PHOENIX − Mookie Betts, dressed in a casual black pinstripe suit, white tennis shoes and a black cap backwards on his head, stopped and said goodbye Wednesday night to several of his Los Angeles Dodgers teammates, shaking hands, sharing hugs and promising to keep in touch.

Betts was on his way out the clubhouse door when he turned around. There was Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. They wrapped their arms around each other, and Roberts whispered in his ear, congratulating him on his season.

They spoke for a few seconds, and with Roberts’ office occupied by members of the Dodgers' front office, he pointed towards the stairs, and told Betts to follow him where they could find privacy.

They stood by the indoor batting cage, just the two of them, and talked privately, spending exactly five minutes trying to make sense out what just transpired, trying to wrap their minds around the fact they were just swept out of the playoffs by the Arizona Diamondbacks. But there were no answers.

"We talked about the game," Betts told USA TODAY Sports as he walked out of the clubhouse for the final time this season. "We talked about what we could have done different. I don’t know, there’s no real cause for what happened. None."

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'We were embarrassed:' Dodgers sent home packing

This is a team that won 100 games, cruised to the NL West title by 16 games over the Diamondbacks, and then suddenly forget how to hit, how to pitch and how to win.

The Diamondbacks completed their sweep with a 4-2 victory over the Dodgers in front of a sellout crowd of 48,175 at Chase Field, sending Arizona to the NLCS for the first time since 2007. But the three-game sweep doesn’t come close to adequately describing just how lopsided this series was from first pitch to last.

The Dodgers never led a single inning. They trailed in 25 of the 27 innings. They were outscored by a score of 19-6.

The Dodgers were down 6-0 in the first inning of Game 1.

They were down 3-0 in the first inning of Game 2.

And they were down 4-0 in the third inning of Game 3 with the Diamondbacks setting a postseason record by hitting four homers in the inning.

"As far as the power goes, I’ve never seen something like that before," D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said. "It was almost unbelievable, right?"

It was an ugly beatdown in every conceivable way.

"We were embarrassed by the way the whole series went," Dodgers infielder/outfielder Enrique Hernandez said. "They kept punching us in the face, and we were unable to get back up. There’s not a lot of words other than I’m hurt. Disappointed. Frustrated. And a little bit embarrassed."

No team is going to win a series when its starters last a total of 4 ⅔ innings. The Dodgers rotation yielded a 20.25 ERA, allowing a .571 batting average with a 1.808 OPS. It was the fewest innings by a starting rotation in the first three games of a postseason in history.

The Diamondbacks hit nine home runs in the series, including 1,626 feet worth of homers in the fourth inning alone, while the Dodgers hit just one. The Dodgers, who scored more than 900 runs for the first time since the franchise was in Brooklyn, never scored more than two runs in any game.

"It’s easy to say it’s just baseball," said Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw, who gave up six runs in just one-third of an inning in his start, "but ultimately, we got beat in most of the facets of the game.

"Obviously, this one hurts, just the way it went down.

"A horrible way to end it, personally."

Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman silenced in NLDS

The most astonishing stat of the entire series was that Betts and Freddie Freeman, who will each finish in the top four of the MVP balloting, went 1-for-21 in the series. The lone hit was a harmless infield single by Freeman in Game 2 when D-backs pitcher Zac Gallen was late covering first base.

"It’s hard to find words right now," Freeman said. "Frustrating. Me and a lot of us didn’t play the way we wanted to. We didn’t do it for three days. Not good by us."

Said Betts: "I felt like I had prepared the right way, but I just didn’t execute anything. They pitched the ball really great. Didn’t score very many runs. 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."

This is a team that has won 211 regular season games the past two years, but have now gone 1-6 in the postseason. They finished 22 games ahead of the San Diego Padres a year ago, but lost in four games in the Division Series. They finished 16 games ahead of the Diamondbacks this year, and were brutally swept.

This is the first time the Dodgers have been swept in a postseason series since 2006, which was 118 postseason games ago.

They have also lost six consecutive postseason games for the first time since 1995-1996 when they were swept in back-to-back years in the division series.

