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

“It was nice to see him perform really well, obviously in the situation where I’m on base,” Ohtani said of Betts. “So he looks really good and is well put together. My job at that point is to make sure I score on everything that really hits Mookie.”

Ohtani and Betts have made it seem inevitable that all purple Grimaces in the tri-state area will soon be placed into hibernation. Ohtani sucked the air out of the stadium before the fans even got to their seats. He blasted a leadoff home run on the second pitch from veteran Jose Quintana’s left hand, ending the trend of being unable to hit when no one was on base. The home run snapped an 0-for-22 streak for Ohtani with no runners on base to start the postseason. With the Mets apparently choosing to avoid any more damage from the Japanese phenom, Ohtani reached base on a walk in three of his next four at-bats.

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

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

Yeah, no joke, especially when the guy hitting behind him is so locked up. After starting the postseason hitless in his first nine at-bats, Betts 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 took the Mets completely out of the game. Betts’ biggest hits of the night came immediately after the Mets made pitching changes, tapping into his clutch gene to power the Dodgers in Game 4.

Betts now has seven career playoff home runs, and he is 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 up against Hall of Famers. It’ll be amazing if they swing the bat as well as they do now. It’s fun to hit behind them.”

Like Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, or Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal, LA’s newest legendary tandem was ruthless against Mets pitchers in Game 4. Ohtani relied on patience while drawing a walk, and Betts leaned on his timely hitting to force Quintana left his start with five earned runs in just 3.1 innings. That Ohtani, Betts and the rest of the Dodgers scored 10 runs with Freeman sidelined Thursday is a testament to how complete the offense is right now.

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

“You have to give them credit because it’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 anyone in the league. Not only do they do that, but if they force you into the zone, they can do some damage. And they did that. They did it .” again today.”

As players and managers like to say, everything is magnified at this time of year. So it will take a different level of patience and confidence to handle the quick turnaround and added media responsibilities of the postseason.

Ohtani, making the playoffs for the first time in his seven-year career in the major leagues, rushed through the clubhouse in a frenzy after the Dodgers’ victory in Game 4. Sitting on the chair near his locker, he quickly swept his jet-black hair off, ran back to the bathroom, and hurried back to his locker to retrieve his belongings: a backpack he threw over his shoulder, a hat he wore backwards, and a pair of headphones he held in his hand. He then rushed behind an MLB staffer out of the clubhouse and into the press conference room to talk about his night at the plate and how the Dodgers were one win away from the World Series.

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

“A lot of things have clicked and haven’t worked and some of it has worked,” Betts said of his preparation. “Today it worked. But tomorrow is a new day, and I come to work and try to find the same feeling.”

Not much was working for the team from Queens. As for why the Mets are backed into a corner, faced with the worst-case scenario of being eliminated for the remainder of the series, they failed to capitalize on their chances on Thursday. There was heartbreak in the sixth inning as the team loaded the bases with no one out and failed to score a single run. Then there was embarrassment in the eighth inning as the Dodgers continued to pile on and the stadium nearly emptied with six outs to go.

The Dodgers, playoff veterans, did the same thing as putting the new kid at school in a locker. It’s hard to watch these Mets leave Citi Field with games still to be played.

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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