PHILADELPHIA — Welcome to October chaos.

With a dominant effort from Blake Snell, one perfectly executed wheel play and one fortuitous scoop from Freddie Freeman for the game’s final out, the Los Angeles Dodgers escaped with a tense, thrilling 4-3 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies on Monday night to take a 2-0 lead in their National League Division Series.

“I’ll take off my Dodgers hat and just put on a fan hat,” shortstop Mookie Betts said. “I think that was a really, really dope baseball game. I think both of these games were really, really dope baseball games, fun to be a part of. Obviously, it’s a lot better when you’re on the winning side, but you can’t ask for better postseason baseball. It’s just fun. This is why we play.”

The first six innings were a classic pitcher’s duel between Snell and Phillies starter Jesus Luzardo as the game was scoreless through six innings. The final three innings were a wild affair of hits, walks, tag plays at home plate and on the bases, second-guessing of managers and a nearly costly throw in the dirt from Tommy Edman that Freeman scooped with the tying run on third base to close it out.

The key play of the game, however, occurred earlier in the bottom of the ninth. Nick Castellanos‘ bloop two-run double to shallow left field made it 4-3 with nobody out. With Alex Vesia entering to face Bryson Stott and Los Angeles expecting a bunt, the Dodgers huddled up and called for the wheel play, which entails having the third baseman charge toward the plate and the shortstop cover third base. It’s a play third baseman Max Muncy said the Dodgers don’t practice in spring training.

“Immediately, Mookie was like, ‘Hey, we need to be doing this,'” Muncy said. “It speaks to his baseball IQ and his intuition in that situation. We were all thinking it, but Mookie was definitely the one that brought it up and said we need to do this.”

Betts, who just finished his first full season at shortstop, explained his thinking.

“It’s just another learned behavior,” he said. “I’ve got to give that credit to [Miguel] Rojas. I think we did it earlier in the year in Anaheim, and I remember asking him, ‘When’s a good time to do it?’ He said, ‘In a do-or-die situation,’ and he and Woody [Dodgers coach Chris Woodward] have really helped me a lot just learning situations.”

Manager Dave Roberts gave the go-ahead. If the Dodgers failed, it would put runners on first and third with nobody out.

“I think it just speaks to the experience that a lot of us have been in a lot of these big games before, and we have a lot of experience doing these types of things,” Muncy said. “Doc trusts us as much as we trust Doc, and it’s not an easy thing to gain, and so that’s why in that moment, Doc heard us talking and right away he was on board with it.”

The first pitch to Stott was a slider out of the zone. With Muncy charging and Betts hustling to third, they were worried they might have given away their strategy.

“When it comes to the wheel play as a third baseman, your first job is obviously to field the ball, and then you’ve got to make a good throw,” Muncy said. “But the one thing no one talks about is you got to make sure the guy’s there to catch the throw.”

Betts got there.

“God blessed me with some athleticism, so I was able to just kind of put it on display there,” Betts said.

“It’s tag play, too,” Woodward said. “Running the wheel on a force out is a lot easier because the third baseman just has to catch it. But if you have to tag him, it presents a more difficult play. For Muncy to field it, know right away, make a good throw. Mookie hung in there. That was the play of the game.”

The Dodgers didn’t have a 5-6 putout in the regular season, the only team in the majors without one, according to ESPN Research.

In an era with few sacrifice bunts, the attempt was debatable. The Phillies had just 16 sacrifice bunts all season. Manager Rob Thomson explained the decision: “Just left-on-left,” he said, referring to Stott against Vesia. “Trying to tie the score. I liked where our bullpen was at, compared to theirs. We play for the tie at home.”

He praised the Dodgers’ execution.

“Mookie did a great job of disguising the wheel play,” Thomson said. “We teach our guys that if you see wheel, just pull it back and slash because you’ve got all kinds of room in the middle. But Mookie broke so late that it was tough for Stotty to pick it up.”

The Phillies eventually put runners on second and third with two outs in the ninth. Roberts went to Roki Sasaki, whom Roberts hoped to avoid using for the second time in three days after Sasaki missed most of the regular season because of a shoulder injury. Sasaki got Trea Turner to hit a routine grounder to second — which Edman fielded but nearly threw away.

