Snell Struggles as Braves Even the Series in Los Angeles

Trying to dissect Blake Snell’s numbers from Sunday night’s 3-2 loss to the Atlanta Braves is enough to leave most fantasy baseball players scratching their heads. On the surface, three hits, one earned run and five strikeouts over 90 pitches doesn't look particularly alarming. Then you notice the five walks and the fact that Snell needed all 90 pitches to get through just 3⅔ innings, and suddenly the box score begins to tell a considerably different story.

Snell simply never found a rhythm. He needed 27 pitches to get through the first inning, throwing only three more strikes than balls, and finished with 47 strikes among those 90 pitches. Atlanta managed only three hits against him and scored once, but the constant traffic eventually forced the Dodgers into a bullpen game much earlier than they wanted. It was Snell’s shortest postseason outing since 2022 with San Diego.

There is a defense to be made for Snell, at least in the simplest interpretation of the starting pitcher’s job description. Pitch well enough to give your team a chance to win. By allowing only one run, Snell technically accomplished that part of the assignment. The problem was that the Dodgers’ offense did not exactly send him a thank-you card.

Los Angeles went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position and left seven men on base through the first five innings. The biggest opportunity came in the fifth, when Mookie Betts walked and Shohei Ohtani singled to open the inning with nobody out. That was the moment when the Dodgers had Atlanta on the ropes.

Instead, Will Smith and Freddie Freeman both flew out, and Teoscar Hernández struck out.

Opportunity gone.

From there, the Braves’ bullpen essentially put the Dodgers in a batting cage and forgot to turn the pitching machine off. Atlanta retired 14 consecutive Dodgers hitters after Ohtani’s single.

Freeman had briefly tied the game in the fourth inning, hitting a two-strike solo homer off Grant Holmes against his former club. But Freeman’s blast turned out to be the Dodgers’ only run until Max Muncy launched a two-strike, two-out homer in the ninth to make it 3-2. That homer at least gave the Dodgers one final heartbeat.

It wasn't enough.

The Braves had their own problems keeping runners from wandering around the bases. Atlanta stranded 11, but unlike the Dodgers, they managed to string together enough of their opportunities to put three runs on the board.

Mauricio Dubón delivered the first blow in the opening inning, bringing Ronald Acuña Jr. home with a two-out, bases-loaded single. Mookie Betts made a diving stop, but his throw arrived too late.

Atlanta regained the lead in the fifth when Michael Harris II tripled with two outs and scored on a wild pitch from Kris Bubic. Harris was a problem all night, adding an RBI double against Edgardo Henriquez in the seventh and finishing a home run short of the cycle.

It was the sort of postseason performance that tends to produce an unexpected name in the headlines.

As Braves manager Walt Weiss put it:

“Postseason, you never know what’s going to happen. There’s no blueprint. There’s no playbook. There seems to always be unsung heroes in the postseason.”

Harris certainly qualified.

The Dodgers had some late drama of their own, but the Braves had already constructed enough of a cushion to survive it. Raisel Iglesias, Atlanta’s fifth reliever of the evening, entered in the ninth and recorded the final out after getting pinch-hitter Josue De Paula to foul out to third.

The Braves had decided to give Chris Sale additional rest rather than use him in Game 2, turning the game into a bullpen exercise from the outset. Atlanta’s relief corps responded by shutting down the Dodgers after that fifth-inning opportunity.

“They’re going to use any pitcher, try to get every matchup possible,” Dave Roberts said. “They're going to ride certain guys, and obviously they use their bullpen accordingly.”

That was precisely what happened.

Edwin Díaz was one of the bright spots for Los Angeles, continuing to embrace the role he was brought here to fill.

“That’s why I came here, to help this team to win, pitch in big spots,” Díaz said. “I want to keep getting the ball and do my job. I’m always ready.”

Unfortunately, the Dodgers needed more than a ready bullpen. They needed some offense.

Ohtani went 1-for-4 with two strikeouts and was not a major factor for the second consecutive game. Roberts pointed directly at one of the problems afterward.

“If you look at the at-bats, there’s a lot of chase,” Roberts said. “It’s hard to square up, put good swings on balls that are out of the zone.”

Freeman put the offensive problem more simply.

“Gotta find a way to score some runs without hitting a home run; that's our biggest thing right now.”

Therein lies the difference between the two games.

Friday’s opener was a 5-3 Dodgers victory featuring five home runs. Sunday was a 3-2 game in which the Dodgers needed Muncy’s ninth-inning blast simply to get within one.

Home runs are wonderful. They are also not always available on demand, despite what the Dodgers’ recent history might suggest.

And then there was Roki Sasaki, who provided one final bit of postseason drama in the eighth. The Dodgers’ sixth reliever loaded the bases with one out after a walk, a hit batter and an intentional walk. Acuña then grounded into an inning-ending double play, allowing Sasaki to escape without further damage.

It was hardly clean. But clean was in short supply on a night when both clubs were asking their bullpens to do considerably more work than originally planned.

Now the series moves to Atlanta tied 1-1, exactly the sort of split neither team would have objected to before the series began.

“We knew it was gonna be a battle,” Roberts said. “We got our work cut out, so now it’s a 3-game series.”

Betts agreed.

“It’s just not gonna be easy, but I mean we knew that from the beginning,” he said. “We know it’s gonna be a tough matchup, no matter who’s on the mound.”

The Dodgers will have a travel day before Yoshinobu Yamamoto takes the ball Tuesday against Chris Sale in Atlanta.

Game 1 belonged to Los Angeles.

Game 2 belonged to Atlanta.

Now the NLDS becomes what everyone knew it would be all along: a best-of-three series, with the Dodgers needing to win two of the next three to keep their championship defense moving forward.