Dodgers: Mookie Betts and Corey Seager spark offensive wakeup call in Game 5

The Los Angeles Dodgers have won Game 5, and we will see you tomorrow night.

The Dodgers’ ills were entirely difficult to diagnose through the first four games of this NLCS, all of which looked very familiar to the faithful.

Was the main issue a lethargic offense, too reliant on the home run ball rather than putting the ball in play? Probably not; after all, the Braves have punished the baseball in this series, as have the Astros on the other side. But maybe? It was hard not to view the offense through a prism of something not fitting quite right … yet again.

Perhaps it was all on Dave Roberts, then. Surely, if a front office can assemble the perfect pieces, and those pieces can look perfect throughout the entire regular season annually, then the issue with October chemistry is the man whose instincts led to him flop-sweating all over the wrong button and accidentally pressing it all series long.

Or maybe it was Kershaw? Yeah, let’s blame Kershaw.

As wonky as it sounds, the MLB playoffs are all about a combination of luck coming from unexpected corners, as well as brand-name players realizing there’s still time on the clock for them to play to the back of their baseball cards. And that’s what Mookie Betts and Corey Seager (and, yes, Will Smith) came to do on Friday night, pushing this turning-point series in recent Dodgers history to Game 6, a feat that seemed impossible in the third inning.

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Betts, carrying a 2-for-16 through the middle portion of this game in the NLCS, flipped this game on a dime with a shoestring catch that caught Marcell Ozuna mystified off third base. His rocketed single down the left-field line set up the Will Smith Showdown. He was all over the base paths and the spacious right field territory. He reminded you why he’s here.

And Seager, with his pair of home runs, now has the most RBI of any Dodger in any postseason series … ever. That’s a lengthy history.

It’s easy to ignore the pieces of the narrative we don’t want to focus on — after all, how could Seager have been so spectacular if the offense was so broken? But his Game 5 effort, with his proverbial back against the wall like Cristian Pache failing to rob his first home run of the evening, showed us the man feels no pressure.

He might’ve been there all along, but now his teammates have joined him. The constant grows all the more impressive when the rest rise around it.

The Dodgers are alive. They’re ignited. They’ve got Kenley Jansen buying in now, too; he finished this one off with a three-strikeout scoreless frame.

And thanks to a lineup full of superstars, we saw the spectacular burst of Game 3 spread out over the course of about six full innings. The offense arrived with consistency instead of brevity. Betts and Seager stamped their names all over this one.

And they’ll be back tomorrow.

Dodgers: Frank Thomas made bizarre comment about Freddie Freeman hit by pitch

The Los Angeles Dodgers nearly staged a comeback against the Atlanta Braves in Game 2 of the NLCS and Frank Thomas believed it happened for an odd reason.