Heading into today’s game, we knew that the Dodgers just had to survive against Strasburg. Hopefully they would repeat their basic plan of attack from yesterday. Run Strasburg’s pitch count up, expose the bullpen, and let Kershaw keep the game close.

They couldn’t even do that.

If you were following twitter throughout the game like I was, the mood was…tense. If this was 2014, maybe I would have told myself that it was just one bad showing from the offense. But I can’t. This particular loss felt too familiar.

Have you ever wondered why they haven’t won the entire thing after 6 straight postseason appearances?

I used to think it was because we were unlucky. Maybe we just needed Nick Punto to play out of his mind for a month or maybe Clayton Kershaw was BABIP’d to death. Then, I thought it was because the roster construction was somehow flawed. Maybe we needed a better bullpen, younger players, or the lefty mashers.

But what’s the excuse now?

It’s not the bullpen.

It’s not Hanley’s broken ribs either.

This 106 win team is elite in every conceivable manner, built and prepared for postseason success. You could chalk it up to running into Strasburg and Scherzer, but it isn’t like Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole aren’t up next.

There are no more excuses for this team. Here is the exact reason why they haven’t won:

The guys that needed to be counted on the most were directly responsible for a whole half loss over the course of this run. WPA is the perfect stat to look at in this case because it tells the truth plain and simple: these three have not executed in the big moments. (Reminder: a WPA of 0 means that they had no effect on the game)

Friedman can tighten every screw and address any weakness. Yesterday (and even Muncy’s homer today) show how well he’s done that. We know that the Dodgers depth is insane and can carry them far. It just can’t completely carry them to victory. You need your literal Cy Young/ MVP-caliber players to step up.

In years past it’s been easy to just throw my hands up and say ‘luck!‘. But now I know: it’s about results. These bums need to step it up.