The Los Angeles Dodgers came into the National League playoffs with a 97-68 record, a .580 winning percentage, and a payroll of about $229 million dollars. The Washington Nationals finished with the best record in the National League at 96-66, and had a pitching staff that was the hottest in the Majors.

Both failed to win the requisite three games necessary to advance to the National League Championship Series. Both are going home early.

We all know that the Major League Baseball playoffs are largely a crapshoot. A five-game series is equivalent to 3.1% of the 162-game regular season, so teams are moving on in the playoffs based on an extremely small sample size. But there is no other way to do it, unless you want to institute a 27-game series, and I don't think that's in the cards.

The playoffs have always been about the team that plays best over that particular week, and for this week, the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals were better than the Nats and Dodgers.

So what went wrong? How did Los Angeles and Washington fall short once again?

Silent Bats

To say that the offenses went cold for the Dodgers and Nationals would be a bit of an understatement.

The Dodgers scored nine runs in their Game 1 loss to the Cardinals. In Games 2, 3, and 4, they scored a combined six runs. The Nats' highest output for any one game was when they "exploded" for four runs in their Game 3 win, and two of those runs were directly the result of a throwing error by San Francisco starter nERD of 2.61 - meaning a lineup full of Puigs would score 2.61 runs a game more than a lineup of league average players - that was 14th best among all MLB hitters this year. L.A. mustered just two runs in Game 4 and I don't think it made any sense to bench a player who has the ability to break out of a mini-slump at any minute and single-handedly carry a team to victory.

D.C. Bullpen Issues

Teams with uncertain bullpen situations often have a hard time succeeding in the playoffs. Detroit found that out the hard way in their series against the Orioles, and the Nationals also discovered that in their series against the Giants.

While the 'pen pitched well for most of that Game 2 epic, the game was sent into extra innings thanks to another shaky postseason performance from closer @Cardinals back to the #NLCS. #Postseason http://t.co/tJ3FxOimLm

— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) October 8, 2014

Left-handers hit just .190/.225/.252 against Clayton in 2014, with only one home run. And in the two games he pitched in this series, Kershaw was terrific in innings 1-6, giving up just two runs in those 12 innings. He gave up nine runs in his two seventh innings, failing to make it out of the inning in each appearance. That follows last year's meltdown against the Cardinals in which Kershaw gave up seven runs in Game 6 of the NLCS against them.

ELIAS: Before Matt Adams… Clayton Kershaw had not allowed a home run of three runs or more since June 9, 2012, to Miguel Olivo.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) October 8, 2014

What has happened to Kershaw in the playoffs these last two years is simply unexplainable.

What Next?

So now, both the Nationals and Dodgers will spend a long off-season trying to figure out how to fix their problems. Will the Nats try to shake up their lineup and add some more reliable help in the bullpen? Will the Dodgers break up a largely unhappy and highly-paid clubhouse? Will they make changes to a coaching staff that had a clear "win-now" mandate?

Or do they simply look at themselves as the victims of the randomness and small sample size that is the Major League Baseball playoffs?