They Had Every Advantage. Then They Gave It Away.

Braves 3, Dodgers 2
NLDS tied 1-1

There are losses, and then there are games where you sit there afterward wondering how a team with this much talent could look that bad.

Sunday night was the latter.

The Dodgers had Blake Snell going against what amounted to another Atlanta bullpen game. They were at Dodger Stadium. They had won Game 1. The Braves had already been forced to lean heavily on their pitching staff.

This was the game the Dodgers were supposed to win.

Instead, they played as if they were waiting for someone else to do it.

Atlanta won 3-2, and now the NLDS heads to Atlanta tied at one game apiece.

Snell Wasn't Snell

Blake Snell didn't get hammered.

In some ways, it was worse than that.

He simply couldn't command the baseball.

Snell threw 90 pitches in 3.2 innings, only 47 for strikes. He allowed three hits and one run, but walked five while striking out five. His first inning alone took 27 pitches.

That is not October baseball from your $182 million, two-time Cy Young Award winner.

Dave Roberts said afterward that Snell was fighting his delivery and didn't have command of his fastball or slider, while his changeup wasn't there either.

Translation: He wasn't locked in.

Snell survived. He battled. He limited the damage.

But there is a significant difference between surviving and dominating.

October aces dominate.

The Dodgers needed seven pitchers in a game in which Atlanta started a reliever. Somehow, the team with Blake Snell ended up using more pitchers than the team with the bullpen game.

That's almost impressive.

Just not in a good way.

The Offense Was Pathetic

This was the bigger problem.

The Dodgers went 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position and stranded seven runners.

They had opportunities.

They just kept stepping on them.

Miguel Rojas doubled to start the third inning.

Beautiful.

Then Tommy Edman popped up a bunt.

Not beautiful.

Mookie Betts walked, putting two runners aboard.

Shohei Ohtani came to the plate.

This is exactly why you pay Shohei Ohtani a gazillion dollars.

Result?

Pop-up.

Threat over.

The Dodgers managed two hits against Braves opener Ray Kerr and repeatedly let Atlanta off the hook.

And then came one of the ugliest statistics of the night:

Fourteen consecutive Dodgers were retired before Max Muncy homered with two outs in the ninth, as the LA Times proclaimed.

Fourteen.

Against a bullpen game.

At home.

In October.

That's not getting beaten by Sandy Koufax.

That's disappearing.

Freddie Did His Job

Freddie Freeman gave the Dodgers exactly what they needed in the fourth.

BOOM.

Home run.

1-1.

Freeman now has 13 postseason homers that either tied the game or put his team ahead, one shy of José Altuve's record.

For a moment, it looked like the Dodgers might be waking up.

They hit the snooze button.

Then Came the Keystone Cops

The fifth inning was the game.

Michael Harris II hit a ball into the left-field corner.

Teoscar Hernández took a questionable route; the ball got past him, and Harris wound up at third.

Then Kris Bubic uncorked a wild pitch.

Harris scored.

2-1 Braves.

Later, Harris drove in Atlanta's third run with a seventh-inning double.

The Dodgers didn't lose because Atlanta overwhelmed them.

They lost because Atlanta played cleaner baseball.

There is a difference.

Where Were Mookie and Shohei and will?

Eventually, the stars have to be stars.

October doesn't care what your WAR was in June.

It doesn't care how many home runs you hit during the regular season.

It doesn't care about endorsements, MVP trophies or Statcast exit velocity.

When the game is sitting there waiting to be taken, somebody has to take it.

Sunday night, Freddie Freeman tried.

Max Muncy tried late.

The rest of the lineup spent much of the evening watching Braves pitchers walk off the mound smiling.

Atlanta's Didier Fuentes pitched 3⅔ innings in relief before Muncy finally got him with two outs in the ninth.

Again: The Braves were supposedly the team with the pitching problem.

Funny how that worked out.

Muncy Made It Interesting

Max Muncy's ninth-inning homer cut it to 3-2.

For approximately five minutes, Dodger fans could locate their pulse again.

But Raisel Iglesias finished it.

Game over.

Opportunity squandered.

Here's What Bothers Me

Losing doesn't bother me nearly as much as how they lost.

Atlanta didn't play a flawless masterpiece.

The Dodgers didn't get steamrolled.

This was a winnable baseball game sitting on a silver platter.

Los Angeles had:

• Home field.

• Momentum.

• Snell.

• A tired Atlanta pitching staff.

• Multiple scoring opportunities.

• And a chance to go to Atlanta with a 2-0 series lead.

They turned all of that into a 1-1 series.

That's the part that should sting.

Planet Reality

Now comes Game 3, and Chris Sale is waiting in Atlanta.

Suddenly, what looked like a chance to put Atlanta in a chokehold has become a best-of-three series with the Braves holding home-field advantage for the next two games.

Does that mean the Dodgers are finished?

Of course not.

This team can absolutely win two more games.

But enough of the sleepwalking.

Enough waiting for the three-run homer.

Enough sloppy defense.

Enough unproductive at-bats.

And it's enough to assume talent will eventually win the game for you.

It won't.

October baseball is usually decided by the team that executes the little things when the pressure gets enormous.

Sunday night, that team was Atlanta.

The Dodgers?

They looked pathetic.

It's one game.

But it's also October.

And you don't get many mulligans in October. Shohei looks pathetic, and at some point, Ohtani needs to sit if he can't deliver, and Josue DePaula needs to get in the lineup. There, I said it!

Time to wake up. Hopefully, Jeff will publish his synopsis of the OKC Comets tomorrow, so at least we can talk about something good...

(Apologies to Bluto for the format.)