Max Muncy's NSFW response to experts writing off Dodgers sparked Padres comeback

If the Mets had any hope at all of trying to even up the NLCS at two games to stay on par with the Dodgers, they were dead by the top of the six in Thursday night's Game 4, when Mookie Betts hit a two-run homer (to follow his two-run double in the fourth) to make the score 7-2.

Although it looked like the Mets had some fight in them at first (Shohei Ohtani opened the game with a leadoff homer, and then Mark Vientos answered in the bottom of the inning), it all just withered away and died after another bases-loaded, one out situation in the third.

The Dodgers have now outscored the Mets by 20 runs in this series and are just one win away from advancing to the World Series. This isn't even a fair fight at this point; the Dodgers are simply warming up their bats for the big show just a little more than a week away.

Clearly, something's gotten into them. LA clawed their way out of the LDS against the Padres (who were objectively just a better baseball team than the Mets), spoiling a lot of predictions from national media outlets about how that series was going to shake out.

Last week, after Game 5 of the LDS, Max Muncy told Alden Gonzalez of ESPN (one of the outlets that overwhelmingly predicted the Dodgers would lose), "What was it, 80 percent of the f—ing experts said we were going to lose? F— those guys. We know who we are. We're the f—ing best team in baseball, and we're out there to prove it."

Ahead of Game 3, Muncy went onto Foul Territory to double down, saying, "In the postseason, you're wanting to watch all the other games. Every time you're watching the game, anytime a commercial comes on, the bottom line ticker...'here's what we're seeing,' it was always talking about how we were going to lose. It was starting to get frustrated, it was starting to really piss us off that that's all we were seeing on the TV."

Max Muncy claps back at baseball experts who incorrectly predicted Dodgers' downfall to Padres in the NLDS

With this and Kiké Hernández's "We don't give a f—" comment on live TV, the Dodgers were clearly rankled by everyone who doubted them and have started using it as fuel instead (which was exactly what we wanted to see happen!). Going into the LDS, the facts were the facts: the Padres did just look better than the Dodgers, and the onus was on LA to let it fire them up and say 'prove it.'

Muncy is clearly feeling himself too, because he had a nice on-base streak lasting 12 plate appearances that made up an uncanny pattern — homer, three walks, single, two walks, and then back again — before it ended with a strikeout against the Mets on Thursday.

After two brutal losses to the Padres in the LDS, we were begging to the Dodgers to play like they meant it, and they are. Their bullying of the Mets is exactly what they need to go to the World Series hot, and to throw those experts' predictions back in their faces even more.