When your favorite team goes a collective 1-for-21 with runners in scoring position through four games of a five-game series, more specifically, through the 2022 National League Division Series, it’s easy to understand why the National League West Division champion Los Angeles Dodgers are watching the 2022 National League Championship Series on television rater than playing in it.

But while baseball is, on every level, a team sport (i.e., you win as a team or you lose as a team), there is almost always one single play – or misplay – by one single player that proves to be the defining moment of any one game … or series.

Although no one likes to point the finger at or blame any one guy or any one play, the defining moment of the 2022 NLDS between the Dodgers and San Diego Padres was the incredibly costly and series-changing error by Dodgers shortstop Trea Turner in the top of the sixth inning of Game-2 at Dodger Stadium that turned a (then) very winnable 3-3 tie into an eventual 5-3 Dodgers loss.

On what should have been an inning-ending routine 6-4-3 double play, Turner muffed the ground ball off the bat of Padres first baseman Wil Myer, allowing Padres second baseman Jake Cronenworth to safely reach second base. Cronenworth would come around to score what would prove to be the go-ahead and eventual winning run on a sharp single to right by Padres left fielder Jurickson Profar.

It would certainly be unfair not to mention that the speedy 29-year-old Boynton Beach, FL native and first-round draft pick in 2014 out of North Carolina State University in Raleigh by the (wait for it…) San Diego Padres posted an exceptional slash-line of .298/.343/.466/.809 with 39 doubles, four triples, 21 home runs, and 100 RBI during the 2022 regular season for the Dodgers. But as we all painfully know too well, all of that goes out the window once postseason play begins.

“Defensively, it just wasn’t a clean game,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, after his team’s series-changing Game-2 loss. “I thought [Turner] might have been a little too quick. You know, if you’re not going to double the guy up, so just to get the lead runner was really important.

“I just think that the exchange wasn’t good. So, I didn’t look at it again, you know. That’s a play that Trea knows that you just need to get that lead runner.”

Turner didn’t get the lead runner.

…or the second runner.

Pick your favorite cliché: “It is what it is,” “That’s baseball,” “You can’t win them all,” “There’s no point crying over spilt milk,” whatever. But the bottom line is that Padres are still playing in the postseason while the Dodgers are watching it on TV.

…at least for a few more hours.

Play Ball!

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