ATLANTA –– Two superstar pitchers were on the mound.
Two teams’ seasons were essentially hanging in the balance.
And in Game 3 of the National League Division Series, an all-time, old-fashioned, heavyweight October pitchers’ duel came down to two no-doubt, home run swings.
With a 3-1 win on Tuesday night that represented a monumental step in their pursuit of a third-straight World Series, the Dodgers and Yoshinobu Yamamoto got the best of Chris Sale and the Atlanta Braves.
Sale gave up a pair of home runs in the top of the fourth inning, with Kiké Hernández launching a two-run blast to left and Freddie Freeman belting a solo shot to right-center.
Yamamoto made the lead stand up, spinning seven spectacular innings of one-run ball in his latest playoff gem.
And now, the Dodgers hold a 2-1 lead in this best-of-five series, needing just one more victory to advance with Tyler Glasnow lined up for Game 4 and Tarik Skubal on deck for a Game 5, if it gets there.
“We know we’re in for a battle,” veteran Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas said pregame.
Once again, as they’ve done so often in October over the last couple years, the Dodgers were unfazed by the challenge.
The night before Game 3’s titanic pitching clash, Dodgers hitting coach Aaron Bates laid out the situation succinctly.
To go deep in the playoffs, he said, “you’re gonna have to beat some really good pitchers … You’re gonna have to face an ace.”
That, of course, applied to both teams, with Yamamoto making his 2026 postseason debut after a 14-9, 2.53 ERA regular season.
Still, the left-handed Sale represented a unique challenge for the two-time defending champions, entering Tuesday off the back of a career-best 2.16 ERA this year (even better than his 2024 Cy Young campaign), two clutch performances in last week’s wild-card round, and a five-hit shutout of the Dodgers the last time he faced them in August.
Thus, the Dodgers made adjustments.
Hernández and Rojas were drawn into the starting lineup, replacing Max Muncy and Tommy Edman to give the club two extra right-handed bats. Banged-up slugger Shohei Ohtani was also dropped to the No. 5 spot in the batting order, the lowest he had hit since the 2020 season with the Angels.
“I just feel this gives us the best chance to beat the Braves today, and combat Sale,” manager Dave Roberts explained pregame. “I feel good about it.”
Indeed, the Dodgers had Sale under pressure early and often, putting runners in scoring position in each of their first three trips to the plate (including a bases-loaded opportunity in the third) while driving up his pitch count with stressful, laborious innings.
Still, those were nothing but moral victories initially, with Sale wiggling out of each threat to keep the game scoreless –– with the help of outfielder Mauricio Dubón robbing Freeman of a surefire two-run homer on a leaping, full-sprint effort at the short wall in left in the third.
An inning later, however, the Dodgers would finally break through.
In his latest bit of postseason heroics, it was Hernández who broke the deadlock from the No. 9 spot, getting a changeup from Sale that caught too much of the inside corner of the plate and sending it screaming out to left for a two-run homer.
It was the 17th home run of Hernández’s illustrious playoff career. It was a drive he celebrated with a primal scream as he rounded first base. And it turned a tense Truist Park crowd silent, save for raucous reception coming from the visiting third-base dugout.
Two batters later, the Dodgers bench would be going wild again.
Making his first postseason appearance in Atlanta since leaving the Braves for the Dodgers as a free agent five years ago, Freeman made sure not to be robbed again.
He squared up an inside fastball from Sale and uncorked a towering 399-foot bomb, sending it safely over the brick wall in right-center to make it a 3-0 game.
Of Sale’s 13 career playoff appearances, it was the first since his postseason debut in 2017 in which he had given up multiple home runs. And though the Dodgers have yet to score any way other than the long ball this series –– falling to 0-for-13 with runners in scoring position after another hitless showing in that category Tuesday –– Yamamoto made sure the two big flies would stand up.
Tapping back into his historically dominant form from last October, Yamamoto largely breezed through a four-hit, one-walk, 10-strikeout masterpiece, burying the Braves with a flurry of fastballs, curveballs and splitters in a 98-pitch effort.
He faced his only real trouble in the fifth, when he limited the Braves to just one run from a bases-loaded, one-out jam.
And by the time he turned things over to the bullpen –– where Tanner Scott and, in his return to closing duties, Edwin Díaz finished off the game –– he had already outlasted Sale (who departed after the fifth) and put the Dodgers on track to a pivotal Game 3 victory.
