Braves Break Serve Against the Dodgers, Head to Atlanta With 1-1 NLDS Tie
Heading into Game 2 of the NLDS, much of the talk was of the mismatch in pitching rotations between the Dodgers and the Braves, and whether Atlanta’s bullpen could continue to cover up for a rotation held together with rubber bands and duct tape. Yet, in the end, it was the Dodgers who ended up burning the most relievers, and the denouement was only in doubt because the Braves missed a few opportunities to blow the game, a 3-2 win, wide open.
The most-talked-about pitching decision was probably the one made before the game started: Going with a third consecutive bullpen game rather than starting ace Chris Sale in Game 2. It’s a decision that Walt Weiss clearly doesn’t regret, at least not when speaking in public. He told reporters:
“We had a conversation this morning. Look, at the end of the day, we want full-strength Chris Sale. I know him at 80 percent is really good, but that’s what it came down to. 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. He’d be on normal rest from his last start, but he had the outing in between. Not sure you’re getting the best version of him pitching today. We’re certain he will pitch in Game 3.
That additional rest was necessary, of course, because Sale was used to finish out Game 3 of the Wild Card Series on Thursday, a 6-2 game in which the Braves had a 98.5% win expectancy. With Sale no longer starting in Game 2, there would be no possibility of him pitching on four days’ rest in a possible Game 5.
While losing a possible Sale start is a dangerous gamble for a team with only two healthy starting pitchers it trusts, Atlanta’s bullpen did its job in Game 2, keeping the Braves from going home in a 2-0 hole.
As he did in Game 3 against the Phillies, Ray Kerr got the nod to lead off the parade of relievers. Rather than get too cute with his repertoire, Kerr went right after the Dodgers with a fairly simple game plan: lots of curveballs for the righties, lots of sinkers and cutters for the lefties, and keep everything as far away from the wheelhouse as possible. Kerr cut way back on the fastballs from his Phillies start, and didn’t dare to throw any of them into the heart of the strike zone. The result was a lot of pitches well out of the strike zone, but the Dodgers swung and missed at a good many of them. Three of Kerr’s pitches went into the dirt, and Drake Baldwin earned his keep on a few more.
For the first two innings, this went smoothly, marred only by a Freddie Freeman single in the second. In the third, however, one of Kerr’s curves that did land in the strike zone was pulled by Miguel Rojas toward the line in left for a leadoff double. The Dodgers failed to capitalize, with Tommy Edman following up with a bunt popup. Mookie Betts walked on four pitches, and after Kerr got Shohei Ohtani to pop out in an at-bat during which it looked like his command of the cutter was starting to fall apart, the Braves brought in Weird Al Yank…err…Grant Holmes, who immediately got Will Smith to end the inning with a harmless grounder.
The 1-0 lead that Kerr left the game with could have easily been a much larger margin if Atlanta had fully cashed in on its threat in the first inning. Blake Snell got the Game 2 nod, and with one out, a Ronald Acuña Jr. single and walks to Matt Olson and Ozzie Albies loaded the bases for Michael Harris II and Mauricio Dubón. Harris fouled out, but Dubón beat out a grounder up the middle to get the Braves on to the board. Snell escaped the inning with his best-behaved curves of the night, punching out Sean Murphy on three pitches.
Snell kept runs off the board after that, but command was a constant issue for him, and he ended up allowing five walks, his most in a game since August 2024. Atlanta’s general patience in waiting out his breaking stuff drove up the pitch count, with Snell eventually throwing 90 pitches without finishing the fourth. The curveball and changeup are always nasty enough to get a lot of whiffs on a bad night, and Sunday night was no exception, but Snell ended up in a lot of hitters’ counts and threw too many pitches the Braves just watched hit the dirt. After Snell’s fifth walk, Brock Stewart came in to get Acuña to ground out to end the fourth inning.
Freeman had hit only a single home run since Independence Day and had put up a .681 OPS in the second half of the season, the worst half-season split of his career (at least if we’re not counting his 2010 cup of coffee). He picked a good time to hit his second home run of the summer/fall, golfing a low slider from Holmes into right field, which would have been a pretty sweet souvenir if a fan hadn’t fumbled it into the Braves bullpen. Freeman’s overdue homer tied up the game at 1-1.
Weiss didn’t immediately yank Holmes, but the Dodgers started a new rally with a Kyle Tucker single and a walk that Andy Pages squeezed out from a 1-2 count, and in came Dylan Lee. Lee got Max Muncy out on a foul-tip strikeout, and Edman popped out to end the inning.
The tie didn’t last very long. Kris Bubic started the fifth inning for the Dodgers, and with two outs, Michael Harris II took an outside sweeper the other way to the wall in left field, where Teoscar Hernández played it rather awkwardly. Unlike a certain large adult mustached catcher for the Yankees who shall go nameless here, Harris had the wheels to get around to third fairly easily. Bubic immediately started missing the strike zone horribly against Dubón, and a wild pitch on a 2-0 count scored Harris to give the lead back to Atlanta.
A fourth ball gave Dubón a free pass to first base, ending Bubic’s night, with Evan Phillips coming in to get Rowdy Tellez.
The Dodgers started something in the fifth against Lee, with a Betts walk and an Ohtani single. The Braves brought in Robert Suarez, who proceeded to hurl a bunch of 100-mph fastballs until the heart of the Los Angeles lineup conceded the inning in order.
And with one notable exception, that was about it for the Dodgers offense on the night. After Suarez’s inning, Didier Fuentes, a contender for the NL Reliever of the Year award (at least behind Mason Miller), nearly gave the Braves half of a no-hitter against the Dodgers. Fuentes threw 47 pitches and was just one batter away from possibly getting the rare four-inning save; how often do you see a save earned by the pitcher who led both teams in innings pitched?
The Braves picked up an insurance run in the seventh, on another Harris extra-base hit, this one a double that drove in Olson. They missed out on collecting more in the eighth, as Roki Sasaki was wild and walked Tellez on five pitches and then hit Austin Riley on a full count. Mike Yastrzemski sacrificed the runners to second and third, and after Baldwin was intentionally walked to load the bases, Acuña grounded into an inning-ending double play.
As it turned out, the Braves needed that run. The crowd had gotten fairly lifeless by the time Muncy came up in the ninth, but he woke up Chavez Ravine very quickly by violently uppercutting a 98-mph fastball into the stands to make it a 3-2 game.
Josue De Paula pinch-hit for Edman, but Atlanta’s closer Raisel Iglesias came in to quickly earn a three-pitch save.
The Braves leave Los Angeles in a solid position to advance to the NLCS. The team’s biggest weakness, a bullpen that has to shoulder a massive burden thanks to a tatterdemalion rotation, didn’t prove to be its undoing in Game 2, and the Braves did just enough offensively to make those efforts count. The series now becomes, from the point of view of the Braves, a best-of-three series in which they hold home-field advantage, have Sale coming in Game 3, and are playing a team they’ve gone 6-2 (including the postseason) against in 2026. Like most, I’m confident that the Dodgers are the better team on paper, but fortunately for Atlanta, nobody has yet figured out how to make October baseball respect that opinion.
