NEW YORK – The New York Mets know how well they’ve responded this season when playing from behind.

The Los Angeles Dodgers can’t forget what happened the last time the Mets were in a hole.

The Mets will aim to even reach the National League Championship Series, while the Dodgers will look to take a commanding lead on Thursday night when the teams play Game 4 of the best-of-seven set.

Left-hander Jose Quintana (0-0, 0.00 ERA in the playoffs) is scheduled to start for the Mets against right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto (1-0, 5.63 ERA).

Enrique Hernandez, Shohei Ohtani and Max Muncy homered to provide the assurance on Wednesday as Los Angeles rolled to an 8-0 victory and took a 2-1 series lead.

Hernandez’s home run in the sixth inning was the first extra-base hit of the game as both offenses struggled to generate momentum on a 51-degree night. The Dodgers went 2-for-9 with runners on base prior to Hernandez’s round-tripper, while the Mets finished 1-for-10 with runners on base.

Ohtani hit a 350-foot three-run homer in the eighth and Muncy went deep in the ninth inning for the Dodgers, who recorded their second shutout of the NLCS. Los Angeles recorded a 9-0 victory in Game 1.

The two wins in this series are among the three most lopsided shutout wins in postseason franchise history for the Dodgers – as well as the most lopsided shutout losses in postseason franchise history for the Mets.

“I think when you get into this playoff stuff, everything gets really blurry and really fast,” said Dodgers pitcher Walker Buehler, who started Game 3 and allowed three hits in four innings. And sometimes I think they feel bigger than they are. If we come out tomorrow and play like (trash), we don’t care how we played today.

“I think we saw that a little bit in LA: we get the big win in Game 1 and the second game doesn’t go our way.”

The Mets showed their signature resilience in Game 2 on Monday, as Francisco Lindor hit a leadoff home run and Mark Vientos delivered a second-inning grand slam in a 7-3 victory.

The Mets fell eleven games short of .500 in early June, not clinching a playoff berth until splitting a doubleheader with the Atlanta Braves on September 30 and trailing the Milwaukee Brewers by two runs with one out in the ninth inning of Game 3 of an NL wild-card series before Pete Alonso hit a go-ahead three-run homer in the ninth inning, leading to a 4-2 victory.

“This is nothing new,” said New York pitcher Luis Severino, who took the loss Wednesday after allowing two unearned runs in 4 2/3 innings. “We have to come back (Thursday) and try to win that game. If we win two out of three here, that would be huge for us.”

Quintana last pitched on October 9, when he waived the call after allowing an unearned run over five-plus innings as the Mets advanced to the NLCS by defeating the Philadelphia Phillies 4–1 in Game 4 of the NL Division Series. . He is 0-1 with a 2.43 ERA in seven career postseason games (six starts).

Yamamoto earned the win on Friday when he gave up two hits in five scoreless innings as the Dodgers advanced to the NLCS by beating the Padres 2-0 in Game 5 of the NLDS. It was the rookie’s second postseason start after scoring five runs in three innings during Game 1 against San Diego.

Quintana is 3-2 with a 2.04 ERA in 13 regular season games (10 starts) against the Dodgers. He went 0-1 with a 10.29 ERA in two postseason starts for the Chicago Cubs against Los Angeles in 2017.

Quintana lost his only start against the Dodgers this season on May 28, giving up three runs in six innings as the Mets fell 3-0 in the second game of a doubleheader.

Yamamoto didn’t factor the call in his only start against New York. He allowed four runs (three earned) over six innings as Los Angeles fell 9–4 on April 19.

–Jerry Beach, field level media