It’s down to five regular-season games remaining for both the Dodgers and Giants. The sobering truth – whether we choose to accept it or not – is that the Dodgers must, absolutely must win out the season and hope that the Giants lose two of their remaining game just to tie them for the NL West Division lead, thereby forcing a one-game playoff to determine the division winner.

Likely? Probably not.

Possible? Absolutely.

…especially if your name happens to be Walker Buehler, who did everything he could possibly do towards that end on Tuesday night.

“It’s huge,” Buehler said of the importance of his team’s 2-1 win over the NL West third-place San Diego Padres on Tuesday in front of a sold-out Dodger Stadium crowd of 52,128. “Obviously this thing’s not over till it’s over, but we go on working and win as many games as we can and see what happens. But we’re in the playoffs and that’s a big deal for us, and trying to get ourselves ready, and play good baseball here at the end of the year.”

All the 27-year-old Lexington, KY native and Dodgers first-round draft pick in 2015 out of Vanderbilt did was toss 7.0 innings of no-run/three-hit ball, during which he struck out five and walked only two.

“It was great,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts postgame. “To win a ballgame is always good, but to have Walker throw the baseball like he did tonight makes it that much more exciting going forward. He was in command all night; in control, just all quadrants, his entire pitch mix. Just everything he had tonight just had teeth. You could see it with the swing-and-miss, the soft contact.

“Really, to get through seven innings and to just use two guys out of the ‘pen, really solid,” Roberts added. “Scored just enough to win. But overall, really, defense played really well. It was good to see.”

That “…just enough to win” thing was paramount, as the Giants beat the NL West (very) last-place Arizona Diamondbacks by a score of 6-4 up the coast at Oracle Park to maintain their 2.0-game lead over the Dodgers – again, with five left to play.

“We gotta take care of our own business, we did that today,” said Dodgers second baseman Trea Turner, who continues to swing a smoking-hot bat, going 3-for-5 on the night with an RBI double in the bottom of the first inning to get the Dodgers on the board. “Close game, but all that matters is we won, so it was good to get the week started with a win.”

Barring a complete meltdown by the Giants, the Dodgers will face the (extremely) red-hot St. Louis Cardinals in the NL Wild Card game on October 6 at Dodger Stadium. The good news is that although the Cards have won 17 games in a row (that’s not a typo), the Dodgers split their six games with them this season, including a 14-3 rout of them on June 2 at Dodger Stadium, which is where the Wild Card Game would take place … so there’s that.

Play Ball!

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