Dodgers bite back, take series lead over Braves with 3-1 win

Dodgers right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto was dominant Tuesday, and the Braves are back on the brink of elimination for the second time this postseason.

Yamamoto struck out 10 over seven innings and allowed one run in the Dodgers’ 3-1 victory at Truist Park in Game 3 of the NL Division Series. The Dodgers now lead the best-of-five series 2-1 and can advance to the NL Championship Series with a win at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

The Braves may have felt like they let the Dodgers and Yamamoto — as commanding as he was at times — off the hook. They left six runners on base and went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position.

“He has good stuff. He can kind of throw it wherever he wants in the zone. Kind of changes at-bat to an at-bat. He’s a good pitcher,” Braves catcher Drake Baldwin said of Yamamoto. “He’s been doing it the last couple years. Everyone knows it.

“I think there’s probably some swings or some takes or whatever people can look back on in which they did better. But he was really good tonight.”

A turning point came in the fifth, when Yamamoto lost a bit of his control. Two singles and a walk loaded the bases. And with the Braves down 3-0, and many of the 42,420 in attendance yearning to explode, the NL East champs had a golden opportunity to put the visitors on the ropes.

But Baldwin swung at a first-pitch sinker that rolled slowly to first. That plated a run but was a costly second out nonetheless.

Ronald Acuña Jr., who was the designated hitter Tuesday and not the right fielder because of a sore right knee, worked a 3-1 count before swinging at a sinker down and away. A grounder to short ended the inning.

Acuña is now 3-for-21 in the postseason and 2-for-12 in the NLDS.

“I think we hold ourselves to a high standard, and we couldn’t get some runs across,” Baldwin said. “We’re not really too happy about it. Whenever (starting pitcher Chris) Sale goes out there, we want to give him run support. And only giving him one run, we wish we could have given him more runs.”

The loss was a tough blow for Atlanta, considering they had split two games in Los Angeles against the two-time defending World Series champions. And the Braves had ace Chris Sale pitching, ready to put them in prime position to advance.

But Sale’s start was a mixed bag through three innings. The first six outs he recorded were strikeouts while navigating around a single and an error in the first inning and a single in the second inning. In the third, Sale got some help from Mauricio Dubón, who made a leaping catch at the wall in left to rob Freddie Freeman of what would have been an extra-base hit — and very likely a two-run homer.

Sale gave up a second hit in the third inning, a single to Will Smith, and then the Dodgers loaded the bases with two outs after Baldwin was called for catcher’s interference with Shohei Ohtani at the plate. Miguel Rojas bailed Sale out by lining a first-pitch fastball to Lane Thomas in right field.

But in the fourth, Sale’s good fortune ran out. After a single by Andy Pages and a lineout to second, Enrique Hernández golfed a 1-0 changeup 406 feet into the stands in left field to make it 2-0. And one out later, Freeman, the former Braves first baseman who also homered Saturday, belted a solo shot to right, for a 3-0 advantage.

Sale’s one and only 1-2-3 inning came in the fifth. It was his last frame, as he left having exhausted 95 pitches.

“Just one bad inning can kind of ruin a whole game,” Sale said. “Yanked a changeup to (Hernández), and we all know what he can do in October when the lights are bright. And then felt like I actually made a pretty good pitch to (Freeman) but he’s either looking for it or saw it out of the hand or something. That’s what good hitters do. So just one bad inning kind of just ruined the game.”

The Braves’ bullpen threw four scoreless innings after Sale’s departure.

Tanner Scott worked around a two-out walk to record a scoreless eighth for the Dodgers. Edwin Díaz gave up a leadoff double to Ozzie Albies in the ninth, but Michael Harris II grounded out to second, Dubón fouled out to shallow right and pinch-hitter Mike Yastrzemski rolled out to shortstop.