Kenny Albert to Call Dodgers-Braves NLDS Game 3 as Joe Davis Sits Out With Voice Issues

ATLANTA — The most familiar voice of this October has gone silent for one of its biggest nights. Joe Davis, the play-by-play man for the Los Angeles Dodgers' television broadcasts and the lead voice of Fox Sports' Major League Baseball coverage, will miss tonight's NLDS Game 3 between the Dodgers and Braves because of voice issues. Stepping into the booth: veteran broadcaster Kenny Albert, who will call the 6 p.m. ET first pitch on FS1 from Truist Park.

Who Joe Davis is — and why his absence matters

Davis, 38, holds two of the most visible jobs in baseball broadcasting. He has been the television voice of the Dodgers on SportsNet LA since 2017, when he succeeded the legendary Vin Scully after Scully's retirement. In April 2022, Fox Sports named Davis its lead MLB play-by-play voice, replacing Joe Buck after Buck's departure for ESPN's Monday Night Football. Davis works Fox's No. 1 booth alongside Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz, and he has called the World Series for the network — including the 2022 Fall Classic between Houston and Philadelphia, his first.

Davis's stock has only risen since. Last year he won his first Sports Emmy for Outstanding Personality/Play-by-Play for his national work with Fox Sports and FS1. He was on the call for Bryce Harper's pennant-clinching home run in the 2022 NLCS, and his rise from calling minor-league ball for the Montgomery Biscuits to the sport's biggest stage has been one of broadcasting's cleaner arcs. That is exactly why the news, first reported by The Athletic and confirmed by USA Today, landed so hard on Tuesday: the lead national voice missing a tied 1-1 series' Game 3, in which both teams are throwing their aces, is about as high-leverage a broadcast assignment as October produces.

The man stepping in

If there is a safer pair of hands in American sports broadcasting, it is hard to name one. Kenny Albert has called MLB games for Fox since 2001, NFL games for Fox since the network's inaugural 1994 season, and hockey at the very top of the sport — he has been the lead play-by-play voice of the NHL on TNT since the 2021-22 season. Per his NBC Sports bio, Albert is the only national play-by-play broadcaster who calls football, basketball, baseball, hockey and boxing.

This is not his first big-league fill-in. Albert called Game 1 of the 2014 Stanley Cup Final for NBC when Mike Emrick was unavailable. He has been the radio voice of the New York Rangers since 1995. He worked his 10th Olympics with NBCUniversal at the 2024 Paris Games. And he has October baseball history of his own: it was Albert on the call for José Bautista's famous bat-flip home run in Game 5 of the 2015 ALDS between Toronto and Texas — a call that became part of postseason lore. For a one-night assignment under maximum pressure, Fox could not have drawn up a steadier substitute.

The game Albert inherits

The booth change comes at the series' pivot point. The Dodgers took Game 1, then dropped Game 2 at home Sunday by a 3-2 score, with the Braves evening things behind a bullpen game and a star turn from Michael Harris II, who fell a home run short of the cycle. Now the series shifts to Atlanta, where the pitching matchup is the one the Braves have been building toward all week: a fully rested Chris Sale against Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Sale is on full rest by design. He threw 24 pitches in relief on Thursday to close out Atlanta's wild-card series win over Philadelphia, and manager Walt Weiss deliberately held him out of Game 2 on short rest. Game 4 is set for Wednesday back at Truist Park, which would be a potential closeout game for Atlanta — and the last thing the Dodgers, chasing a third straight World Series title, need is to be cornered at Truist Park by the Braves' bullpen.

The history says tonight is the night that decides it. In a best-of-five tied 1-1, the winner of Game 3 goes on to take the series roughly 72 percent of the time. The Dodgers took Game 1 at home; they had Game 2 there for the taking and let it slip with an 0-for-8 night with runners in scoring position. Now they face Sale in a stadium they have not seen all October, with the knowledge that a loss sends them into Wednesday's Game 4 one defeat from elimination.

Also tonight: Brewers one win from the NLCS

The second Game 3 of the night tips the other way entirely. The Brewers took a 2-0 series lead Sunday with a 4-3 walk-off win over the Padres in Milwaukee, the third postseason walk-off in franchise history, when Jackson Chourio singled with the bases loaded off San Diego closer Mason Miller with two outs in the ninth. First pitch at Petco Park is 9:30 p.m. ET on FS1.

The pitching matchup is Dustin May for Milwaukee against Nick Pivetta for San Diego. May, acquired from the St. Louis Cardinals at the trade deadline, got the nod over the Brewers' other length options largely on history — he has been excellent against San Diego this season, and manager Pat Murphy was blunt about the reasoning. “He's pitched fantastic against the Padres,” Murphy told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Pivetta carries the season on his right arm for San Diego: he went 3-2 with a 2.86 ERA in the regular season after missing roughly five months with a right elbow flexor strain.

The math for the Padres is unforgiving. Milwaukee won the NL Central at 103-59 and is 48-33 on the road this season; San Diego finished second in the NL West at 91-71. Teams that fall behind 0-2 in a best-of-five have come back to win just 10 times in 93 tries. If the Brewers close it out tonight, they start resting for the NLCS. If the Padres survive, Game 4 is Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET back at Petco Park, with a potential Game 5 on Friday in Milwaukee.

The takeaway

October broadcasts are supposed to be invisible — the voice you barely notice because the game is all you hear. Tonight, the voice will be one of the storylines, and the good news for everyone tuning in is that the replacement is the rare broadcaster for whom a series-swinging Game 3 is just another night at the office. Albert has called Stanley Cup Finals, Olympic hockey, NFL playoffs and a half-century of baseball. Sale vs. Yamamoto with the series knotted 1-1 is the assignment Davis would have wanted. It is in hands that have held plenty like it.