Yamamoto Deals, Kiké and Freddie Deliver as Dodgers Take 2-1 NLDS Lead

Sometimes the best-laid plans actually work.

The last time the Dodgers saw Chris Sale, it was in late August in Los Angeles, and the Atlanta ace authored one of those games that makes an opposing lineup question whether somebody has secretly moved the mound five feet closer to home plate. Sale threw a complete-game shutout, allowing five hits and no walks while leading the Braves to a 1-0 victory in a classic pitchers’ duel with Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

The Dodgers had seen enough. When the two aces met again Tuesday night in Atlanta for Game 3 of the National League Division Series, Los Angeles came armed with a blueprint designed to prevent a repeat performance. For once, the best-laid plan didn't wind up in the baseball trash can. It worked almost exactly as designed.

Sale looked very much like the pitcher the Dodgers remembered in the early going, striking out five of the first six batters he faced and keeping the Dodgers off the scoreboard through three innings. If you were looking only at the scoreboard, it appeared Atlanta's ace was once again dictating terms.

But something else was happening, something far less noticeable to anybody watching only the score. The Dodgers were making Sale work. They were selective, extending at-bats and refusing to chase the game. Although Sale had not surrendered a run through three innings, he had already thrown 62 pitches, and that was the tell. The Dodgers had put the leadoff runner on in three of the first four innings, repeatedly forcing Sale to begin innings with immediate traffic and stress. They weren't getting rewarded yet, but they were making the Braves' ace spend something much more valuable than runs.

Pitches.

By the fourth inning, the investment paid off. Andy Pages led off with a single to left, putting another runner aboard, and this time Sale couldn't escape. Kiké Hernández stepped into the box for his first postseason at-bat, and if there was any question about whether the man who seems to have been genetically engineered for October was ready for the moment, it didn't last long. Hernández ripped a home run to left field, putting the Dodgers ahead 2-0. Two batters later, Freddie Freeman sent a Sale sinker toward right-center field and put it over the wall. Suddenly it was 3-0 Dodgers.

The Dodgers had gotten three runs against Sale, and as Mookie Betts later told Dave Roberts, “Scoring 3 on Chris Sale, that's like scoring 10.” There may not be a better way to explain the significance of what had just happened. The Dodgers weren't simply beating Sale. They were beating him by refusing to play the game at his pace.

Roberts was especially proud of that approach afterward. “The thing I was most proud of is we played tonight like an elimination game,” he said. He pointed specifically to Betts' early at-bats, including one in which Mookie fought off pitches and helped establish the tone for the entire lineup. “We spoiled a lot of pitches,” Roberts said. “Took a lot of really good pitches that we normally don't do.” It was the game within the game, and it was working.

While the Dodgers were patiently dismantling Sale one pitch at a time, Yamamoto was doing what Yamamoto does when he gets into one of those zones. He was pitching. Not performing, not searching for strikeouts and not trying to overwhelm anybody. Just pitching.

Yamamoto was about as calm and collected as anyone you've ever seen on a mound, but underneath that calm is something considerably more dangerous. There is a competitive fire in Yamamoto that doesn't always show itself on his face. On Tuesday, it showed itself in the numbers: seven innings, 98 pitches, four hits, one walk, one run and 10 strikeouts.

This was the Yamamoto the Dodgers believed they were getting when they signed him, and the Yamamoto who became the World Series MVP a year ago. There was one moment when Atlanta finally managed to create some legitimate stress. After Yamamoto had cruised through the early innings, the Braves began the fifth with trouble. The bases became crowded, and suddenly the Dodgers' three-run advantage didn't feel quite as comfortable. Atlanta eventually got its only run against Yamamoto when a ground ball from Drake Baldwin brought Mauricio Dubón home.

But that was it.

Yamamoto bent without breaking, then went right back to work. Roberts noticed it.

“I think it was the fifth inning where they started to be a little bit of stress,” Roberts said. “But, you know, managed the situation, limited damage, and you know, to go out there and give us two more was pretty impressive.”

Yamamoto finished the seventh with 10 strikeouts, walked off the mound and, for once, allowed himself a little visible satisfaction. That smile said plenty. The normally composed Yamamoto was high-fiving teammates as he left the field, and there was no reason to hide it. He had just outdueled Sale in Atlanta in a postseason game that suddenly looked an awful lot like the kind of game that had made Yamamoto so important to this Dodgers team in the first place.

He was nails.

And now came the bullpen.

Tanner Scott handled the eighth and did exactly what the Dodgers needed, striking out two and getting a groundout to keep Atlanta off the board.

