The Atlanta Braves beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 3-2 at Dodger Stadium on Sunday night to even their National League Division Series at a game apiece, scoring what proved to be the decisive run in the fifth inning on a wild pitch and then holding off a late Dodgers home-run push to send the series back to Atlanta tied.
Michael Harris II tripled to lead off the fifth and scored when Dodgers reliever Kris Bubic bounced a pitch past the plate, breaking a 1-1 tie and putting the Braves back in front for good. Harris added an RBI double in the seventh that brought home Matt Olson, finishing the night 3-for-5 with three hits, a run scored and an RBI in the biggest offensive performance by either team's hitters through the first two games of the series.
Six Pitchers, Two Solo Homers
Braves starter Ray Kerr worked 2 2/3 scoreless innings with four strikeouts before handing off to a parade of relievers who combined to cover the rest of the way. Dodgers starter Blake Snell matched Atlanta's staff for stretches, striking out five but issuing five walks across his own 3 2/3 innings. Atlanta used six pitchers in all, with only two of them allowing a run: Grant Holmes surrendered Freddie Freeman's game-tying solo homer in the fourth, and Didier Fuentes, who worked the final three-plus innings after entering in the sixth, gave up Max Muncy's solo homer in the ninth. Dylan Lee, who was pitching for Atlanta in the half-inning right after the Braves grabbed the lead, was credited with the win after Robert Suarez worked out of the jam Lee left behind; closer Raisel Iglesias got the last out for the save.
Los Angeles actually out-homered Atlanta in the game, 2-0, but managed only two runs in the process. Freeman's fourth-inning shot tied the score at 1-1, and Muncy's two-out blast in the ninth briefly cut the deficit back to one run, but the Dodgers could not complete the rally, and reliever Kris Bubic was charged with the loss for the wild pitch that let Harris score. Mauricio Dubón's infield single had driven in the game's first run back in the opening inning, scoring Ronald Acuña Jr.
The split leaves the best-of-five series even after Los Angeles took Game 1 at home. It also reverses a lopsided regular-season trend: Atlanta won five of the six meetings between the two clubs during the regular season, a split that made Sunday's result less surprising to Braves fans than the Dodgers' home-field advantage might have suggested entering the series.
The Series Shifts to Atlanta
Game 3 is scheduled for Tuesday night at Truist Park, putting the pressure back on Los Angeles to win on the road after dropping its home-field cushion. A Braves win would put Atlanta one victory from the National League Championship Series; a Dodgers win would even the pressure again heading into a potential Game 4 in Atlanta later in the week.
Sunday's win continued a strong postseason for Harris, who powered Atlanta's run through the wild-card round the previous week with a three-run homer that helped eliminate the Philadelphia Phillies. His production at the plate has now carried over into the division series, giving the Braves a hitter who has delivered in moments the team needed most across two different postseason series.
For the Dodgers, the loss puts more weight on their rotation and bullpen to limit Atlanta's lineup as the series moves to a ballpark where the Braves have had the better of the two teams in recent meetings. Los Angeles will need to find offense beyond solo home runs, which have provided plenty of distance but not, so far, enough runs when it has mattered most in this series.
Sunday's result was the first real test of how Atlanta's pitching staff would respond after dropping the opener, and Kerr passed it, working around a couple of baserunners to keep the Dodgers off the board through his 2 2/3 innings and setting the tone for a bullpen that needed to cover six and a third innings behind him.
Both managers will have decisions to make about their rotations the rest of the way, with the Braves now needing only two more wins, in any combination of the remaining games, to reach the NLCS. The Dodgers, meanwhile, will lean on a deeper bench and bullpen to try to steal a game on the road before the series can return to Los Angeles for a potential deciding Game 5.
