Another 100-win season, another humiliation: why the Dodgers fail in the playoffs

LA have been the most consistently successful regular season team in the National League for years. But they stumbled in the postseason once again

The Los Angeles Dodgers achieved a special kind of baseball ignominy on Wednesday night, in the third game of their National League Division Series against the Arizona Diamondbacks. In the third inning, Dodgers pitcher Lance Lynn became a successful launching pad for four Arizona home runs. It was the first time a team had homered that many times in a single playoff inning, made more preposterous by another would-be home run flying just outside the foul pole. The next pitch became a real home run, and Arizona’s four runs in the inning stood up in a 4-2 final score and three-game sweep for the D-backs. The Dodgers, winners of 100 regular-season games, won none in the postseason.

For Los Angeles, the manner of the defeat was brutal, but the end outcome was typical. The Dodgers are the most consistent franchise in the National League and one of the game’s financial juggernauts. They’ve cleared that 100-win plateau five times in seven years and were paced to do so again in 2020’s pandemic-shortened season. They managed a World Series win in that Covid-addled year, giving their fans some salvation. Otherwise, postseason torture has come to define this era of Dodger baseball.