PHOENIX — Lightning does strike twice and the Dodgers are the charred victims, left smoking and unrecognizable as the 100-game winner they were during another pointless regular season.

For the second consecutive year, the Dodgers were eliminated in their first playoff series despite facing a team that finished a distant second behind them in the National League West. The Arizona Diamondbacks will move on to the NL Championship Series after hitting a postseason record four home runs in one inning and beating the Dodgers, 4-2, on Wednesday night to complete a shocking three-game sweep in the NL Division Series.

“There’s not a lot of words other than hurt, disappointed, frustrated and a little bit embarrassed,” center fielder Kiké Hernandez said of the feeling in the clubhouse after the game.

First baseman Freddie Freeman also struggled to answer questions.

“It’s hard to find words right now,” he said. “Yeah, it’s hard to put into words right now. Frustrating. Me and a lot of us didn’t play the way we wanted to. They just came out swinging in all three games and beat us.”

The Dodgers have lost six consecutive postseason games since winning Game 1 of their ill-fated NLDS against the San Diego Padres last fall. Twenty-two games better than the Padres during the 2022 season, they were 16 games better than the Diamondbacks during the 2023 regular season. They went 1-6 against those two teams in October.

“I don’t know the answer, and it’s ironic that these are teams that we’re very familiar with,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “You get in a series and it gets flipped on its head, I just don’t know that answer.”

The first team in baseball history to win 100 games or more in four consecutive full seasons (2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023), the Dodgers have been utter failures in the postseason those same years. They followed those epic regular seasons with first-round exits in three of the four postseasons, advancing only in 2021 when they stalled out in the NLCS instead.

“I mean, it’s obviously super frustrating,” All-Star Mookie Betts said. “There’s no real known cause for it. They played better. We didn’t do much. I can’t speak for all of us, but I know for sure I did absolutely nothing to help us win. There’s no words for it.”

The Diamondbacks led at the end of all but two innings in this series, dominating the Dodgers in every phase.

The Dodgers’ three starting pitchers – Clayton Kershaw, Bobby Miller and Lance Lynn – recorded a total of 14 outs between them while allowing 13 runs.

According to Elias Sports, the 4⅔ innings from their starters are the fewest by the starting pitchers in the first three games of a postseason series in MLB history.

But the Dodgers were able to outhit their pitching problems all season thanks in large part to their two MVP candidates – Betts and Freeman. But Betts and Freeman were no-shows in the postseason. They went a combined 1 for 21, the lone hit an infield single by Freeman in the first inning of Game 2. Over the two NLDS losses to the Padres and Diamondbacks, Betts has batted .080 (2 for 25). Stretching back to 2021, he is 3 for 38 in his past 10 postseason games.

An offense that has averaged 5.4 runs per game over the past two regular seasons (first in the majors in 2022, second this season) has managed just 2.6 per game in two postseason series.

“Not good. I don’t know. It just did,” Freeman said when asked how that happened.

“We didn’t do it for three days. Not good by us.”

The Dodgers were 4 for 38 (.105) with runners in scoring position during last year’s NLDS defeat (including an 0-for-20 stretch). This year, they slipped in the clutch again, going 4 for 17 (.235) with RISP against the Diamondbacks. Only four consecutive two-out singles in the seventh inning (producing their only runs of Game 3) buoyed this year’s number.

“(That is) just how playoff series go,” Hernandez said. “You’ve got to capitalize every time you have a chance. You only get so many chances. … We weren’t able to capitalize. Regardless of what they did offensively, for us as a group and a unit and a lineup and the guys that we have and what we’ve been doing all year, to score only two runs in each game. … They just played better. There’s no other way of putting it. We fell short and we didn’t capitalize on the few opportunities that we had. We’re here now.”

Only the bullpen performed up to its regular-season standard, holding Games 2 and 3 close with 7⅓ scoreless innings in Game 2 and 5⅓ scoreless innings in Game 3.

Out of it after the first innings of Games 1 and 2, the Dodgers at least stayed in this one until the third inning.

Lynn held the Diamondbacks scoreless for the first two – the only two innings in this series during which the Dodgers didn’t trail by multiple runs.

But he gave up a leadoff home run to Geraldo Perdomo in the third inning and another homer to Ketel Marte two batters later.

It was hardly shocking. Lynn led the majors with 44 home runs allowed during the regular season But he gave up another home run to Christian Walker two batters after Marte’s 428-foot shot.

When Gabriel Moreno followed by sending a 2-and-1 fastball from Lynn into the Dodgers’ bullpen, it was briefly ruled a home run. A replay review overruled that – so Moreno hit Lynn’s next pitch 420 feet into the center field seats, taking the foul poles out of play.

“I got behind in counts and they made me pay. Plain and simple, and that’s what they’ve been doing all series,” Lynn said.

It was the first time in postseason history that a team has hit four home runs in one inning and Roberts watched all 1,626 feet of home runs before pulling Lynn.

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“You’ve got two outs and a low pitch count, and you figure that this run of right-handed hitters, you’ve got to be able to navigate it somewhat with two outs, nobody on base (after Walker’s homer),” Roberts said. “Then two homers later you’re down 4-0.

“I had some guys ready (in the bullpen). Obviously, I can’t predict the future. I try not to be reactionary and get ahead of things. I just can’t predict the future. The way he was throwing the baseball, I didn’t expect that.”

No one in the Dodgers’ clubhouse expected to be packing up for the winter so soon. But there they were, winners of 211 games over the past two regular seasons but just one in two postseason series.

“We just didn’t play well. It’s as simple as that,” utility man Chris Taylor said of the back-to-back postseason failures. “I don’t think there’s a magic answer. It’s not like, ‘Oh, if we did this, we would’ve (won).’

“At the end of the day, they played better than we did. When you get to this late in the season, usually the hot team wins. They’re feeling good right now. They’re playing the best baseball they’ve played all year, I think. And we were probably playing our worst baseball we’ve played all year.”