MLB's day of reckoning: 4 things we learned heading into Saturday's crucial quartet of games

The best-laid plans? Blown up.

Historic World Series matchups pitting coastal blue bloods? On life support.

The defending champions who came back to win 101 games in a fervent effort to run it back? One loss from elimination.

On a raucous Friday where postseason baseball returned to two venues largely shuttered for a decade or two in October, Major League Baseball’s Division Series took several unpredictable turns – and set up a gut-wrenching quadruple-header Saturday.

Four things we learned as we head into a four-pack of games in which three teams could get eliminated:

Dodgers-Padres: 111 and done?

It’s happening again.

The regular season dream machine is once again turning into an October aggravation. And after the Dodgers’ maddening 2-1 loss to the Padres in a raucous Petco Park on Friday, the greatest team in franchise history is on the brink of another early exit.

This is the Dodgers’ 10th consecutive year in the postseason and one more loss vs. the Padres will ensure that they’ll have just one title to show for it. Hey, it happens. The ring isn’t necessarily everything, in that playoff baseball is so erratic even in its exhilaration, teams would go crazy if they fixated so hard on every championship failure.

Yet after two consecutive losses to a club it beat 14 times in 19 tries in the regular season, it’s fair to wonder how much the Dodgers do this to themselves.

Friday’s starter, Tony Gonsolin, hadn’t pitched more than two innings since Aug. 23 due to a right forearm strain. Meanwhile, healthy 15-game winner Tyler Anderson was ready to roll, but manager Dave Roberts opted for Gonsolin, reasoning that a likely shorter start would be easier to absorb following a day off.

Yet Gonsolin put them in an immediate hole.

He was lucky to escape the first inning giving up just one run, then gave up a pair of loud hits in the second, hooked after just four outs. Reliever Andrew Heaney was quickly summoned, cleaned up the mess and ultimately allowed just a solo homer to Trent Grisham.

Yet the Dodgers were playing uphill from the get-go, only exacerbating the task of scoring against a Padres bullpen that’s now recorded 39 outs in these three games without surrendering a run. This time, trying to touch the 100-ish mph filth from Robert Suarez and friends was complicated by the 45,000 San Diegans, give or take, in full throat, all night.

Opinion: Padres in position to shock Dodgers after taking 2-1 lead in NLDS

Now, Anderson will pitch – but only to save the season and force a Game 5 back in L.A.

“There's a lot of guys in that clubhouse that have played in do-or-die games. So it's not a situation where I expect us to panic,” says manager Dave Roberts. “As far as the mindset or the mentality, we have a lot of guys that have been there. We've got to play good baseball.”

Braves-Phillies: An ace rises in Philly

Playoff clincher. Wild-card clincher. Division Series buzz saw.

Forget the bacchanal on the bases that transpired Friday at Citizens Bank Park, where the Phillies strafed Braves rookie Spencer Strider and Rhys Hoskins released days of frustration from his Game 2 misplay with a vicious bat spike following a three-run homer in Game 3.

Increasingly, the man the Phillies follow is a softer-spoken right-hander who excelled on some mediocre Phillies teams. Now, Aaron Nola has the squad to match his stuff.

Nola added to his burgeoning rep as a big-game pitcher by tossing six innings and giving up no earned runs against the defending champion Braves. While the game shifted in the Phillies’ six-run third inning, their conviction increasingly comes from their co-ace.

“I've seen this guy go about his work on the day that he pitches and on the days that he doesn't pitch for five, six straight years and nobody's as consistent as Aaron Nola,” says Hoskins. “And I think you've seen this month, in October, with the clincher in Houston and in St. Louis and now tonight, there's no moment too big for him.

“But I don’t think anybody in that clubhouse is surprised.”

The Phillies played a home playoff game for the first time in 11 years, and it was also their first home game since Sept. 26, after ending the year with a 10-game road trip, a wild card trip to St. Louis and two NLDS games in Atlanta.

It’s been an uneven and occasionally sketchy ride, but Nola has been the constant.

