LOS ANGELES - Sunday at Dodger Stadium turned into a bullpen fight for both clubs, and the Braves got the better of it. Atlanta held the Dodgers to two runs and escaped with a 3-2 win in Game 2 of the National League Division Series, evening the series at one game apiece.
Blake Snell never really settled in, and the Dodgers were fortunate the damage stayed as light as it did early. He opened with a 27-pitch first inning that included two singles, two walks and a run, though he did manage to punch out Sean Murphy and limit the damage to one.
Snell kept surviving traffic in the second and third, but the fourth inning brought two more walks and pushed his season total to a game-high five. It was his most walks in a start since Aug. 24, 2024, when he walked six with the San Francisco Giants.
By the time Snell was done, he had thrown 90 pitches to record only 11 outs, with 43 balls and 47 strikes. Brock Stewart entered and got the final out of the fourth, but that only set the stage for the bullpen game the Dodgers weren’t expecting to play.
Kris Bubic, a left-hander acquired at the trade deadline from the Kansas City Royals while on the 60-day injured list, was pressed into a different role than usual. He’s a starting pitcher and former All-Star, but he has worked in relief through his rehab assignment and into the majors because that’s where the Dodgers needed him. That arrangement had gone well through six rehab outings in Triple-A and five appearances with the Dodgers down the stretch.
His 12th appearance in the organization began the fifth inning, and he retired the first two hitters before Michael Harris II sent a ball into the left-field corner. Teoscar Hernández played it into a triple, the first extra-base hit Bubic allowed in those 12 games.
Then came the wild pitch, and Harris scored the go-ahead run. Bubic had faced 43 batters without allowing a run before that moment.
The Braves kept putting the Dodgers in the same spot they had been in the night before. For the second straight game, Los Angeles was held scoreless against the first arm out of Atlanta’s bullpen. Dylan Dodd opened Game 1 with three shutout innings, and on Sunday left-hander Ray Kerr worked the first eight outs and blanked the Dodgers again.
Miguel Rojas earned the start at third base and delivered a leadoff double in the third, but the rally stalled fast. Tommy Edman tried to bunt and instead popped out to Austin Riley at third.
Shohei Ohtani then kept chasing pitches out of the zone before popping out softly. Kerr handed things over after an impressive extended outing, and former Dodgers first-round pick Grant Holmes needed just one pitch to get Will Smith to ground out and strand the runners.
The Dodgers finally cracked the first Braves reliever, and they did it with the long ball again. Freddie Freeman launched a homer off Holmes in the fourth to tie it 1-1, ending an 85-plate appearance homer drought and snapping a skid that dated back to Sept.
- Freeman had gone 47 straight games and 196 plate appearances without leaving the yard before that swing.
His right knee had bothered him for a good portion of that stretch, though he said late in the season that the knee had healed and that he needed to clean up some bad habits in his swing during the five days off before the NLDS.
Through two games, Freeman has three hits and has scored in both contests.
Edgardo Henriquez came on in the seventh for his first appearance in three weeks after spending the final two weeks of the regular season on the injured list with lower back discomfort. The fastball was back in triple digits, but the results weren’t clean. Matt Olson and Harris both singled off him, and Harris later added a two-out double that brought Olson home from first and stretched Atlanta’s lead to 3-1.
The Dodgers had chances throughout the first five innings, putting eight runners on base, but only one crossed the plate. They also went 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position before Max Muncy changed the tone in the ninth.
The 21-year-old Braves right-hander Didier Fuentes took control early, holding Los Angeles off the board through his first three innings and eventually working into the ninth before Muncy took him deep. That homer cut the deficit to one and knocked Fuentes out after he had recorded 11 outs on 47 pitches, striking out three.
He entered the game with a 2.45 ERA in 73 1/3 regular-season innings and a 31-percent strikeout rate.
The Dodgers’ ninth-inning push forced Raisel Iglesias into the game, and pinch-hitter Josue De Paula came up as the potential tying run. The 21-year-old was making his first major league postseason plate appearance, but he popped out in foul territory to end it.
Atlanta had 15 runners reach base on the afternoon, including eight walks from Dodgers pitchers, which marked just the eighth postseason game in Dodgers history with at least eight walks.
LP - Kris Bubic (0-1): 2/3 IP, 1 hit, 1 run, 1 walk
Sv - Raisel Iglesias (2): 1 up, 1 down
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