Pair of aces: Greinke vs. deGrom in Mets-Dodgers finale

Should the Dodgers level the best-of-five at 2-2, the climactic Game Five would be played on Thursday in Los Angeles.

Pitching on short rest with the season on the line, Kershaw shut down the New York Mets for seven innings and Justin Turner delivered a key hit against his former team that sent the Dodgers to a 3-1 victory Tuesday night and forced the NL Division Series to a deciding Game 5.

It happened again – the Dodgers were starting their ace Clayton Kershaw in an elimination game needing a win to force a victor take all game.

So would Mattingly considering using Kershaw in relief in the winner-take-all Game 5 Thursday night?

The last time the Mets were in the playoffs, in 2006, current Yankees’ outfielder Carlos Beltran played for the Mets, and struck out looking against the St. Louis Cardinals to end that season’s NLCS.

Fittingly, the Dodgers’ season could be prolonged or end on back-to-back appearances by Kershaw and Greinke, whose arms propelled them to a third consecutive NL West title and a franchise-record third straight playoff appearance.

With Greinke and deGrom squaring off again, Kershaw says the series is “dead-even”.

Other than a 13-run outburst in Game 3, the New York Mets have struggled to score runs in the NLDS, accumulating just six in the other three games of the series. “He’s just very impressive, very tough to square up”. He has allowed two or fewer runs 27 times.

In fact, he breezed through the first two innings with only 28 pitches, and appeared rather settled when the bottom of the Dodgers order came up in the third.

Kershaw improved to 1-1 with a 1.89 ERA in a trio of playoff starts on three days’ rest.

Steven Matz had one bad inning in his first postseason start, all the leeway Clayton Kershaw needed to keep the Mets from advancing to the NL Championship Series in front of their orange towel-twirling fans. “But the better you pitch, the better your chances are”.

“They both have awesome fastballs, and I just think deGrom might have a little more location”, said Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke, who will start Game 5 on Thursday.

“We want to make it to the World Series and this is one step toward that”, deGrom said. His main goal Tuesday was to push this series to Game 5, but by doing so, he was going to change the way people talked about him, too.

Utley was suspended two games for his rough slide in Game 2 that broke the leg of Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada.

Jacob deGrom struck out 13 batters over seven innings pitched in his Game 1 outing against the Dodgers. We’ll never know, but now he goes on regular rest and in a stadium and against a team where he put up 13 strikeouts in seven shutout innings. “So I don’t really know who the advantage goes to there”. “We hit every day, they handle the bats very, very well, and I think it’s made a big difference in our offense”.

Granderson drove in five runs with a pair of booming doubles, while Cespedes and d’Arnaud both homered and each had three hits, three runs scored and three RBIs.

Manager Terry Collins will have Noah Syndergaard and Matt Harvey as potential options in the bullpen, but the Mets would prefer to ride deGrom as close to Jeurys Familia as possible.