He nearly tossed a perfect game against the Houston Astros in the playoff-clinching game in his final start. He shut out the St. Louis Cardinals for seven innings of the wild card round.

And then Friday, when he ensured the Braves’ momentum after squaring the series was blunted.

Nola’s numbers in the three biggest starts of his life: 19⅓ innings pitched, no earned runs, eight hits, 21 strikeouts and three walks.

That’ll play.

“I don't think you can say enough about it, really,” says manager Rob Thomson. “His stuff, his makeup, his toughness, his resiliency, just he's done it all. He's just pitched extremely well for us.”

An encore? That would come in Game 2 of the NLCS. One more win – perhaps Saturday – ensures that start will happen.

Yanks-Guardians: The shrinking 2 seed

This could all be over so quickly for the Yankees, who need to win two games in three days against the more-than-pesky Guardians. But let’s put aside this ALDS momentarily and consider the bigger picture, in which we can still see the Yankees as they were at the trade deadline – 70-34, the best team in the AL, the road to the World Series running through the Bronx.

Those Yankees are gone forever.

Oh, the Yankees can still reach their first Fall Classic since 2009 – six victories would do it. But as they muddled through 10 innings and produced just one extra-base hit – just one run-scoring hit – in their 4-2 Game 2 loss, the club’s many imperfections came to the surface.

And any run to the World Series will be a slog.

'It's the Bronx, man': Aaron Judge hears some boos amid struggles in Yankees' Game 2 loss

Game 4 in this Division Series will exist, and unsurprisingly, manager Aaron Boone said Gerrit Cole would start it. The Yankees have no choice but take this one step at a time and are fortunate their Game 1 starter and ace will be ready to pitch in either a clincher or to stave off elimination.

We have the luxury to look a little further ahead, and buddy, the road will probably get even tougher. Cole’s Game 4 start means that, barring an outing on short rest, he wouldn’t start until Game 3 of the AL Championship Series. And thanks to this year’s compressed, lockout-driven postseason schedule, there’s no off day between Games 6 and 7. That means Cole would get just one start in the ALCS, unless they bring him back on short rest for either Game 2 or Game 7.

So, in addition to trying to beat Triston McKenzie in Saturday's Game 3 in Cleveland, they might want to spend some of the pregame rooting for the Mariners in their do-or-die Game 3 against Houston. An Astros sweep, and they’d line up Justin Verlander and Framber Valdez in Games 1-2 of the ALCS, vs. whatever the Yankees have left after rain and the Guardians extended their ALDS.

“We never expected any of this this time of year to be easy,” Boone said after their Game 2 loss, “and nothing's been easy for us this year, especially in the second half of the season.”

Mariners-Astros: One and done?

Speaking of Houston, the Astros have almost everything going in their favor heading into a potential closeout Game 3. Seattle? It has waited 21 years for a playoff berth and, following in the footsteps of Philly and San Diego, hopes that means something when 45,000 Mariner fans stuff T-Mobile Park on Saturday afternoon.

“The factor that I don't think is getting talked about enough,” says Mariners manager Scott Servais, “I think it's going to show up tomorrow in the first inning, is when there's 45,000 Mariner fans in the stands pumped and ready to go and all behind us. Because we certainly need it.

"I've talked about it, when we clinched or ended the drought, how valuable our fans base has been to this team. This team really, somehow we get wired, we get going when it gets loud here. And I really ask everybody to bring it. Not just our team, but all 45,000 people that are going to show up here tomorrow.

“Because we need it.”

Servais certainly isn’t too proud to beg, not after the 1-2 gut punch Yordan Alvarez administered in crushing a pair of go-ahead home runs in the first two games. Not since 2001 has the club hosted a postseason game, when Ichiro Suzuki was a rookie and Seattle won 116 games.

Houston will have something to say about this, of course. But Seattle didn’t wait this long just for one game. Right?

“I cannot wait to step on the field with them in the first postseason game in a long time here,” beloved rookie Julio Rodriguez said of the thirsty fan base. “I'm definitely excited for that and I know they're going to enjoy it.

“I know they're going to enjoy it.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: MLB playoffs: What we learned from Friday League Division Series games