LOS ANGELES — Chavez Ravine has been a politician’s vanity purchase, a nest of disease, a sleepy, multicultural neighborhood, the site of municipal bullying, and, since 1962, the home of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The trees and scrub on the surrounding hills and the orange-and-blue “76″ sign, a vestige of bygone gasoline wars, sit in the distance between giant flagpoles, the Stars and Stripes on the left, a “2024 World Champions” banner on the right.

It is here that the Phillies season came to die.

And oh, what an ugly death it was.

An error. A bases-loaded error. An 11th-inning, bases-loaded error in a 1-1 game.

All pitcher Orion Kerkering needed to do was knock the ball down. He did.

He could have thrown to first base to get Andy Pages.

He didn’t.

He threw home to get pinch-runner Hyeseong Kim. No problem, it was, maybe, 30 feet.

But his throw sailed over the head of catcher J.T. Realmuto, Kim scored, the Dodgers won Game 4 of the NLDS, 2-1, won the series, three games to one, and that’s how the season died Thursday night.

Ninety minutes earlier, things were much different.

Realmuto singled off reliever Emmet Sheehan. He was forced out when Max Kepler grounded to second base, but Sheehan whiffed on the double-play relay to first, which put Kepler on second. Nick Castellanos, who went hungry in the Game 3 smorgasbord, pulled an RBI double to left, scoring Kepler. That made it 1-0 in support of Cristopher Sánchez, who’d dueled Dodgers starter Tyler Glasnow to a dead heat.

Then Trea Turner, who’d dived right and caught Kiké Hernández’s liner in the fifth, dived left and ate up Will Smith’s grounder in the seventh.

Then the momentum switched.

In the seventh, Sánchez didn’t get the call on a borderline strike three, which let Alex Call work a one-out walk. Hernández singled, and that ended Sánchez's afternoon at 95 pitches and 6 1/3 innings.

Designated closer Jhoan Duran entered to face Pages, who grounded out and advanced the runners.

That brought up Shohei Ohtani, but only briefly. Rob Thomson intentionally walked him, the latest in a series of decisions over the last three postseason that will forever haunt him.

Ohtani was 1 for 17 with eight strikeouts in the series (he finished 1 for 18 with nine Ks).

Thomson’s plan backfired.

Duran walked Mookie Betts, which forced in a run and tied the score at 1.

Duran then struck out Teoscar Hernández, which ended the inning. He dealt a perfect eighth, and, with left-handed pinch-hitter Max Muncy on deck and lefty reliever Matt Strahm warming up, the circumstances and the manager left everyone hanging as to what would happen. Would Strahm enter a tie game in the bottom of the ninth to face the bottom of the Dodgers’ order?

Of course, that was three Phillies outs away.

Would the game still be tied in the bottom of the ninth?

Indeed.

Roki Sasaki, who’d replaced Sheehan and pitched a perfect eighth, did the same in the ninth.

In came Strahm.

He’d given up a three-run homer in Game 1, a blown save. He’d allowed an inherited runner to score in Game 2.

But he was perfect in Game 4’s ninth inning: two fly-ball outs sandwiched a strikeout.

Sasaki, a rookie, had allowed two baserunners in 4 1/3 innings of relief since a four-month layoff due to a shoulder injury. He has allowed two baserunners, now through 7 1/3 innings and six appearances. He overpowered the entire Phillies lineup, three perfect innings, Nos. 8 through 10.

Jesús Luzardo entered in the 10th to try to extend the season. He did so, with just 11 nasty pitches.

Los Angeles lefty Alex Vesia worked around a one-out walk in the 11th, which brought Luzardo back out to face the Dodgers in the 11th.

He gave up two soft singles, one with one out and one with two out, and that led Thomson to replace him with right-handed Kerkering to face right-handed hitter Kiké Hernández.

He walked him and loaded the bases.

Pages topped a 96-mph fastball.

It left the bat at 70 mph.

Kerkering couldn’t handle it.

Then, he couldn’t decide.

Then, he couldn’t make the throw.

Of course, a lineup that features $927 million of veteran offense should be able to produce more than one run. The Phillies’ top three hitters, Turner, Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper, went 1 for 14 with a walk.

You’ve heard this song before.

In their three losses against the Dodgers, the Phillies scored a total of seven runs. They scored eight runs in the win.

Last year, when they lost the NLDS in four games to the Mets, they scored five runs in the three losses. They scored seven runs in the 2024 win.

©2025 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.