Alexander: Padres again push Dodgers to edge of cliff in NLDS

SAN DIEGO — So, who is living rent free in whose heads today?

The pinwheeling yellow rally towels, and the unceasing din, should have been a hint Tuesday night.

After the events, and ramifications, of Sunday night’s turbulent 10-2 Padres victory in Game 2 of the National League Division Series, the Dodgers and their NL West rivals played a relatively sober Game 3 on Tuesday night at Petco Park … as long as you were wearing earplugs.

And while the Dodgers showed some fight – with Teoscar Hernandez’s third-inning grand slam serving as a response to San Diego’s six-run second – that Padres big inning, and the Dodger sloppiness that fueled it, put the visitors back on their heels and then on the brink in a 6-5 loss that put them within a game of another early elimination.

Quite possibly, not only are the Padres a little brother that is massively punching above its weight, but the style with which they’re dismantling the Dodgers after winning eight of 13 in the teams’ regular-season series could be a testament to throwing the other team off balance.

This really is a clash of styles. As noted after Sunday night’s game, these Padres are flamboyant, fun to watch if you’re a fan and oh, so irritating if you’re playing or rooting against them. The Dodgers have their own celebrations – the Freddie Freeman-inspired arm-waving dance after a base hit likely doesn’t have many fans outside of L.A. – but in comparison to the Padres’ swag, the Dodgers are staid.

The Padres celebrate their successes, all right, usually to excess. And let’s face it: The Dodgers were rattled Sunday night, in a game that went off the rails in the late innings after Jurickson Profar, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado goaded Dodger fans into an ugly response.

Up until the first pitch Tuesday night some of those events were still being debated. Dodgers pitcher Jack Flaherty hitting Tatis in the thigh with a sinker, purpose pitch or no? And was Machado acting with malice when he threw/tossed/fired a ball in the direction of the Dodgers’ dugout?

What else, after all, is social media for?

It’s become apparent that this is not only a postseason series, it’s the continuing tale of two disparate cities and fan bases.

There’s the metropolis to the north, with its 16 million residents and its taste for celebrity, heritage of success and, admittedly, no small bit of smugness. And there’s the smaller, more provincial burg to the south, very much portraying itself as everything L.A. isn’t – and maybe – probably – being just a wee bit envious of all the things L.A. has. They’re the ones, to be sure, who insist that there is a rivalry between the two cities (and teams) even as the larger city shrugs its collective shoulders at the idea, maybe while pointing further north toward San Francisco.

But to go back to the question at the top of this column, the combination of Sunday night’s antics and Tuesday night’s events suggests the Padres not only are living in the Dodgers’ heads but are ready to take out a second mortgage, maybe as early as Wednesday night.

“Things are going to happen out there on the field, and you just can’t let them affect you on a personal level,” Dodgers infielder Max Muncy said before Tuesday night’s game. “You have to find a way to take what’s going on out there and transfer (it) into something you can do positively.

“If someone is doing something you don’t like, instead of letting it get under your skin, just realize if you go out there and you make a bigger impact, that’s going to get under their skin more than you trying to fight back with them. That’s what we’ve been focusing on, just getting back to yourself.”

Still, when Mookie Betts stopped short of second base and took a few tentative steps toward the dugout in the first inning Tuesday, even though his drive this time ticked off of Profar’s glove and over the left field fence for a home run, he was either trolling Profar – whose “I don’t have it/yes I do” act Sunday night set the tone for the evening and inflamed the fans in the left field boxes – or else he hadn’t quite let go of the trauma.

Do the Padres act out more than anybody else? Maybe, maybe not. But consider …

“They play off the emotion,” Muncy said. “The atmosphere here plays off their emotion. And we’ve seen that for the last several years, even in regular-season games. Just something as simple as a single and you see the guy throwing the bat 30 feet in the air, that really gets the crowd going here.

“That is part of their game, trying to get under your skin and trying to have the emotion come out and get you to do something that you’re not normally doing.”

It worked in the second inning, when the Dodgers made two bad defensive plays to prop up the six-run inning – Freddie Freeman’s throw to second that was intended to get Machado, the lead runner, but instead glanced off his shoulder, and Miguel Rojas’ futile attempt to get a force play on Xander Bogaerts’ grounder up the middle that resulted in no outs at all and a run scoring. Former Dodger David Peralta doubled home two, Kyle Higashioka added a scoring fly and Tatis – of course – added his punctuation with a two-run homer.

Freeman’s error was actually the product of Machado’s gamesmanship, since he ran well inside the basepath – on the infield grass for a bit, actually – and forced Freeman to throw wide. And, Padres manager Mike Shildt said, that’s by design.

“Basically, the baserunner can create his own baseline until there’s an actual attempted play on him,” Shildt said. “So at that point you can run inside the line just like he did and force a throw to be like it is. You can do it from any base. As soon as the fielder has to make an attempt to a play, now the baseline has been established and you can go from there.”

Roberts confirmed that the play was not reviewable. “It was a heady play,” he said.

That touched off the big inning that Tatis punctuated. He seems to have become the emotional leader of the Padres, and he compared these games to his experiences playing winter ball in the Dominican Republic.

“I feed off that kind of energy,” he said. “When the fans are coming, meaningful games, leave everything you have out there. I feel like I just take it to another level of my mindset. My body, just everything is just through the roof.”

And if that should aggravate the opponent … well, maybe it’s up to the Dodgers to figure out how to handle it.

Time’s growing short.

jalexander@scng.com