Braves fall to Dodgers in Game 4: Pages' two-run single ends the season, and the bullpen math was always the difference

For three innings at Truist, the plan was working. Michael Harris II turned a 107-mph liner, a steal, and a wild pitch into a 1-0 Braves lead off Tyler Glasnow, and Tyler Mahle matched L.A.'s best pitcher pitch for pitch. Then the relays that carried this whole October — a bullpen that needed four innings in Game 2 and more in Game 3 — finally gave out in the seventh, and Andy Pages made the season pay for it. The Dodgers won 4-1 and took the series 3-1. It's over.

Harris did his part, and the offense didn't do anything else

Harris was the only Brave who showed up ready to manufacture against Glasnow. He shot the first pitch through the right side at 107 mph, took his vault lead, swiped second, tagged to third on an Olson groundout, and read the spiked curveball to Will Smith perfectly to score on the wild pitch. One run, fully earned, almost entirely by one guy.

After that, nothing. Glasnow settled, the reserve-heavy Braves lineup had no second act against him, and the runs the Braves spent all week scraping together went quiet again. Four games, and the offense basically lived and died on whatever Harris and Riley could drag in themselves.

The seventh inning was the season in one swing

Read the pitch counts: Dave Roberts had the freshest arms in baseball and used every one of them the instant Glasnow wobbled. Walt Weiss had already leaned on his pen for four innings in Game 2 and four more in Game 3, and when he had to stretch it one more time, the depth ran out. Pages's two-run single in the seventh wasn't a bolt — it was the bill coming due.

Edwin Díaz, back from the neck issue and the long rehab, closed out his second straight Dodger win in Atlanta. That's the difference between the two dugouts this October, and it's the one that hurt most.

What this October actually was

Remember where this started: a winner-take-all Wild Card Game against the Phillies, a patchwork rotation, a roster held together by masking tape and Chris Sale's left arm. They killed Philadelphia, stole a game in L.A., evened the series at home, and pushed the best team in baseball to a coin flip. Most of the roster spent September on the IL, and the guys left standing got within a swing of the NLCS.

Anthony Rendon and the rest are headed home with the 94-win, NL East-champion receipts intact. The window isn't closed — but the bill for a bullpen run on fumes came due, and now the front office has a whole winter to figure out how to build one that doesn't need four innings every night.

Bird Gang bottom line

There's no shame in losing to this Dodgers team in four games, but there is a real question embedded in how it ended: Atlanta's identity was defense and a patchwork pen, and the pen ran out of pitches in the seventh inning of the biggest game of the year. Fix the depth, and this core — Sale, Riley, Olson, Harris, Acuña — is right back in this exact spot next October with a shot.

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