The Dodgers finished with a 7.38 ERA in the five NLCS games. At least once, the Phillies bettered - or battered - every significant Dodgers pitcher they saw.
"Pitching is the name of the game," Dodgers manager Joe Torre said. "Coming in here, maybe we were trying to be too perfect. Trying to be too good."
Can they, against this lineup, ever be good enough? Can anyone?
"It's stoppable," Torre insisted. "If you pitch up to your capabilities."
That didn't happen. And the Phillies made them pay.
"You watch how they went about their at-bats this series," marveled Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti, whose club led the league in batting average, but scored 15 total runs in the series. "They don't give much away. We've still got to get to that level. You've got to make every at-bat something special."
Last night, in the 10-4, Game 5 loss, starter Vicente Padilla, the hottest pitcher on the staff, lasted only three innings. He threw 55 pitches. He surrendered six runs on four hits, two of them homers.
It was nothing like Friday afternoon, in LA, in Game 2.
Padilla handcuffed the Phillies then, the only game the Dodgers won, extending his streak of late-season dominance.
Torre pointed to that game as how to stop the Phillies' offense.
Recently, though, nobody was hitting Padilla.
Entering last night, Padilla, who was cut by the Rangers in August and unwanted by almost every major league team, had yet to lose as a Dodger. He was good down their stretch, better in his season finale, which began a three-game run in which he was 2-0 with a 0.93 ERA in his last three starts - his last one of the regular season and two playoff outings - with 20 strikeouts and two walks in 19 1/3 innings.
He capped that run by allowing one run in 7 1/3 innings in Game 2.
The Phillies watched. The Phillies learned.
