NEW YORK — The New York Mets know how well they have responded when playing from behind this season.
The Los Angeles Dodgers can’t forget what happened the last time the Mets found themselves in a hole.
The Mets will look to even the National League Championship Series while the Dodgers will aim to take a commanding lead Thursday night when the teams play Game 4 of the best-of-seven set.
Left-hander Jose Quintana (0-0, 0.00 ERA in the playoffs) is slated to start for the Mets against right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto (1-0, 5.63 ERA).
Enrique Hernandez, Shohei Ohtani and Max Muncy homered to provide insurance on Wednesday as Los Angeles rolled to an 8-0 win to take a 2-1 series lead.
Hernandez’s sixth-inning homer was the first extra-base hit of the game, as both offenses struggled to generate momentum on a 51-degree evening. The Dodgers were 2-for-9 with runners on base prior to Hernandez’s round-tripper while the Mets finished 1-for-10 with runners on base.
Ohtani hit a 397-foot three-run homer in the eighth and Muncy went deep leading off the ninth for the Dodgers, who posted their second shutout of the NLCS. Los Angeles rolled to a 9-0 victory in Game 1.
The two wins this series are among the three most lopsided shutout victories in postseason franchise history for the Dodgers — as well as the most lopsided shutout defeats in postseason franchise history for the Mets.
“I think when you’re in these playoff things, everything gets really blurry and really fast,” said Dodgers pitcher Walker Buehler, who started Game 3 and allowed three hits over four innings. “And sometimes I think they feel bigger than they are. Like if we come out and play like (garbage) tomorrow, we won’t care about how we played today.
“I think we kind of saw that in L.A.: We get the big Game 1 win and the second game doesn’t go our way.”
The Mets displayed their trademark resilience in Game 2 on Monday, when Francisco Lindor hit a leadoff homer and Mark Vientos delivered a second-inning grand slam in a 7-3 win.
The Mets slipped 11 games under .500 in early June, didn’t clinch a playoff berth until they split a doubleheader with the Atlanta Braves on Sept. 30 and trailed the Milwaukee Brewers by two runs with one out in the ninth inning of Game 3 of an NL wild-card series before Pete Alonso hit a go-ahead three-run homer in the ninth inning to spark a 4-2 win.
“This is nothing new,” said New York pitcher Luis Severino, who took the loss on Wednesday after allowing two unearned runs over 4 2/3 innings. “We need to come back (Thursday) and try to win that game. If we win two out of three here, that would be huge for us.”
Quintana last pitched on Oct. 9, when he didn’t factor into the decision after allowing an unearned run over five-plus innings as the Mets advanced to the NLCS by beating the Philadelphia Phillies 4-1 in Game 4 of the NL Division Series. He is 0-1 with a 2.43 ERA in seven career postseason games (six starts).
Yamamoto earned the win on Friday when he gave up two hits over five scoreless innings as the Dodgers moved on to the NLCS by defeating the Padres 2-0 in Game 5 of the NLDS. It was the rookie’s second career postseason start, after he yielded five runs in three innings during Game 1 against San Diego.
Quintana is 3-2 with a 2.04 ERA in 13 career regular-season games (10 starts) against the Dodgers. He went 0-1 with a 10.29 ERA in two postseason starts for the Chicago Cubs against Los Angeles in 2017.
Quintana lost his lone start against the Dodgers this season on May 28, when he gave up three runs over six innings as the Mets fell 3-0 in the second game of a doubleheader.
Yamamoto didn’t factor into the decision in his lone start against New York. He allowed four runs (three earned) over six innings as Los Angeles fell 9-4 on April 19.
–Jerry Beach, Field Level Media