Then came the moment that had Dodger fans everywhere collectively reaching for the imaginary emergency oxygen mask.

Can you hear the trumpets?

Edwin Díaz.

Yes, that Edwin Díaz.

The pitcher who sputtered when the season began, went down with elbow surgery and then had to be carefully worked back into the Dodgers' bullpen through low-leverage situations was now being handed the ninth with the Dodgers holding a two-run lead in an NLDS game.

It was a ballsy move, and for a while it looked like the kind of move that could make a manager age approximately six years in three minutes. Ozzie Albies greeted Díaz with a leadoff double off the wall in right-center, and suddenly the tying run was standing at the plate. Fasten the seat belts. Buckle the chinstraps. Maybe stop breathing entirely.

Then Díaz settled down.

A groundout moved Albies to third. A foul out to right left the Dodgers one out away. One more ground ball ended it.

Dodgers 3, Braves 1.

Díaz had survived the ninth, and the Dodgers had survived another Atlanta attempt to turn the game into something it didn't need to become. Roberts' gamble had worked, and somewhere, every Dodger fan who had watched Díaz walk toward the mound was finally breathing again.

There were plenty of other little moments tucked inside the victory. Shohei Ohtani, moved down to fifth in the order by Roberts because he was just 3-for-15 against Sale coming into the game, actually created one of the stranger opportunities of the night. In the third inning, after Sale had already put runners aboard, Ohtani reached on catcher interference, loading the bases. The Dodgers couldn't cash it in, but Roberts' reasoning for moving Ohtani down had been sound: create opportunities for him rather than simply asking him to beat Sale at the top of the lineup.

There was also the third-inning robbery. Freeman appeared to have given the Dodgers their first home run of the night, only for Mauricio Dubón to leap at the left-field wall and steal it away. Freeman simply waited another inning. He wasn't going to be denied twice.

And then there was Kiké.

Hernández summed up his mindset perfectly: “The one thing that I knew was that I was gonna be ready whenever, you know, Doc put my name in the lineup.” That is Kiké Hernández in October.

Roberts called him a “big time player” and said the Dodgers needed some of that “Kiké dust.” It arrived immediately. Hernández doubled up on a changeup from Sale and put a perfect swing on it.

During the broadcast came another reminder of why nobody should ever attempt to explain Kiké Hernández with ordinary baseball logic. His agent, Joel Wolfe, was asked about Kiké's October surges.

The answer: “It’s a phenomenon. We cryogenically freeze him until September.”

At this point, there is really no reason to dispute the science.

Freeman's night was a little more complicated emotionally. The former Brave was booed by portions of the Atlanta crowd, something that wasn't lost on Roberts.

“It was great,” Roberts said when asked about watching Freeman get booed and then nearly hit two home runs. “Not many people have success against Sale.”

Freeman ultimately got his homer, the 18th of his postseason career, and he did it against the pitcher the Dodgers had specifically built a plan around. He also took the moment in the larger context of October baseball.

“We've got to treat every game like an elimination game and go out there and play with urgency.”

That urgency was visible throughout the night. The Dodgers didn't blow Atlanta away. They didn't need to. They executed. They made Sale throw 95 pitches through the middle of the fifth before Atlanta finally went to its bullpen. They put leadoff runners aboard repeatedly, made him work for outs and waited for their opportunities.

When those opportunities arrived, Kiké and Freddie supplied the thunder.

Yamamoto supplied everything else.

There was one unfortunate footnote in the eighth inning when Miguel Rojas appeared to hurt his back in the field and couldn't finish the following at-bat. The Dodgers later announced it as lower back pain, and Tommy Edman took over. But even that couldn't derail the night.

The Dodgers had come to Atlanta knowing exactly what was at stake. A loss would have put them in a very different position heading into Game 4. Instead, they walked out with a 2-1 series lead, one victory away from advancing.

Perhaps more importantly, they walked out having answered the question that had lingered since that August night.

Could they solve Chris Sale?

They could.

They didn't do it by trying to overpower him. They did it by making him work. And while Sale was counting pitches, Yamamoto was counting outs.

Seven innings later, the Dodgers had three runs, Atlanta had one, and the most important number of all sat next to Los Angeles' name.

Two.

The Dodgers now lead the NLDS 2-1. One more win sends them forward.

And if they need Yamamoto again?

Well, after tonight, he has already delivered the message.

“OK.”

And somewhere in parts unknown in Los Angeles, a lone Dodger parking lot attendant named Ronnie is saying, “See, I told you!”