Lack of timely hitting has Dodgers facing early playoff exit vs. Padres

SAN DIEGO — Time after time, the Los Angeles Dodgers have put themselves in premium run-scoring opportunities and failed to capitalize.

An 0-for-8 showing with runners in scoring position in Wednesday's Game 2 of the National League Division Series was followed by an 0-for-9 showing in Friday's Game 3. Their hitless streak in those situations has extended to 19 at-bats, tied for their longest rut of the season and marked their longest in a single playoff since 1981. Now their dominant season — of 111 wins and a plus-334 run-differential, tied for the fourth-largest in history — is on the verge of ending at the hands of the same San Diego Padres team they steamrolled over the previous six months. The postseason can often feel this sudden.

«They're pitching good right now, and we're not hitting,» Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said after Los Angeles' 2-1 loss at Petco Park, which gave the Padres a 2-1 advantage in the best-of-five division series. «We got to hit tomorrow.»

San Diego native and lifelong Padres fan Joe Musgrove will take the ball in Saturday's Game 4 in front of what promises to be a frenzied home crowd and with an opportunity to extinguish a Dodgers team that cruised to a division title. The Dodgers, who will start left-hander Tyler Anderson, must get past Musgrove and figure out a way to muster offense against a Padres bullpen that has limited their prestigious offense to nine baserunners and zero runs in 13 innings this series.

The Padres scored on a two-out single from Jake Cronenworth in the first and a first-pitch, fourth-inning home run from Trent Grisham in the fourth — his third this postseason, after hitting only two over his last 40 regular-season games. They, too, struggled offensively,