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The faces in the crowd told the story. In the eighth inning Thursday night, many of the 43,882 fans at Citi Field found the exits. Those who remained were mostly staring straight ahead, stone-faced, seemingly in shock and disbelief, save for a moment when they offered a round of sarcastic cheers after their pitchers finally managed to retire Max Muncy. 

The New York Mets, who had demonstrated so much resiliency and fortitude to get to the National League Championship Series, endured another thorough beatdown at the hands of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who followed up an 8-0 shellacking in Queens in Game 3 with a 10-2 thrashing at the same venue in Game 4. 

Here are three takeaways as the Dodgers put the Mets on the brink and moved one win away from returning to the World Series for the first time since winning it all in 2020. 

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1. Has the Mets’ magic run out? 

The Mets’ unyielding nature is what got them here. They were 11 games under .500 on June 2. From that point on, no one in baseball was better. A McDonald’s mascot became a lasting image of an ascending squad and a changing vibe. As the team started winning, “OMG” became their anthem. They were not only good, they were fun.

Francisco Lindor ensured that aura would last into October with his game-winning homer that sent them to the playoffs on the final day of the regular season. When Pete Alonso followed in the wild-card series with the team down two runs, two outs away from elimination with a game-winning homer against one of the best closers in baseball, this seemed to be a team of destiny. 

Until they ran into the Dodgers, who have outscored them by 21 runs through four games. 

The Mets hit .265 with an .808 OPS with runners in scoring position during the regular season. In the NLCS, they’re hitting .138 with a .541 OPS and seven RBIs in those situations. The Dodgers, meanwhile, are batting .333 with a .942 OPS and 24 RBIs with runners in scoring position. 

In Game 4, the Mets had 10 at-bats with runners in scoring position and failed to record a hit in all of them. Their most flagrant offense came in the sixth inning, after Mookie Betts sent one of his four hits on the night out for a homer to increase the Dodgers’ lead to five. The Mets answered back in the bottom half of the frame by loading the bases with no outs. 

And then? 

Jose Iglesias struck out. Jeff McNeil sent a fly ball to center field that might have been deep enough to score Brandon Nimmo if not for the plantar fasciitis that has hobbled the Mets outfielder throughout the series. He did not even try to score. When Jesse Winker’s promising drive to right field died short of the warning track, it was all but over. 

At the start of September, the Mets’ odds to make the playoffs were just 29.6%. If they’re looking for some motivation, that percentage is not far off from the odds of winning an LCS with three elimination games to go. Teams that have gone up 3-1 have won 82% of the time. 

If the Mets can somehow find a way to dig out of the hole they’ve created here, it’ll be their greatest trick yet in a season that seemed magical until this point. 

2. The Mets’ biggest advantage has not played out. 

The tone for the series was set quickly when Jack Flaherty spun seven scoreless innings in the best start of his Dodgers tenure while Kodai Senga allowed as many runs (four) as outs recorded in Game 1. But considering Senga’s lack of innings this year, that was the one matchup that seemed to be in the Dodgers’ favor. The Mets were supposed to be the group with the starting pitching depth. 

Sean Manaea demonstrated as much in Game 2, carving through the opposing lineup as the Mets foiled the Dodgers’ bullpen game plans, ending Los Angeles pitchers’ streak of 33 consecutive scoreless innings and flipping all the momentum with the series going to New York. 

They had to feel good with Luis Severino and Jose Quintana going against Walker Buehler and Yoshinobu Yamamoto the next two nights. 

Then the Dodgers annihilated them in both matchups, walking four times against Severino in Game 3 and four more times against Quintana in Game 4 as a disciplined L.A. lineup forced both Mets starters out early. It was a tough assignment for Quintana, who lives for chase, against a team unwilling to leave the strike zone. 

Buehler and Yamamoto, meanwhile, combined to strike out 14 batters and allow two runs in 8.1 innings. 

RELATED: Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts make Dodgers look unbeatable: ‘You’re facing Hall of Famers’

The Mets hadn’t faced Yamamoto since April 19, when he allowed four runs (three earned) in six innings. He didn’t throw any sliders in that meeting. In Game 4, he switched it up, throwing 14 of them, which represented a season high. The Mets whiffed on half of their 10 swings against the pitch, which was responsible for four of Yamamoto’s eight strikeouts. 