"When you’re in the postseason, man, you’ve got to play well," said Betts, who hit .079 (3-for-38) in his past 10 postseason games. "We have not. You can point to a million different things, but at the end of the day, you have to play well."

The Dodgers did not.

Once again.

"I don’t know the answer," Roberts said, "but the bottom line is that the last two years we got outplayed in the postseason. They outplayed us in every facet of the game. …

"The regular season, I think we do a great job. But the last couple of postseasons, it just hasn’t gone well for us. It’s ironic that these are teams that we’re familiar with. So why when you get in a series, it gets flipped on its head? I just don't know that answer."

No one did.

What to expect in 2024

The Dodgers, despite winning at least 100 games in four consecutive full seasons, need to make changes to assure they don’t have another short October. Not everyone is coming back in 2024.

They are expected to strongly pursue Shohei Ohtani. Maybe they’ll go after Cy Young favorite Blake Snell too. Kershaw, their three-time Cy Young award winner, says it’s too early to know whether he’ll retire or come back one more time.

All the Dodgers know for sure is that they’re sick of losing to teams they dominate during the regular season, only to lose when the stakes are the highest.

"I don’t think there’s a magic answer," Dodgers outfielder Chris Taylor said. "We just didn’t play well. It’s as simple as that. When you get to this late in the season, usually the hot team wins.

"They’re playing the best baseball they’ve played all year.

"And we were probably playing our worst baseball we’ve played all year."

No excuses. D-backs had well-executed plan

It’s an easy and lazy excuse to blame it on the five-day layoff, the reward for winning the NL West with the second-best record in the league, and there wasn’t a single Dodger player who used it for an excuse.

The AL East champion Baltimore Orioles were bounced in three games, too, after their layoff. Atlanta, the NL East champion with the league’s best record, is on the brink of elimination. But it sure didn’t hurt the Houston Astros, who took down the Minnesota Twins in four games.

"I hate to say that the break got us swept," Hernandez said. "It’s just, put everything aside, we just didn’t play good baseball. There’s no other way to put it."

The Diamondbacks, of course, had something to do with the Dodgers’ failures. They privately believed that when the Dodgers clobbered them in August, outscoring them 23-5 in a three-game sweep at Dodger Stadium, the Dodgers were picking up their pitches.

This time, the Diamondbacks changed their routine, and made sure they weren’t tipping their pitches. They constantly changed speeds and locations, and rarely threw the same pitch twice in shutting down Freeman and Betts.

"There’s definitely a way to pitch to them," Lovullo said. "You can’t duplicate pitches. You got to change locations. You got to change speeds. You got to start on the chalk lines, you’re (working) your way in, and just get a feeling for what they’re doing per at-bat. And you just hope they make a swing mistake or a bad decision and get themselves out.

"It was a well-executed plan, and maybe we just caught them at the right time."

'That's our pool:' D-backs slay the dragon

After upsetting the Milwaukee Brewers in the wild-card round and the Dodgers in the Division Series, the D-backs know they’ll be heavy underdogs whether they play the Philadelphia Phillies or Atlanta.

No matter.

They finally slayed the dragon, and, man, did it ever feel good.

"I think it’s an understatement to say we were counted out, especially in this series," Gallen said. "And obviously, it’s no secret we’ve had our battles with them, our struggles.

"But this one tastes a little bit sweeter, for sure, especially since I heard some comments that this was going to be a home game for them.

"But that’s our pool."

Yep, after the Dodgers jumped into the D-backs pool and celebrated their division title in 2013, the D-backs finally got sweet revenge a decade later, with their whole team taking a late-night swim.

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So, go ahead, feel free to count the D-backs out in the NLCS like everyone else.

They dare you.

“Right now, we’re dangerous,’’ said D-backs rookie starter Brandon Pfaadt, who pitched 4 ⅓ scoreless innings. “People don’t want to play us. So we got some momentum in our favor.

“I think we’ll keep showing people who we are.’’

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dodgers left searching for answers after NLDS sweep