For the first two-thirds of the game, Snell and Luzardo were dominant. Luzardo allowed just one hit through six innings and fired 20 fastballs at 97-plus mph. Snell didn’t allow a hit until the fifth inning. He got his biggest outs in the sixth. After walking Turner and Kyle Schwarber with one out, he struck out Bryce Harper on a 2-2 slider.

“I needed weak contact,” Snell said. “I knew I was going to have to attack him somewhere where he could hit, but I felt confident with the slider. Like today, I felt really confident with that pitch. Just kind of rode it out against him in that at-bat and ended up winning.”

Snell then got Alec Bohm to ground out to third base. Rojas fielded it and dove to tag the base just ahead of the speedy Turner.

Snell, a two-time Cy Young winner whom the Dodgers signed for $182 million in the offseason, had made 10 postseason starts before this season and never made it through six innings. He has now done it twice this year after pitching seven innings in the Dodgers’ wild-card opener against the Reds.

The Dodgers are one win from advancing to the NLCS as the series shifts to Dodger Stadium. The Phillies’ top three hitters — Turner, Schwarber and Harper — are a combined 2-for-21.

“Huge, huge momentum maintainers,” Roberts said. “Great ballgame, great plays, huge win.”

PHILADELPHIA — Bryce Harper says the only thing the flat Phillies can do in Los Angeles is “flip the script.”

Flip it? Philadelphia needs to tear it up and start typing from scratch, because, in Hollywood terms, Harper, Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber and the bulk of the high-priced Phillies have been an absolute flop.

Throw in J.T. Realmuto and Nick Castellanos, and those five players are 5-for-35 through two games of the NL Division Series with 13 strikeouts and no home runs.

The Phillies — with a $291.7 million payroll — have fallen into the same October pattern of frigid bats from their highest-priced players that also doomed their previous three playoff runs.

The Dodgers turned back Philadelphia’s late rally Monday night for a 4-3 victory in Game 2, pushing the Phillies to within one loss of elimination.

“I think those guys are trying to do a little too much right now, instead of just being themselves and looking for base hits,” manager Rob Thomson said. “The power will come.”

Dodgers left-hander Blake Snell and reliever Emmet Sheehan held Philadelphia to three hits over eight innings. Without any help from their All-Star trio at the top of the batting order, the Phillies showed life in the ninth and scored two runs on three hits.

Turner, the NL batting champion, was retired on a groundout to end the game.

For those keeping score at home, Turner, Schwarber and Harper went a combined 1-for-10 in Game 2 with five strikeouts. The trio had a combined 1-for-11 effort with six strikeouts and no RBIs in the 5-3 loss in Game 1.

“I wouldn’t say we’re pressing,” Harper said. “We’re missing pitches over the plate. They’re making good pitches when they need to. That’s kind of how baseball works sometimes.”

The Phillies were built on the long ball, so it was a bit of a head-scratcher in the ninth when Bryson Stott was asked to sacrifice with no outs and Castellanos on second base. Stott got the bunt down, only for the Dodgers to get the out at third — and the next two outs — without another run scoring.

“I wanted to play for the tie,” Thomson said. “I liked where our bullpen was compared to theirs.”

Stott defended the unpopular decision and said he tried to deaden the bunt as much as possible, but the Dodgers’ infielders executed their wheel play on defense “as perfect as you can.”

“We’re in the postseason and you’re trying to win games and getting the tying run on third with less than two outs is big,” Stott said. “You get the bunt down and you want to play for that. It just didn’t really work.”

Nothing really has for the Phillies.

With ace Zack Wheeler sidelined as he recovers from surgery to remove a blood clot in his pitching shoulder, Cristopher Sanchez and Jesus Luzardo did their part to limit the Dodgers in the first two games.

The Phillies will turn to one-time ace Aaron Nola over 12-game winner Ranger Suarez to try to save their season in Game 3. It sure looks bleak: Teams taking a 2-0 lead in a best-of-five postseason series have won 80 of 90 times, including 54 sweeps.

“First one to three,” Harper said. “They’re not there yet. We’ve just got to play the best baseball we can and understand we’re a good team in here. Anything can happen over the next couple of days.”

