Yamamoto's 10-Strikeout Masterclass and Two Fourth-Inning Swings Lift Dodgers to 3-1 Game 3 Win, 2-1 NLDS Lead

ATLANTA — This is what a championship pitching performance looks like when the calendar says October and the other dugout holds the ace they saved for exactly this moment. Yoshinobu Yamamoto took the ball at Truist Park on Tuesday night against Chris Sale with the National League Division Series knotted at a game apiece, and he simply refused to let the Braves breathe. Seven innings, one run, four hits, one walk, and a postseason-career-high 10 strikeouts later, the Los Angeles Dodgers walked off with a 3-1 win, a 2-1 series lead, and one foot in the National League Championship Series.

It was Yamamoto's first postseason start since he was named the 2025 World Series MVP, and it played like a reminder of why. The right-hander needed 26 batters to get through seven frames, and he was better as the night went on: after wiggling out of the Braves' only real threat in the fifth, he retired the side in order in both the sixth and the seventh, punching out the final two hitters he faced — Lane Thomas and Austin Riley — to end it. The stat that tells you everything about his October legend? He had never beaten the Braves before Tuesday despite allowing just one earned run across 16 1/3 innings in three previous starts against them. That particular piece of trivia is retired now.

The game turned on two swings in the fourth inning — and on everything that happened right before them. Sale had been the story of the early innings: he threw 24 pitches in the first, struck out six of the first nine Dodgers he faced, and fanned Shohei Ohtani with two runners aboard to end the opening frame. He stranded two in the first and wriggled out of a bases-loaded jam in the third, and he got help from the most spectacular defensive play of the night when left fielder Mauricio Dubón went back to the wall and leaped to rob Freddie Freeman of a two-run homer — a ball Freeman launched 101.3 mph off the bat the other way. For three innings, the Braves' decision to save their ace for Game 3 looked like genius.

Then the fourth arrived, and October did what October does. Andy Pages opened with a leadoff single, and up stepped Kiké Hernández — in the lineup over Tommy Edman because Dave Roberts wanted, in his words, "intensity, urgency." Hernández had struck out his first time up. His second time, he turned on a Sale changeup and drove it 406 feet to left field, a two-run shot that was the first homer of his postseason and the 17th of his playoff career. Two batters later, Freeman got his revenge on the wall, sending a solo homer to right-center. Just like that, it was 3-0 — and the Dodgers had all the runs they would need.

For Freeman, the night was personal in the way only Atlanta can make it personal. This was his first postseason game back at Truist Park, the building where he spent his first 12 big-league seasons and closed his Atlanta tenure with the 2021 World Series title. His fourth-inning blast was the 18th home run of his postseason career, moving him into a tie for 10th in major league history. He wasn't done making noise, either: Freeman hit three balls harder than 100 mph on the night, and he capped the win with a sensational pick at first base on Mookie Betts' throw to record the final out. He is 4-for-11 with two homers to open the playoffs. Some guys just have a building.

Sale, to his credit, never folded. The left-hander ground through five innings on 95 pitches, allowing three runs on seven hits with seven strikeouts and — critically — zero walks. The Dodgers made him work for everything, but the Braves' gamble on saving him carried a cost that showed up in the box score: he had thrown 21 pitches in relief to close out the wild-card series against Philadelphia on Oct. 1, and on short rest he simply ran into two swings he couldn't take back. He kept Atlanta in the game. The game, as it turned out, was decided elsewhere.

The Braves' one chance to rewrite the night came in the fifth, and it was the kind of rally that usually flips a playoff game. Dubón and Thomas opened with back-to-back singles, the bases were loaded with one out, and the top of the Atlanta order was due. Yamamoto gave them exactly one run — Drake Baldwin's groundout to first — and then induced Ronald Acuña Jr. to ground out to second to kill the inning. The Braves never threatened him again. Atlanta stranded six runners over the first three innings, and when the night's biggest moment arrived, the best pitcher on the field simply said no.

The most fascinating subplot of the night was where Roberts put his best player. Ohtani batted fifth — the lowest he has hit in a lineup since 2020 with the Angels — a concession to both his struggles against Sale (he was 0-for-4 with two strikeouts Tuesday, reaching on catcher's interference in the third and a walk in the eighth) and the knee and triceps injuries that have clearly hampered him in the second half. The Dodgers weren't about to bench the best player in the game, but the lineup card was an honest admission: right now, this team wins with its pitching and its role players, not its superstar.

And the role players keep delivering. Tanner Scott followed Yamamoto with a scoreless eighth. Edwin Díaz made the ninth interesting — Ozzie Albies doubled off the right-center-field wall to lead off, then moved to third on Michael Harris II's groundout — before slamming the door: Dubón fouled out, Mike Yastrzemski grounded to Betts, Freeman stretched for the pick, and the Dodgers had their win. "We played tonight like an elimination game," Roberts said afterward, and it showed in every decision, from the Hernández start to the quick hook-free trust in Yamamoto.

The stakes from here are brutally simple. The Dodgers, chasing what would make them the first National League team ever to win three straight World Series, can punch their ticket to the NL Championship Series with a win Wednesday night at Truist Park. Tyler Glasnow gets the ball for Los Angeles in Game 4. If the Braves survive and force a decisive Game 5 on Friday in Los Angeles, Tarik Skubal is lined up to start it. Across the bracket, the Brewers walked off the Padres on Sunday to take a 2-0 series lead — the National League playoff picture is condensing fast. For the full context on how this weekend reshaped October, see the division-series weekend takeaways and our Game 2 report from Los Angeles. More MLB coverage lives on the sports desk.