Ahead for the Dodgers: playing the Mets for the NL pennant.

They had a starting rotation most of which belonged in post-op. But the Dodgers are going to the National League Championship Series.

They had Shohei Ohtani, maybe the National League’s 2024 Most Valuable Player winner in waiting (though Francisco Lindor has a powerful claim), hitting a hefty home run in the first division series game but nothing much after. And they’re going to the NLCS.

They had Freddie Freeman, trying to play despite not giving a rolled ankle sufficient healing time, as close to plain ineffective as he’s ever been at any time in a brilliant career so far. And they’re still going to the NLCS.

Their starting picture so belonged in an orthopedic journal that they went to a Game Four bullpen game. And they’re still going to the NLCS.

They surrendered three homers to Padres superman Fernando Tatis, Jr. (two in Game Two, one in Game Three). And they’re still going to the NLCS.

They lost the sason series to the Pads and didn’t look quite as good on paper coming into the now-done division series. They’re still going to the NLCS.

They scored only two runs Friday night. But those were more than enough to send them to the NLCS.

The Dodgers did it with resilience. They did it with that eight-man bullpen game in the hostile arterials of Petco Park and the pen going lights out otherwise, to where the Dodgers were somehow able to shut the Padres out over the final 24 innings of the set.

They coaxed a magnificent Game Five start out of Yoshi Yamamoto, who turned a five-inning shutout over to that pen, where a mere four relievers were needed to finish what he started. On the first MLB postseason night featuring two Japanese-born starting pitchers, Yu Darvish was brilliant for the Padres over seven, except for two blemishes, and Yamamoto was better over five for the Dodgers.

But the Dodgers had to turn Dodger Stadium into Hernández Hideaway to get there, too, Friday night.

First, Kiké Hernández—back with the Dodgers for a second homecoming year after a detour to Boston, where he’d had a pocketful of postseason heroics for the Red Sox—punished Padres starter Yu Darvish with two outs in the bottom of the second, sending Darvish’s first service halfway up the left field bleachers.

Five innings later, Teoscar Hernández—a first-year Dodger after a tour taking him to Houston, Toronto, and Seattle, whose hefty grand slam pulled the Dodgers to within a run of the Padres in Game Three but only that—didn’t need full pillows. With one out, he hit Darvish’s 2-1 service to the same real estate his fellow Hernández reached.

Padres third baseman and slugger Manny Machado had perhaps the best post mortem from anyone in their silks: “We didn’t hit and score some runs. They did a tremendous job on the other side, on the pitching side. You have to give credit where it’s due. We just couldn’t string along hits. We had some opportunities, we couldn’t [push] through, and we fell short.”

That from a representative of the regular-season offense that threshed, of the team whose starting rotation could and often did dominate, and whose bullpen was one of baseball’s deepest of the year. The Dodgers said, essentially, in Kiké Hernández’s shameless postgame phrase, “[Fornicate] ’em all.”

“What was it,” said third baseman Max Muncy, “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.”

That won’t be as easy as they think. Awaiting the Dodgers are the Mets, who picked themselves up from the May scrap heap, rumbled their way to the postseason and through the first two rounds, have a lot more starting pitching depth (and lack of injury), a lineup with more depth than suspected going in, and (big “and”) they’re known lately for leaving bullpens wasted.

Both teams have their issues. The Mets need Pete Alonso to stay in the zone he’s rediscovered this postseason and closer Edwin Díaz to return all the way to form as he hinted in his last outing against the Phillies.

The Dodgers need length from at least two or three starters if they don’t want to tax that bullpen into letting the Mets do what they’ve done best this time around—make the final three innings their personal marquee stage. They also need Mookie Betts to continue becoming the Mookie Monster again after his slumpbusting bombs against the Padres.

This forthcoming NLCS does promise to see two teams throwing the proverbial kitchen sinks at each other as best they can with what they have. Whoever wins it stands to become a heavy World Series favourite.