, and Austin Barnes singled, bringing up Betts again. He laced a liner down the third-base line, only for Manny Machado to snag it. After Freddie Freeman walked to load the bases, Will Smith popped up to end the inning. 

Meanwhile, the Padres produced effective offense. After Juan Soto doubled and Machado walked in the first inning, Jake Cronenworth poked a single into center to score Soto. Gonsolin was so unsteady that left-hander Andrew Heaney began to warm behind him then, and Heaney replaced Gonsolin after two more Padres reached base in the second inning.

In that inning and the next, Heaney pitched around trouble to register scoreless innings. He could not complete the feat in the fourth, for Trent Grisham sent his first pitch into the bleachers for the decisive run.

In the fifth, Betts lifted his sacrifice fly, scoring Thompson, who had singled and taken third on Barnes’ double. The bottom of the Dodgers’ order was not their problem Friday; the middle of it was. Turner, Freeman and Smith could not convert the chances their less-heralded teammates created.

"That’s the difference in the ballgame: getting those runners over and getting them in," Turner said. "My at-bat, I gotta get that run in with less than two outs and a man on third, just like Mookie did."

Turner underwent X-rays on his right ring finger after he jammed it while sliding back to first base on a late pick-off attempt. He said they were negative, and Roberts said he expects Turner to play Saturday as the Dodgers attempt to stave off elimination.

"We’re not out of this, obviously," Turner said. 

The Dodgers should not be ruled out until they are out. They have come back from the brink before, including on their way to a World Series win in 2020 and in the 2021 NLDS. It is not particularly complicated. To do so in 2022, they must bring their baserunners home. 

In a quiet postgame clubhouse Friday, as a city clamored around him, Freeman scoffed at a question about the Dodgers’ sudden loss of swagger. They have their swagger, he insisted.

"It’s just whether we can get hits or not," he said. "If we get hits tomorrow, we’ll be fine."

Pedro Moura is the national baseball writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the Dodgers for The Athletic, the Angels and Dodgers for the Orange County Register and L.A. Times, and his alma mater, USC, for ESPN Los Angeles. He is the author of "How to Beat a Broken Game." Follow him on Twitter @pedromoura.