Dodgers 3-1 Braves: Yamamoto's 10-K gem hands Atlanta a 2-1 NLDS hole at Truist

Two aces, one pitch count. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was everything his legend said he'd be on Tuesday night at Truist Park, and Chris Sale was the guy Atlanta asked to beat him — just without the room to do it. Yamamoto threw seven innings of one-run ball with 10 strikeouts, Kiké Hernández and Freddie Freeman went back-to-back in the fourth, and the Dodgers took Game 3, 3-1, to grab a 2-1 NLDS lead.

The Braves are now one loss from the offseason. Here's how the series turned, why Sale's box score flatters him, and what Game 4 on Wednesday night has to decide.

The matchup was worth the wait; the result wasn't

For three innings it was the NLDS duel the whole sport wanted — 12 combined strikeouts and no runs through the first three frames. Sale was pumping his classic fastball and racked up a historic strikeout total early, but the Dodgers never stopped grinding his pitch count. That work paid off in the fourth: Hernández launched his 17th career postseason homer, and two batters later Freeman — fresh off being robbed at the wall in his previous at-bat and serenaded with boos all night — dropped a no-doubter. Just like that, a 0-0 classic was a 3-0 Dodgers lead.

Sale's line doesn't tell the story. He wasn't bad; he was emptied. Los Angeles forced him into the high-count grind that's the whole point of a lineup like theirs, and Atlanta asked him to be superhuman against a dynamo at his peak. He wasn't. Nobody is.

Yamamoto is the difference in this series

Name the stat — it all points one direction. Ten strikeouts, a career postseason high. Seven innings, four hits, one walk, one run. And per OptaSTATS, he's now the only pitcher in MLB history to win five straight postseason starts while allowing more than one run or one walk in none of them. All five on the road. Reigning World Series MVP, and he pitches like it.

Atlanta got its lone run in the fifth by loading the bases, only to strand them on two right-side groundouts from Drake Baldwin and Ronald Acuña Jr. That's the series right there: the Dodgers are 0-for-13 with runners in scoring position through three games, and they're still up 2-1 because they've scored 10 straight runs via homer to open the postseason — a record. The long ball is beating the rally.

Atlanta's bullpen did its job; the lineup didn't

Credit where it's due: behind Sale, the Braves' 'pen threw three shutout innings, with Suter, Dylan Lee and Raisel Iglesias keeping Atlanta in it. But a shutout bullpen is worthless when the offense can't score. The Braves' best chance — Albies' leadoff double in the ninth against Edwin Díaz — fizzled when the next three hitters couldn't cash it. Walks and doubles don't beat Yamamoto; early contact and damage do, and Atlanta made too little of it.

Game 4 is everything

The Dodgers can clinch a third straight NLCS berth with a win on Wednesday night at Truist — Tyler Glasnow against Tyler Mahle at 6 p.m. ET. Lose and this series is back in Los Angeles, because the Dodgers just won the two they hosted and the Braves have to protect the only one they play at home. Atlanta is on its last life, and it's asking its depth arm to outduel one more Dodger superstar.

Bird Gang bottom line

This was the matchup Atlanta wanted and the result it didn't. Sale did everything except pitch against himself, and in October the ballpark rewards the pressure that grinds a great arm down. The Braves are 2-1 on the wrong side and need Mahle to be better than Glasnow on Wednesday — or it's a long flight to L.A. for a game five that might not matter. Pick your winner of the Game 4 duel on Pick'em Baby and see if you read this October better than the Braves' bats did.

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