It was that same pitch that Yamamoto used to flummox Yankees hitters the last time he was in New York, when he tossed seven scoreless innings on June 7 in a game many referenced before the playoffs as an example of his ability to thrive with the lights at their brightest. There was some thought that the increased usage of his slider, however, might have also contributed to the shoulder issue that sidelined him for three months not long after that start against the Yankees. But there’s no denying the effectiveness of the pitch and how it plays with the rest of his arsenal, and he clearly felt OK about it Thursday night. 

After Buehler got 18 swings and misses in Game 3 — his highest total of the season — Yamamoto followed with 16, his third-highest total of the year, in just 4.1 innings of work. That’s all the Dodgers needed before turning the game over to their pen, where they hold the clear advantage. 

Mets manager Carlos Mendoza elected to save David Peterson despite Quintana’s struggles Thursday. Now, with their season on the line, that’s who they’ll turn to in a do-or-die Game 5, perhaps with less of a leash than Mendoza was willing to grant Quintana as his night unraveled Thursday. 

3. The Dodgers’ MVPs thrived. But there’s much more to this unrelenting lineup. 

With one former MVP out of the lineup, two more took starring roles. With the Dodgers giving Freddie Freeman a night off to rest his injured ankle, the rest of the Dodgers’ lineup picked up the slack.

“There was no excuse,” manager Dave Roberts said. “We were expecting to win this game tonight.”

It started from the top. Shohei Ohtani and Betts each reached base four times, with both going deep and the latter finishing a triple short of the cycle. 

Ohtani entered the night 17-for-20 dating back to the end of the regular season with runners in scoring position, a record in the live-ball era. Strangely, it was a far different story with no one on base. He was 0-for-22 with the bases empty entering Thursday, when he immediately ended the peculiar skid by crushing a Quintana sinker 117.8 mph off the bat for a 422-foot home on the second pitch of the game. 

He got on base three more times via walk, which meant pitching to another MVP, who often made them pay. Betts went 4-for-6 with 4 RBIs, bringing Ohtani home with a double in the fourth and a homer in the sixth. 

There was nowhere for Mets’ pitchers to rest. Tommy Edman had two hits and knocked in three runs, October legend Kiké Hernández added two more hits and Muncy reached base each of his first four times up, running his on-base streak to an MLB postseason record 12 straight plate appearances before striking out in the eighth. 

“I wasn’t even aware of that,” Muncy told FOX Sports’ Tom Verducci after the game. “That’s pretty cool. The biggest thing, to me, is that means I’m getting on base for my teammates.” 

Up and down the lineup, the Dodgers have worked the Mets pitchers. 

After walking five times in a Game 1 win in the NLDS, the Padres stopped gifting the Dodgers free passes, issuing no more than three walks in a game in any subsequent matchup. Against the Mets, the Dodgers have walked at least seven times every game. At the time of Betts’ two-run double in the fourth inning, all four of their run-scoring hits had come with hitters ahead in the count. 

The Dodgers have 16 hits and 24 RBIs with runners in scoring position in the NLCS. The other three teams in the LCS have combined for 11 hits and 20 RBIs with runners in scoring position. 

“Right now, I’m still kind of enjoying it a little bit, but I’m already thinking about Peterson tomorrow,” Roberts said. “Yeah, we’ve still got some work to do.”

Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner.

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NEW YORK — The Mets have magic. The Dodgers have dominance. 

The Mets have MVP candidates. The Dodgers have MVPs. 

The Mets have OMG. The Dodgers are OMG.

The chasm between them couldn’t have been clearer Thursday night, as the Dodgers won 10-2 and took a commanding 3-1 lead in the National League Championship Series. Los Angeles has won all three of its games by at least eight runs. Game 4 was the most revealing, as Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts turned an energized Citi Field into a library by combining for two homers, five hits, five RBIs, three walks and seven runs. 

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“It’s been fun being able to see him perform really well, obviously being in the situation where I’m on base,” Ohtani said of Betts. “So, he looks really good and locked in. My job at that point is to make sure that I score on anything that Mookie really hits.”

