Duel in Atlanta! Sale Tops Yamamoto

Chris Sale and Yoshinobu Yamamoto turned a critical Dodgers-Braves matchup into a pitchers' duel. Unfortunately for Los Angeles, Atlanta only needed one pitch to win it.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto got touched on the very first pitch of the night. Drake Baldwin ambushed the opening fastball and deposited it into the right-field seats, giving Atlanta a 1-0 lead before most of the crowd had settled into its seats.

That turned out to be all the Braves would need.

What followed was about as pure a pitchers' duel as August baseball gets. Yamamoto and Chris Sale locked horns and proceeded to spend the next eight-plus innings making the hitters look like they had wandered into the wrong stadium.

For Yamamoto, the first pitch was the blemish. After that, he was outstanding, allowing only four hits while striking out eight over 6⅓ innings.

"I knew it was going to be a neck and neck game. He is a great pitcher, so I had to focus on my execution. However, the first pitch kind of got away from me. It's a great lineup, I knew that. So, I just had to stay sharp for the whole rest of the game."

Sale, meanwhile, apparently decided that one run was going to be plenty.

The 37-year-old left-hander threw 80 of his 109 pitches for strikes, walked nobody and struck out 11 while completing the game. It was his first complete game since 2019 and his fourth career shutout.

The sellout crowd of 39,650 knew what was happening when Sale walked back toward the mound for the ninth inning. Atlanta had relievers warming, but manager Walt Weiss left his ace in.

Freddie Freeman opened the inning with a single, providing the Dodgers with one final glimmer of hope.

Sale apparently had other plans.

Teoscar Hernández popped out. Alek Thomas, running for Freeman, was erased at second on Miguel Rojas' fielder's choice grounder. Then Sale finished it himself, striking out Alex Call to complete his 17th career complete game.

Eleven strikeouts. No walks. Five hits. One run.

That was the entire evening.

"Sale had it and we didn't have much of an answer today," Mookie Betts said.

Hard to improve on that.

For Yamamoto, there was nothing particularly mysterious about the night. He made one mistake with the very first pitch, watched Baldwin turn it into the only run of the game and then spent the rest of his outing trying to keep the Dodgers within striking distance.

He did exactly that.

The Dodgers simply never struck back.

And so, after dropping the first two games of the series in considerably more chaotic fashion, Los Angeles managed to lose the finale in the most frustrating way possible: there wasn't much to criticize.

No bullpen collapse. No bases-loaded disaster. No nine-run inning.

Just one pitch.

And one opposing pitcher who wouldn't give them another chance.

Three games in Atlanta, three one-run losses for the Dodgers. That’s how thin the margin has become between these two National League powers, and with the Braves now just one game behind Los Angeles for the No. 2 spot, this race looks increasingly like one that could go right down to the wire in September.

The three-game sweep gives Atlanta all six games in the season series against Los Angeles and pulls the Braves to within one game of the Dodgers for the second-best record in the National League.

Which, as everyone keeps pointing out, matters because the No. 2 seed gets to skip the three-game wild-card series that nobody wants any part of.

So, the Dodgers leave Atlanta having been swept, with Roki Sasaki headed to the injured list, their bullpen under considerable scrutiny and their margin over the Braves reduced to a single game.

Dave Roberts, naturally, had the prescribed remedy.

"We just gotta flush it. I wish we played better, I wish we would've won the game, I wish we would've won the series. It didn't happen."

There it is again.

Flush it.

At this point, somebody might want to call Roto-Rooter and see if they're interested in buying some advertising space on the Dodgers' dugout. Because if Roberts keeps reaching for that particular metaphor, Los Angeles may eventually need a sponsorship deal just to keep up with the plumbing bill.

The Dodgers now head to Detroit, where Tarik Skubal is scheduled to make an emotional return to his former home against the Tigers.

After three nights in Atlanta, a change of scenery probably won't hurt.

Neither will a little offense.

Because after watching Chris Sale throw a five-hit shutout, the Dodgers can at least say they know exactly what a good pitching performance looks like.

They just didn't have one run to spare.

Braves 1, Dodgers 0.

Two pitchers. One mistake. One run. Nine innings later, the Braves had a sweep and the Dodgers had another reminder that in a pitchers’ duel, there isn't much room for error.