ATLANTA — October reveals certain truths about baseball players and teams, and the Los Angeles Dodgers have played enough games in recent postseasons to have a handful of such established facts. One of them is that Kiké Hernández, at some point, will deliver a momentous hit. And another is that Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the best big-game pitcher in the world.
The convergence of both on Tuesday night delivered the Dodgers their biggest win of the year — and put the Atlanta Braves on the brink of playoff elimination. Fueled by Hernández’s two-run home run that broke a scoreless tie and seven clinical innings from Yamamoto, the Dodgers stymied the Braves 3-1 to take a two games-to-one advantage in the best-of-five National League Division Series.
With Truist Park filled to the brim and aflame for a dream pitching matchup — Yamamoto, the reigning World Series MVP, against Chris Sale, a future Hall of Famer who continues to perform at elite levels — the Dodgers did what they’ve done for three years running: just enough to scratch out a crucial win.
Yamamoto is the embodiment of that, from his heroics in last year’s World Series win to his performance in Game 3. He struck out a postseason career-high 10 batters, allowed just four hits and yielded one run while keeping the Braves off-balance with a six-pitch array that drew 17 swings and misses.
“All of my pitches were really good,” Yamamoto said, and the Braves certainly concurred. They recognized, entering Game 3, the charge they faced. Yamamoto is the ultimate October litmus test of an offense’s ability because of his gift to shapeshift. One start he can be a power pitcher, the next a command god, the following a spin doctor. He is large, he contains multitudes and, on certain nights, like Tuesday, he can be all of them combined.
“He just has a way to just make pitches,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, “calm his heartbeat.”
The first three innings didn’t give his ticker much reason to thump. Atlanta mustered just one baserunner — on a bunt single. Sale, in the meantime, was likewise carving the Dodgers’ lineup until he made a mistake pitch to the No. 9 hitter.
Hernández, of course, is no ordinary 9-hole dweller. He is the epitome of the October performer, with a career OPS 120 points higher in the playoffs than the regular season. Playing instead of third baseman Max Muncy — one of a number of left-handed hitters who either didn’t play or got moved down in the lineup out of respect to Sale — he followed a leadoff single by Andy Pages by sending a Sale changeup out to left field. Almost exclusively a fastball-slider pitcher, Sale started Hernández’s at-bat with a changeup and then doubled up on it.
“We needed a little bit of that Kiké dust,” Roberts said. “And he’s always prepared. And he loves moments like this. He has a way to lock in.”
He’s not the only one. Freddie Freeman, another central figure in the Dodgers’ back-to-back championships, added to Sale’s inning of doom with a piece of hitting that could be part of his future Hall of Fame sizzle reel: Not only did he get to a 96 mph Sale sinker that was boring in on him, but he also manipulated his bat — which was almost vertical upon contact — to connect and drive it over the right-field fence.
It was Freeman’s first postseason game at Truist Park since 2021, after which he left the Braves for the Dodgers in free agency, and the boos that cascaded during his first at-bat only grew louder after he staked Los Angeles a 3-0 lead.
“One bad inning can kind of ruin a whole game,” Sale said. “Yanked a changeup to Kiké. We all know what he can do in October when the lights are bright.”
Sale was pitching only because Atlanta manager Walt Weiss chose to give him an extra day of rest after he closed out the Braves’ wild-card series against Philadelphia. Sale intended to throw as deep into Game 3 as possible. The Dodgers intended to chase him from Game 3 as soon as possible — and were more successful, even if Sale finished with five innings, punched out seven and didn’t walk a batter.
“Getting Chris Sale out of the game after five innings is a huge win no matter what the score is,” Freeman said.
The score became 3-1 when Yamamoto ran into his first struggles in the fifth — enough to prompt a pair of mound visits, from pitching coach Mark Prior and Hernández, who, Yamamoto said, “told me just be yourself, even though that was a little bit like a dirty word.”
Mauricio Dubón led off with a single. Lane Thomas followed with another. After an Austin Riley popup, Rowdy Tellez drew a four-pitch walk, Yamamoto’s lone free pass of the night. With the bases loaded and one out, Yamamoto induced a run-scoring groundout from Drake Baldwin before Ronald Acuña Jr. beat a 3-1 splitter into the ground to close out the inning with a whimper.
From there, Yamamoto went six up, six down, finishing with 62 strikes on 98 pitches and a litany of weak contact. He drew 17 swings on fastballs and didn’t allow a hit on them. Nine curveball swings produced zero hits. And the lone knock on 10 splitter swings came from Dubón.
“I usually care about the pitch count during the regular season,” Yamamoto said. “But it’s the postseason, and one thing I was trying to do was one inning at a time. And then the worst scenario, I can give up a few runs. But just one inning at a time, and that should lead me deeper into the game.”
“One bad inning can kind of ruin a whole game. Yanked a changeup to Kiké [Hernández]. We all know what he can do in October when the lights are bright.”
Chris Sale
The seven innings set up the Dodgers beautifully for the coming days. With Tanner Scott covering the eighth and erstwhile closer Edwin Díaz looking to regain his role and working around a leadoff double for a clean ninth, Los Angeles heads into Game 4 on Wednesday with a fully loaded and well-rested bullpen for the Battle of the Tylers, in which the Dodgers will send Tyler Glasnow to face Atlanta’s No. 2 starter, Tyler Mahle.
Both can only hope to turn in a performance like Yamamoto, who over the past three years has thrown 17⅓ more innings than any pitcher in the postseason and owns a 2.14 ERA. The pitcher with the second-most innings and the lowest ERA of any starter with more than 25 in that span: Tarik Skubal, who would start Game 5 for the Dodgers if Atlanta forces a win-or-go-home affair.
“When he goes out there, I’m more confident that we’re going to win no matter what happens,” Skubal said of Yamamoto. “I’ve seen him respond to some adversity, getting tagged early in games, getting tagged late in games. He always responds the right way. And all you can ask out of your teammate is the guy that’s going to go out there and do everything he can to keep us in a ballgame. He does that. So it’s not fair to expect it, but it’s not surprising at all.”
None of it was, really. Yamamoto shoving. Hernández raking. The Dodgers winning. They are part and parcel of October, and they came at just the right time to keep alive hopes of baseball’s first three-peat since the New York Yankees from 1998 to 2000.
