The Dodgers head to Atlanta with the National League Division Series trimmed into a best-of-3, and the Braves suddenly holding the edge at home for Tuesday and Wednesday. What looked like Los Angeles’ biggest strength - the starting rotation - has already been dragged into the mud, and Game 2 was the latest reminder of how quickly a postseason series can turn.
Sunday night should have been the Dodgers’ chance to squeeze an Atlanta bullpen that had already been asked to do plenty. Instead, Blake Snell’s start turned into another long night for Los Angeles.
He worked only 3 2/3 innings, threw 90 pitches and issued five walks, forcing the Dodgers into their own relief chain reaction. That part was ugly.
But the broader issue was simpler: the Dodgers allowed just three runs, the same total they gave up in their Game 1 win, and still couldn’t cash in.
The offense never solved the parade of Braves relievers. Dave Roberts laid out the plan before the series even opened, saying the Dodgers needed to keep Atlanta from getting comfortable.
“The advantage for us is we have an opportunity to not let their pitching staff come up for air, and how do you do that? You have to exhaust the starter.
You have to get in their pen, and you have to have them deploy arms as soon as possible and get that carousel going and continue to beat starters. Then you can suffocate them,” Roberts said Friday.
“We have an opportunity to really expose them if we take the right at-bats and the right approach.”
That hasn’t happened yet. Atlanta has used bullpen games in both of the first two contests, and Los Angeles has still not seen any of the 10 Braves pitchers more than once. But the Dodgers did get quieted over long stretches by three different Atlanta arms on Saturday and Sunday.
Dylan Dodd set the tone in Game 1, carving through three scoreless innings and striking out four of the 11 batters he faced. The left-hander logged 49 2/3 innings across 48 appearances this season, and those three innings matched his career high.
Ray Kerr followed a similar script. After missing more than two years because of Tommy John surgery, he’s been one of the Braves’ more interesting arms since returning in August.
He covered 10 outs to open Atlanta’s wild-card clincher against the Phillies on Thursday, then came back with 2 2/3 innings against the Dodgers in Game 2. Kerr exited with two runners aboard in the third, and Will Smith’s first-pitch groundout against Grant Holmes ended the threat.
That sequence was part of the Dodgers’ 0-for-8 showing with runners in scoring position.
The Dodgers’ best chance to break through against Didier Fuentes came later, but not until the ninth inning. Fuentes retired 11 straight Dodgers before Max Muncy launched a two-out homer to pull Los Angeles within one. It wasn’t enough to tie it.
Even with Atlanta’s bullpen-game approach, the Dodgers never really got the repeated looks they were hoping for. Dodd and Kerr each faced 11 batters, and Fuentes saw 12. In seven combined plate appearances the second time through against those pitchers, Los Angeles managed two hits - Mookie Betts’ single off Dodd in Game 1 and Muncy’s homer - plus one walk from Betts against Kerr in Game 2.
All of that leaves the series where it has been hovering since the start: Chris Sale in the background like the obvious problem. He hasn’t thrown a pitch in this NLDS, but his presence has shaped everything around it.
Sale worked into the seventh inning in Game 1 of Atlanta’s wild-card series against the Phillies on Tuesday and was on the hook for the loss before Austin Riley bailed the Braves out with a three-run homer. Then Sale got four outs on Thursday in Game 3 to close out Philadelphia.
A Game 2 start against the Dodgers was at least possible, because it could have set him up for a Game 5 on four days rest, even if that was a loose definition after his brief “throw day” appearance Thursday. He hasn’t pitched on four days’ rest since April.
“I know him at 80 percent is really good, but that’s what it came down to,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said Sunday afternoon. “We’ve given him extra rest all year, and it’s served him very well. It allowed him to do what he did the other night, I think all the extra rest he’d gotten.”
Sale’s workload pattern during the regular season only sharpened the point. He started on five days rest 13 times and on six or more days rest 12 more times.
In those 25 starts, he posted a 1.89 ERA with a 31.3-percent strikeout rate. The Dodgers know exactly what kind of problem that is, because they’ve already seen him twice this season.
They beat him once, on May 8 at Dodger Stadium, and it felt like squeezing blood from a stone. Three different left-handed hitters delivered run-scoring hits that night, and Freddie Freeman homered off Sale. Freeman summed up the challenge later.
“I would have taken a broken-bat bloop against Chris,” Freeman said. “He’s one of the toughest left-handed pitchers you can face. He’s coming from behind you.”
That win was Los Angeles’ only regular-season victory over Atlanta. The Braves took the next five meetings, including three one-run wins in Atlanta about three and a half months later. On August 27, Sale looked every bit like the version the Dodgers dread, hitting triple digits and shutting them out with 11 strikeouts in his first complete game in seven years.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto took the hard-luck loss in that game, with Drake Baldwin’s solo homer in the first inning standing as Atlanta’s only early damage before the Braves finally pushed things further later. That same matchup is back on the board for Game 3 Tuesday night at Truist Park.
The Braves came into October looking a lot like some recent Dodgers teams: short on healthy, reliable starting pitching by the end of September and into the postseason. For now, Atlanta’s rotation really comes down to Sale and Tyler Mahle, the deadline pickup from the San Francisco Giants.
Mahle gave the Dodgers trouble once already this year, throwing seven scoreless innings in a win for San Francisco on April 22. Since joining Atlanta, he has allowed two or fewer runs in nine of 10 starts and owns a 1.91 ERA with 54 strikeouts and only 10 walks. He also threw seven innings of one-run ball last Wednesday in Game 2 of the wild-card round against the Phillies.
After Saturday’s Game 1 loss, Weiss sounded like a manager still betting on the arms he has left.
“Look, you’ve got Sale and Mahle still, a much more rested bullpen,” Weiss said Saturday night. “I don’t have any worries about that, about having enough pitching. We’ve got plenty of pitching.”
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