Scared straight.
Faced with a reality check, the Dodgers got real. Confronted with the end, the Dodgers are just getting started.
Stepping warily into Atlanta’s Truist Park with their five-game division series tied at one game apiece and Braves’ ace Chris Sale waiting for them on the mound Tuesday, the Dodgers marched out three hours later on the verge of another champagne shower.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto was brilliant, showing everyone that they were focusing on the wrong ace.
The Dodger bats were reborn, showing everyone that they still know how to hit in October.
And, yes, the Dodgers finally have a closer, Edwin Díaz entering the ninth and allowing a leadoff double to Ozzie Albies before retiring the next three hitters for the biggest save of his brief Dodgers career.
In all, the Dodgers drowned out that horrible Tomahawk Chop with some mighty hacks of their own, winning 3-1 and setting themselves up for a gentle coast into the next round.
Seemingly moments after staring the Dodgers down with a thrilling Game 2 victory, the Braves have essentially been consigned to their rear view mirror.
Historically, the team that wins Game 3 in a best-of-five series wins that series 72% of the time, but the Dodgers don’t need some fancy stats to tell them what they know.
The Braves can’t beat the Dodgers in two straight games, and they can’t do it with one of those games at Dodger Stadium if necessary, and they can’t do it with Tyler Mahle pitching in one game and the bullpen handling the other game.
The Dodgers have Tyler Glasnow on their mound in Wednesday’s Game 4 and Tarik Skubal waiting for a possible Game 5 and this thing feels over.
It started with the Dodgers’ offense against Sale, who shut them out in a 1-0 victory over Yamamoto just last month.
This time they were patient. This time they were smart. This time they worked him for 24 pitches in the first inning, 18 in the second, 20 in the third.
All of this set up the 37-year-old Sale for a fourth-inning beatdown with some familiar Dodger postseason magic.
With Andy Pages on first after a ground-ball single — he’s breaking out of his two-year postseason slump! — Kiké Hernández drove in a hanging change-up 406 feet over the left-field wall for a two-run homer, and where have you heard this before?
Hernández is arguably the most consistently unlikely postseason hero in Dodger history. During the regular season he struggles. During the postseason he shines.
This was his 17th postseason home run, fourth in Dodger history, and remember the three home runs he hit that night in the 2017 National League Championship Series in Chicago?
He’s been doing that sort of thing ever since, and this time he was followed two batters later by another familiar October bat. It’s safe to say that Freddie Freeman has broken out of his slump, as he homered for the second time in two nights after hitting one in the previous 66 games. It was the first time Sale had given up more than two runs in an inning in three years.
That made the score 3-1 and considering Yamamoto was 33-0 with at least three runs of support in his career, this game felt over. And it was indeed over.
In notching a postseason-high 10 strikeouts over eight innings, Yamamoto showed why he — and not Skubal — is the ace of this staff.
Making his first start in 13 days, he gave up just one run on four hits in seven innings in a continuation of his postseason mastery. He now has an 8-0 career postseason record with a 2.14 ERA and that doesn’t begin to illustrate his impact.
Yamamoto was held back for this game while Skubal started the opener, but he shouldn’t take a back seat to anyone anymore this postseason. He should pitch early, often, every day if possible, because he is darn near unhittable.
Unhittable in a different sense was struggling Shohei Ohtani, who was moved down from the top of the order to the fifth spot, and it didn’t do him any good.
He failed to get a hit in four plate appearances, reacting so badly to one of Sale’s change-ups that he foolishly called for an ABS challenge that he lost.
Ohtani is still lost. But on a turning-point night in Atlanta, the Dodgers found themselves.
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