Dave Roberts billed it as a potential postseason pitching matchup.
If so, he better hope the Dodgers do a whole lot better against Jacob deGrom in October.
In a 2-1 loss to the New York Mets on Wednesday night, the Dodgers could never fully crack the two-time Cy Young Award winner.
They were hitless over the first four innings. They didn’t score their first run until the sixth. And, for a team that entered the night leading baseball in most offensive categories, it looked largely overmatched for one of the only times this year.
“He was Jacob deGrom — throwing 100-mph fastballs and locating the slider,” said third baseman Justin Turner.
“He’s pretty much the best,” outfielder Mookie Betts added. “He’s a tough task.”
Betts did hit a home run, matching his career high with his 32nd of the season.
Justin Turner probably should have had one, too, robbed of a potential game-tying blast in the seventh inning by Brandon Nimmo’s leaping catch in center field.
And on a night left-hander Tyler Anderson scattered eight hits to limit the Mets to two runs over seven innings, the Dodgers were never out of it, the result not sealed until Mets closer Edwin Díaz trotted in to a live trumpet performance of his entrance song in the ninth and retired the side in order.
“It was a pitcher’s duel,” Roberts said. “A really good baseball game to be a part of.”
Just not the greatest harbinger of things to come for the Dodgers.
From the start, deGrom was dealing. He coupled edge-of-the-zone fastballs and hard-biting sliders to righties. He mixed in changeups and curveballs to lefties. And he kept the Dodgers off balance and out of sync, stranding a walk in the first inning before retiring 12 in a row to take a no-hit bid into the fifth.
Turner finally broke it up with a seeing-eye single that snuck through the left side of the infield.
Then, in the sixth, Betts took advantage of a rare mistake, launching a hanging slider over the left-field wall to cut the Dodgers’ deficit in half — following a Starling Marte two-run homer in the bottom of the third.
The Dodgers, however, wouldn’t score again.
Turner came closest with his drive in the seventh, managing the near-impossible task of squaring up a 99.6-mph deGrom four-seamer only to watch Nimmo leap at the wall and…