Ohtani and Betts have made it seem inevitable that, pretty soon, all the purple Grimaces in the tri-state area will be sent into a winter hibernation. Ohtani sucked the air out of the stadium before fans had even settled into their seats — demolishing a leadoff home run on the second pitch out of the left hand of veteran Jose Quintana and ending the trend that he couldn’t hit with nobody on base. The home run snapped an 0-for-22 stretch for Ohtani without runners on base to begin the postseason. With the Mets apparently choosing to avoid any more damage from the Japanese phenom, Ohtani reached base via a walk in three of his next four plate appearances. 

“Freddie [Freeman] talked to me to make sure that I joined the party earlier than later,” Ohtani said. “So I was able to do that this time in my first at-bat.”

Betts added: “It’s going to be tough to walk him all the time.”

Yeah, no kidding, particularly when the guy hitting behind him is this locked in. Betts, after beginning the postseason hitless in his first nine at-bats, has returned to superstardom. He went 4-for-6, collected a playoff-career-high four RBIs and crushed a towering two-run shot to left field in the sixth — his third homer this postseason — that completely took the Mets out of the game. Betts’ biggest hits of the night came immediately after the Mets made pitching changes, drawing on his clutch gene to power the Dodgers in Game 4. 

Betts now has seven career playoff homers, and he’s the third Dodgers player with at least four hits and at least four RBIs in a postseason game — joining Chris Taylor and Steve Garvey. 

“It’s just so tough for starting pitchers,” said Freeman, who watched Game 4 from the dugout to rest his sprained ankle. “Right out of the gate, you’re facing Hall of Famers. It’s amazing when they’re swinging the bat as good as they are right now. It’s fun to hit behind them.”

Like Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, or Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal, L.A.’s latest legendary tandem was relentless against Mets pitchers in Game 4. Ohtani relied on patience as he drew his walks, and Betts leaned on his timely hitting to force Quintana out of his start with five earned runs in just 3.1 innings. That Ohtani, Betts and the rest of the Dodgers stepped up for 10 runs while Freeman was sidelined on Thursday is a testament to how complete the offense is right now. 

The Dodgers spent more than $1 billion this offseason for this exact reason: overwhelm, exhaust and suffocate the opponent to the point of making any idea of a comeback for the resilient Mets a moot point. The Dodgers have outscored the Mets 30-9 across the first four games in the NLCS. 

“You’ve got to give them credit because that’s a really good lineup and they can do a lot of different things,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “This is a team that controls the strike zone as well as anybody in the league. Not only do they do that, but when they force you in the zone, they can do some damage. And they’ve done that. They did it again today.”

As players and managers like to say, everything is magnified at this time of the year. So it takes another level of patience and confidence to be able to handle the quick turnarounds and additional media responsibilities of the postseason. 

Ohtani, experiencing the playoffs for the first time in his seven-year career in the big leagues, zipped around the clubhouse in a frenzy after the Dodgers’ Game 4 win. Sitting on the chair at his locker, he quickly toweled off his jet black hair, jogged back into the bathroom, and hustled back to his locker to collect his belongings: a backpack that he threw over his shoulder, a hat that he wore backwards, and a pair of headphones that he held in his hand. Then he rushed behind an MLB staff member out of the clubhouse and into the news conference room to talk about his night at the plate and the Dodgers being one win away from the World Series. 

As for Betts, playing in his eighth career postseason, he was operating at a more leisurely pace. As he walked down the Citi Field tunnel on his way to sit in front of countless cameras and reporters, he stopped to hug his family and fist bump a lucky fan who was exiting the stadium. If Betts seemed calm after the game, it was because he spent the rest of his free time swinging in the cages. Freeman joked that if all of that cage work has worked so well for Betts, the first baseman might soon try that approach too. 

“A lot of stuff has clicked and hasn’t worked and some of it has worked,” Betts said of his preparation. “Today it worked. But tomorrow is a new day, and I’ll come work and try and find the same feel.”

Not much was working for the team from Queens. As for why the Mets are backed into a corner, facing the worst-case scenario where they face elimination for the remainder of the series, they failed to capitalize on their chances on Thursday. There was heartbreak in the sixth inning when they loaded the bases with nobody out and didn’t score a single run. Then there was embarrassment in the eighth inning as the Dodgers continued to pile on and the stadium all but emptied with six outs still to go. 

