Sanchez using veteran guile to help fortify Braves

Dansby Swanson and Freddie Freeman (right) both scored on a two-out double from Tyler Flowers in Saturday night’s 5-3 win against the Dodgers. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Credit: Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Credit: Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Dansby Swanson and Freddie Freeman (right) both scored on a two-out double from Tyler Flowers in Saturday night’s 5-3 win against the Dodgers. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

LOS ANGELES – Anibal Sanchez faced a surging Dodgers team Saturday night that had pounded three or more homers in six of its seven June games including five homers in Friday’s series-opening win against the Braves.

Add a raucous crowd of 52,718 and a Braves team that dropped three of its first four on a current trip to Southern California, where they’ve struggled for much of a decade.

Then toss it all aside, because those factors meant nothing to Sanchez, the well-traveled veteran said.

“I never pay attention to (crowd size),” Sanchez said after limiting the Dodgers to three hits, two runs and two walks with five strikeouts in 5 1/3 innings of a 5-3 Braves win. “No matter how loud they can be or how quiet they can be. I just focus on the game and what I have to do to prepare, like with situations, sequence of pitches.

“It’s the same, like, when you pitch in games where it’s really cold; you don’t pay attention to the weather. You focus so much that that doesn’t bother you.”

Braves slugger Freddie Freeman said, “Anibal has been around a long time and pitched in some big games, no different than tonight. We needed to get back on the winning side of things tonight and he gave us a great start.”

Crowd noise? Pfft.

“I remember 2012 when I got the loudest crowd in Oakland,” Sanchez said. “It was the same, when I got out there I didn’t hear anything.”

That was Game 3 in a division series between his Detroit Tigers and the Athletics. The A’s won the game, 2-0, but Sanchez in his first postseason start limited an impressive Oakland lineup – Josh Donaldson, Yoenis Cespedes, Josh Reddick, et al -- to five hits and two runs in 6 1/3 innings.

The Tigers advanced to the World Series before losing to the Giants. In three postseason starts that year Sanchez had a 1.77 ERA, including seven scoreless innings of an American League Championship Series win against the Yankees and two runs in seven innings with eight strikeouts in a World Series start against the Giants.

In seven games (six starts) over three postseasons with the Tigers, he had a 2.79 ERA and 43 strikeouts with 14 walks in 38 2/3 innings.

What we’re saying is, Sanchez, now 34, has pitched in tougher, more pressurized environments than what he faced Saturday night in a June game at Dodger Stadium.

“He’s been through those kinds of things before,” said Braves catcher Tyler Flowers, who drove in three runs with a pair of two-out hits in Saturday’s win, which evened the series at a game apiece and gave the Braves a 2-3 record with one game left on their San Diego-Los Angeles trip.

“He’s a true pitcher in the sense of moving the ball, different locations, trusts his stuff to put it anywhere anytime, doesn’t give in in hitter’s counts,” Flowers said. “When he gets ahead he makes you put his pitch in play instead of what you’re really looking for.”

The Braves only signed Sanchez to a minor league deal with two weeks left in spring training because they had injuries to other pitchers and weren’t satisfied with the depth and experience they had for their rotation.

He missed part of April and most of May recovering from a hamstring injury, but has proven to be as valuable as the Braves could’ve imagined or hoped when they signed him. He’s 2-0 with a 2.42 ERA and .169 opponents’ average in his past four starts and the Braves won all of those games, including a couple of big ones in the past two outings against division rival Washington and the surging Dodgers.

“Really big,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said of his performance Saturday. “It’s fun to watch him pitch. He knows what he’s doing. I keep saying, the stuff’s better than (people expect). Since we got him I’ve been pleasantly surprise because he’s been sharp, velocity’s been good, he’s been quick. He has an arsenal for you.”

Freeman said, “He has magic with the ball, he can make it do things that normal pitchers can’t do. He paints in and out, off-speed -- you just never know what you’re going to see from him. He was fantastic (Saturday).”

His wide-ranging arsenal includes an ultimate veteran’s type of pitch, a 66-mph offering that he threw to strike out visibly perplexed slugger Cody Bellinger to end the fourth inning. Bellinger flailed at it after Sanchez threw an 88-mph cutter on the previous pitch.

The slow pitch was recorded as a “change-up” on MLB Gameday. Others might called it an eephus pitch.

“I think he dropped only one tonight, against Bellinger,” Freeman said. “But it’s in the back of their minds. He knows what he’s doing out there and he did it again tonight.”

Sanchez smiled and said, “That’s my special pitch. I use it a couple of times in the game, helps me sometimes to strike out a guy, keep them (off balance). And since I’ve used it I’ve got really good results.”

What does he call it? Sanchez laughed.

“My butterfly,” he said.