In the heart of election season, Los Angeles’ favorite candidate fittingly just pushed their opponent past the breaking point.
I’m calling the National League … for the Dodgers.
I’m calling a spot in the World Series … to the Dodgers.
The polling is not yet complete but it’s happening, a done deal, a mortal lock, prepare for tickets, plan for parties, spread the word, the Dodgers are going to advance to their fourth World Series in eight seasons. It’s only a matter of time.
Read more: Dodgers show their might, blowing out Mets to move a win away from World Series
After a 10-2 victory over the New York Mets in Game 4 of the NL Championship Series at Citi Field on Thursday night, the Dodgers owned a three-games-to-one lead that is essentially insurmountable.
It’s over. The Mets are as done as their roasted pitching. They are as finished as their fleeing fan base. They probably shouldn’t have been here in the first place, and soon they’ll be gone, in the Dodgers’ rearview mirror along with the San Diego Padres, postseason victims of a very different postseason Dodgers team.
Coming soon, the World Series beckons, whether it is clinched Friday night here in Game 5 or next week at Dodger Stadium, it’s happening, the Dodgers are winning one more game against a Mets team that has quit.
All that’s left is the champagne and kookiness, and here’s guessing that will occur Friday with ace Jack Flaherty on the mound and visions of impending greatness in the air.
“We’re close,” Tommy Edman said.“We can feel it.”
Shohei Ohtani, who homered Thursday, wants it to happen now.
“We played good baseball in enemy territory yesterday and today, and I’d like to connect that to tomorrow,” Ohtani said in Japanese. “I’d like us to have the feeling that we will decide it tomorrow.”
The Dodgers not only will advance to the World Series beginning next week, but they also should be heavy favorites to win it against either the inferior New York Yankees or outmanned Cleveland Guardians.
There hasn’t been a Dodgers team this complete since 2017, and they would have won that World Series if the Houston Astros had not cheated, so hide all the trash cans and let’s go.
How good are these Dodgers? They dominated Thursday night with essentially their “B” team, Freddie Freeman and Gavin Lux out, Chris Taylor playing second base, Edman batting cleanup.
They won with a second consecutive impressive performance by division series-clincher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, with Ohtani being Ohtani, and with everybody else juking and jabbing and creating like the Dodgers do.
“At a time like this … so you’ve just got to jump on the roller coaster and enjoy the ride,” said Mookie Betts, who had a homer among four hits and four RBIs.
And oh, yeah, Max Muncy walked three times and singled to extend his on-base streak to 12 consecutive plate appearances, a record for one postseason.
Think about it. This Muncy dude is setting records and he is not even one of the four best hitters on the team.
“It’s 0-0 right now,” Muncy said, refusing to relent to the hype. “We’re showing up tomorrow as if it’s a 0-0 series. We have to prepare the right way, do everything the right way and play our game. Go out there and try to get a win tomorrow.”
The main attraction is, of course, Ohtani, who set the tone just two pitches into this game when he broke out of his peculiar recent slump with his first hit in 22 at-bats with the bases empty — and man, what a breakout. It was a 422-foot home run over the right-center-field fence. The ball officially traveled 118 mph but, like most of his big hits, it looked like it went 1,000 mph.
After the Mets briefly tied the game in the bottom of the first with a home run from Mark Vientos — hey, at least they scored! — the Dodgers soon crafted a way to break that deadlock forever.
It was accomplished in the third inning by an unlikely hero and an expected one. Edman, batting cleanup for only the third time this season, scored Ohtani, who had walked, with a double to left. Then Kiké Hernández, who has been doing this stuff all October, singled off the glove of diving shortstop Francisco Lindor for another run.
Think about something else. The Dodgers spent more than $1 billion this offseason in signing talent, yet two guys who fueled their fire in one of the biggest games of the season Thursday were an underrated trade-deadline acquisition and a spring-training signing.
Especially impressive is Edman, who could quietly steal the NLCS most valuable player award as he is hitting .412 with seven RBIs.
“I haven’t batted cleanup much in my life, and to do so in this lineup is pretty crazy,” Edman said. “It’s what I’ve always dreamed about. I haven’t had a chance to play in a World Series before, and to be one game away, we’re really excited.”
After spending his career in St. Louis, Edman clearly has embraced the Dodgers culture.
“[The] thing that separates this team is just the experience, and I think everybody just has a very calm and cool demeanor,” he said. “The moment doesn’t really get too big for anybody. I think just having a lot of guys who have been there in big moments definitely helps out to be able to perform when those situations arise.”
Those situations have arisen plenty in these first four games and, while the Dodgers have indeed showed up big, the Mets have shrunk.
Trailing early Thursday, the Mets never really fought back. They loaded the bases with less than two out in two of the first six innings but could scrape only one run out of it, including three Mets hitters retired by Evan Phillips and Blake Treinen to strand three in the sixth.
As the Dodgers piled on the runs — again — the Mets increasingly ran out of the batter’s box with quick swings and offered only minor mound resistance with haphazard pitching.
In the first four games, the Dodgers have outscored the Mets, 30-9, and it hasn’t felt that close. Perhaps even more impressive is that the Dodgers hitters have drawn an LCS-record 31 walks, baseball’s Goliaths administering death by a thousand cuts.
“As we continue to build to a World Series run, we’ll just ride that wave until we get there,” Phillips said.
Read more: How much for two tickets for a World Series in L.A.? Thousands, not hundreds
The wave is almost home. It’s crashing against the rocks of doubt and overwhelming the sands of history.
“We’ve done a good job putting ourselves in this position,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I sort of like the us-against-the-world attitude that our guys have sort of taken on. I think that’s kind of ironic with the Dodgers, but I like that.”
In this equation, they are usually the world. But something happened to them last week when the world mocked them after they were one game from elimination in the NLDS against the San Diego Padres. They found anger. They found a chip. They found each other.
And soon, very soon, they’ll find the 120th World Series.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