Nola, his season derailed by everything from ankle and rib injuries to old-fashioned inconsistency, is coming off his worst year since he broke in with the Phillies in 2015.

The 32-year-old Nola — signed to a $172 million, seven-year contract ahead of the 2024 season — was drafted seventh by Philadelphia in 2014 and had been one of the most durable pitchers in the majors since his big league debut. Even as this season unraveled, with a 5-10 record and 5.01 ERA, Thomson’s confidence never wavered.

Nola is 5-4 in 10 career postseason starts with a 4.02 ERA.

“You can’t get three wins in Game 3, right?” Nola said. “I’ve been feeling pretty good. My body’s all healthy.”

If only there was an instant cure for what ails the Phillies’ bats.

Maybe it’s going to Los Angeles.

Once invincible at home in the playoffs since this four-year run started in 2022, the Phillies lost for the fifth time in their past six playoff games at Citizens Bank Park and are just 2-9 in their past 11 overall.

“It’s been tough,” Harper said. “We’ve got to just flip the script and understand we’re a really good baseball team.”

A really good team. Just not great.

The Phillies lost to Houston in the 2022 World Series, to the Arizona Diamondbacks a year later in the National League Championship Series and were knocked out by the Mets last year in four games in the NLDS.

Get swept, and it could be the end of the line for potential free agents Schwarber, Realmuto and Suarez.

Maybe even Philly Rob.

But those are questions for the end of the series — if it ends the season.

“This is a resilient group,” Thomson said. “Our backs are against the wall. We’ve just got to come out fighting.”

MILWAUKEE — Andrew Vaughn and Jackson Chourio each hit a three-run homer, William Contreras added a solo shot and the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Chicago Cubs 7-3 on Monday night to move one win from a trip to the National League Championship Series.

The Brewers have a 2-0 advantage in the best-of-five division series, which shifts to Wrigley Field in Chicago for Game 3 on Wednesday. Teams taking a 2-0 lead in a best-of-five postseason series have won 80 of 90 times, including 54 sweeps.

Milwaukee is attempting to win a postseason series for the first time since 2018, when it reached Game 7 of the NLCS.

Vaughn and Chourio hit the first two three-run homers in Brewers postseason history. Contreras’ solo shot in the third inning broke a 3-all tie.

Chicago slugger Seiya Suzuki hit a three-run homer of his own — a 440-foot shot to left-center field in the first inning against Aaron Ashby. After coming out of the bullpen in 42 of his 43 regular-season appearances, Ashby served as an opener in this one.

But the Cubs didn’t score again. Nick Mears, Jacob Misiorowski, Chad Patrick, Jared Koenig, Trevor Megill and Abner Uribe combined for 7⅓ innings of shutout relief in which they allowed just one hit.

“We didn’t put enough pressure on them,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “First two innings, we did a nice job. But we had two at-bats with runners in scoring position today. That’s a sign we’re not putting enough pressure on. And that’s going to add up to a lot of zeroes.”

Misiorowski came on in the third and threw three scoreless innings to earn the win while hitting at least 100 mph on 31 of his 57 pitches. Each of the rookie’s first eight pitches went at least 102.6 mph, and he topped out at 104.3 mph.

While Misiorowski was sizzling, Chicago’s Shota Imanaga was fizzling.

Twice in the first three innings, Imanaga retired the first two batters before running into trouble that resulted in a homer. Imanaga has allowed multiple homers in six of his past eight appearances.

Vaughn tied the score in the bottom of the first with a drive over the left-field wall after Contreras and Christian Yelich delivered two-out singles. According to MLB, this was the first playoff game in which each team hit a three-run homer in the first inning.

Contreras then hit a 411-foot shot to left with two outs in the third.

Vaughn’s first-inning shot marked the first time the Brewers had ever hit a three-run homer or a grand slam in the postseason. They got their second such homer just three innings later when Chourio connected on his 419-foot shot off Daniel Palencia.

Chourio was back in the leadoff spot after tightness in his right hamstring caused him to leave in the second inning of Milwaukee’s 9-3 Game 1 victory on Saturday. (Chourio went 3-for-3 with three RBIs in Game 1 before his exit, making him the first player to have three hits in the first two innings of a postseason game.)

The Associated Press contributed to this report.