The Dodgers, playoff veterans, did the equivalent of stuffing the new kid at school into a locker. It’s hard to see these Mets getting out of Citi Field with any games left to play.

Deesha Thosar is an MLB reporter for FOX Sports. She previously covered the Mets as a beat reporter for the New York Daily News. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Deesha grew up on Long Island and now lives in Queens. Follow her on Twitter at @DeeshaThosar.

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Baseball is full of remarkable moments, but few are as rare as perfect games and no-hitters, especially during the World Series. These pitching feats not only showcase exceptional skill but also create unforgettable memories for fans. Keep reading to learn more about the only no-hitters and perfect games ever recorded in the MLB World Series. 

What is a no-hitter?

A no-hitter occurs when a pitcher or pitchers allow no hits during an entire game, which consists of at least nine innings. 

World Series No-Hitters

There have been two no-hitters in World Series history. In 2022, the Houston Astros pitching staff combined for a no-hitter in Game 4 against the Philadelphia Phillies. Cristian Javier started with six no-hit innings, and relief pitchers Bryan Abreu, Rafael Montero, and Ryan Pressly finished the game.

The second no-hitter occurred during the only perfect game in World Series history. Keep reading to find out more about that. 

What is a perfect game?

A perfect game occurs when a pitcher or pitchers complete a minimum of nine innings with no batter from the opposing team reaching base.

World Series Perfect Games

While there has been a total of 24 perfect games in MLB history, only one perfect game has been thrown in World Series history. 

In 1957, Don Larsen of the New York Yankees threw a perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 5. Larsen retired all 27 batters with 97 pitches. 

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The Los Angeles Dodgers routed the New York Mets at Citi Field for the second consecutive night, winning 10-2 behind strong performances at the plate from superstars Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts. L.A. now has a 3-1 lead in the series and can clinch as soon as Friday’s Game 5 (5 p.m. ET on FS1 and the FOX Sports App).

Ohtani homered against Jose Quintana to lead off the game. The likely 2024 National League MVP took Quintana’s first pitch for a ball, then drove a sinker over the middle of the plate 422 feet into the Mets’ bullpen in right-center field for his third postseason homer.

The likely NL MVP began the night 0 for 22 in the postseason when batting with nobody on base and 7 for 9 with two homers and eight RBIs when hitting with runners aboard.

It was the seventh leadoff homer in Dodgers postseason history and first in Ohtani’s career.. The 117.8 mph drive was the third-hardest-hit postseason home run since Statcast started tracking in 2015, after Philadelphia’s Kyle Schwarber in last year’s NLCS (119.7 mph) and the New York Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton in a 2020 AL Division Series (118.3 mph).

Quintana hadn’t allowed a home run in his previous eight starts since Aug. 20.

Mets star Francisco Lindor, who hit a leadoff homer in Game 2 at Dodger Stadium, was unable to match Ohtani in the bottom of the first as he grounded out.

But the next New York batter, Mark Vientos, connected off Yoshinobu Yamamoto for his fourth homer of the playoffs to tie the score at 1.

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The Dodgers struck back in the top of the third, however, to retake the lead on singles from unlikely postseason heroes Tommy Edman and Kiké Hernandez. They never relinquished it out of that. Yamamoto worked out of a bases-loaded jam in the top of the third, though the Mets did scrape a run across when Brandon Nimmo beat out what would have been an inning-ending double play. Nimmo was originally ruled out, but the call was overturned after a challenge from Mets manager Carlos Mendoza.

Betts then helped the Dodgers pad their lead with one of the best performances of his playoff career, smashing a two-run double in the fifth inning and two-run home run in the seventh, both times after Ohtani was walked right before him. Ohtani drew three consecutive walks after his home run and scored each time.

Also of note, Dodgers first baseman Max Muncy became the first player to reach base in 12 consecutive plate appearances during a single postseason.

Muncy had a single and three walks in his first four plate appearances in Game 4 of the NL Championship Series against the New York Mets on Thursday night. The streak ended when he struck out against Danny Young in the eighth.

Muncy’s streak included two singles, two homers and eight walks.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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