Alexander: Uh, about that Dodgers’ momentum

Obviously, the Dodgers aren’t the only ones who respond when challenged. The Atlanta Braves can do so as well.

Much was made of the way the Dodgers responded down the stretch in September after the San Diego Padres had won the first of a key three-game series. And of the way the Dodgers responded Wednesday after losing the first two games of the National League Championship Series, posting an 11-run first inning against the Braves and going from there.

Atlanta had its answer Thursday night, a six-run sixth inning, driving future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw to cover and piling up singles and doubles against Brusdar Graterol and Victor González, the heretofore bright lights of the Dodgers’ bullpen. Then they added runs in the eighth and ninth as exclamation points en route to a 10-2 victory and a 3-1 series lead.

And now the team with baseball’s best record, the team with such depth and such pitching and such a mission to end a 32-year drought without a World Series championship, finds itself at the edge of the cliff.

The Dodgers had the opportunity to feast on the lesser lights of the Atlanta pitching staff this week, but gorging themselves in Game 3 didn’t help Thursday night. Bryse Wilson, a 22-year-old right-hander who had just two regular-season starts and was making his postseason debut, outpitched Kershaw: Six innings, five strikeouts, 74 pitches and Edwin Rios’ home run the only hit.

Those of us who figured the Braves’ starting pitching suspect after Max Fried and Ian Anderson perhaps should have looked closer. Wilson had a 4.02 regular season ERA over six appearances, but most of that was in relief. In two starts toward the end of September, he gave up one run in 10 innings against the Marlins and Red Sox.

So much for what yours truly called the soft underbelly of the Braves’ pitching staff. It was stout enough that the Dodgers scored once and left the bases loaded in the seventh, in their opportunity to respond to Atlanta’s six-run inning. And then Marcell Ozuna – who right now looks like this season’s best free-agent signing – slugged his second home run of the game for an 8-2 lead.

Ozuna took one year and $18 million (pro-rated, of course, because of the pandemic) from the Braves last offseason, and his .338 average, 18 homers, 56 RBIs and 1.067 OPS in the regular season should get him a raise from someone this winter, even in a depressed market. His postseason hadn’t been much to rave about until Thursday night, but with four hits (including two homers) and four RBIs he raised his playoff OPS from .565 to .868 in the span of five at-bats.

Among other things.

I made the suggestion on Twitter in the middle innings Thursday night that Dodger fans find it hard to conceive of the idea that the other team’s manager could make a boneheaded pitching change. Then Brian Snitker almost proved me wrong. So anxious was he to get his left-hander, Will Smith, out of the game in the seventh with the bases loaded (and a 7-1 lead) that he didn’t wait for the pinch-hitter – yep, the other Will Smith, the Dodgers’ right-handed hitting catcher – to be introduced.

It could have burned him. Right-hander Chris Martin gave up a scoring fly ball to left-handed hitting Edwin Rios, re-loaded the bases by walking Matt Beaty and then faced the Dodgers’ still available Smith, who hit a bullet up the middle that Ozzie Albies snagged to end the inning.

There would be no late innings offensive explosion for the Dodgers this night. The momentum they built in the late stages of Game 2 and that turned into an explosive first inning in Game 3 fizzled in Game 4, and now they are staring at another long, unfulfilling winter. When you have set such expectations – among yourselves as well as your fan base and, honestly, most baseball observers – that the only acceptable ending is hoisting the Commissioner’s Trophy, it will hurt even more.

(Guaranteed, the rest of the National League West isn’t shedding tears. And at some point, the question becomes not so much “When will the Dodgers win the World Series” as it is, “When does the rest of the division catch up?”)

“It’s just about hitting your stride at the right time,” Dodgers pitcher Alex Wood said before Thursday night’s game. “… There’s things you can do to (essentially) set yourself up for success. But definitely there’s a lot of chance in the postseason for sure. I mean, we’ve seen it.

“And I think people forget – winning a World Series is really hard. Like, really, really hard. It’s not easy to do. And to just be in the conversation every season is a privilege.”

But when the conversation keeps drifting in the same direction, there comes a point where it seems more like torture than privilege, doesn’t it?

jalexander@scng.com

@Jim_Alexander on Twitter