DODGER STADIUM (Los Angeles) – With Chris Sale unavailable and the Braves needing two bullpen games to get through the first two games of the National League Division Series on the road against two Cy Young Award winners, they still found a way to get back to Atlanta with the series tied at one game apiece.
In came the extension of the deadline of avoidance, Tarik Skubal “as advertised” in Game 1, but Blake Snell couldn’t pick up where Skubal left off.
The Braves patiently waited out the lefty, who couldn’t find the zone on a short out, and held the Dodgers’ potent offense to one run with two outs in the ninth inning when Max Muncy cut his team’s deficit in half with a single off Didier Fuentes.
Until his last outing, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts called up rookie Josue De Paula for his first career playoff appearance. The Braves manager countered with closer Raisel Iglesias, who induced a pop-up to complete the 3-2 win.
On one side was two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell. On the other side was Ray Kerr, a two-time college freshman.
Of course, it was the latter who left the game with a 1-0 lead.
This is Ray Kerr’s October and we’re all living it.
(Photo by Daniel Shirey / MLB Pictures via Getty Images)
“Ray Kerr is awesome, man,” Weiss said. “He did it again.”
Kerr revealed he was starting Sunday’s game on the morning of the game.
“I said, ‘OK, let’s take it,”’ Kerr said. “Just another Sunday, right?”
It certainly seemed that way, the way he calmly handled the high-pressure posts.
Considering his journey and the will and stamina it took the 32-year-old to reach baseball’s grandest stage, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Kerr grew up in foster care, attended junior college, became academically ineligible, returned home to Reno, Nevada, worked at 7-Eleven and a movie theater, and thought this might be what the rest of his life looked like. But then he went to another community college, pitched well, excelled during the Alaska summer league, got noticed by the Mariners, signed a minor league deal and climbed the professional ladder.
He was coming off a two-year layoff following Tommy John surgery when he returned to a big-league lineup this year for the first time since 2024. After making nine regular-season appearances for the Braves, he took the mound to start the decisive Game 3 of the wild-card series and defeated the Phillies’ Aaron Nola in 3 innings.
For his output, he was expected to go only an inning or two. Instead, he powered through Snell over 2.2 scoreless innings, striking out four and setting the stage for the Braves’ upset.
“That was a big start, or opener, or whatever you want to call it, in two big games for us,” catcher Drake Baldwin told me. “It says a lot about him.”
2. The Dodgers’ rotation may not be as invincible as we thought
If the Dodgers’ postseason rotation was supposed to be impenetrable, impenetrable, invincible, Sunday night proved otherwise.
Early last October, Snell looked like the pitcher the Dodgers paid for, combining to allow two runs on 28 hits and five walks over 21 innings in his first three starts of the 2025 postseason.
That wasn’t the version of the left-handed pitcher that showed up Sunday in his first start of the 2026 postseason.
(Photo by Luke Hales/Getty Images)
Snell allowed five passes in Game 2 of the NLDS alone, looking rusty after dealing with a season-ending groin injury that limited him to just five innings of work over the final two weeks of the regular season. Lacking control, Snell needed 90 pitches to go 3.2 innings. He needed four pitches or more against each of the last 10 batters he faced and was unable to get out of the fourth inning after his fifth and final walk of the day.
“He was just battling himself with his delivery the whole game,” Roberts said. “I think overall, it wasn’t hip. He just wasn’t sharp tonight.”
However, he limited the Braves to just one run after Brock Stewart came in and retired Ronald Acuña Jr. to clean up his fourth mess.
Still, it wasn’t the outing they expected from Snell as he posted a 1.13 ERA in his final eight regular-season starts after returning from an elbow procedure.
3. Harris passes Freeman
A nagging right knee sapped Freddie Freeman’s power in the second half of the season, playing a role at first base for the star who hit just one home run after the All-Star break and one extra base hit all of September.
But he tends to find another device when the calendar turns to October.
He found it on Sunday.
The man who hit a grand slam (plus three more home runs) in the 2024 World Series and who ended an 18-inning Game 3 marathon of last year’s World Series against the Blue Jays with another offseason hit made his first big mark Sunday in the 2026 postseason with a game-tying solo shot in the fourth at Grant.
The outburst finally gave the Dodgers some momentum and a crowd of 50,729 fans, who had been lulled by Snell’s shaky performance, a reason to cheer.
But Michael Harris II ensured this was short-lived.
Dodgers reliever Kris Bubic, making just his sixth appearance as a Dodger after returning from an elbow injury, was one pitch away from a perfect fifth inning. He walked the first two batters, then got Harris down 0-2 before the Braves center fielder hit a sweeper out of the zone at the other end.
The ball carried and carried and carried, eventually up and over the outstretched arm of left fielder Teoscar Hernandez, whose looping route and failed field goal attempt allowed the ball to go off the wall and help Harris extend his double into a triple.
“I knew I didn’t fully understand,” Harris told me. “I knew he was breaking away from them. As I got close at first, I kind of got blocked by his body, so I didn’t know if he caught him or not. Then I saw him bounce off the wall and I just had to keep digging.
The run to third was consequential, as Bubic then threw a wild pitch to bring in the lead.
It was one of three hits on the day for Harris, who also singled and doubled and is making his mark on the 2026 postseason. Harris’ three-run home run off Nola in Game 3 of the wild-card series helped send the Braves to the NLDS.
3 1/2. What’s next?
It’s as star-studded a pitching matchup as one can imagine for Game 3.
The Braves made a risky play by using Chris Sale to face the final five batters in Game 3 of the wild-card series, two days after he started Game 1. That extra work between starts meant he wasn’t available for Games 1 and 2 of the NLDS in Los Angeles, a risky proposition in a best-of-five series.
“We needed to win that series and this was our best chance to do it,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said. “So I have no regrets about Chris Sale’s appearance in that last game.”
The decision didn’t come back to burn him in Los Angeles, as the Braves still managed to steal Game 2 despite their ace’s absence, setting them up well for Sale to play in Atlanta in Game 3, four days off since his relief appearance and six days off since his last start.
The Dodgers should also feel good about their chances, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto starting his postseason campaign following his World Series MVP season.
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