Shohei Ohtani ending a game stranded at third base with a leadoff triple. An .066 hitter coming up huge with a walk-off hit. A game ending 1-0 where the only run was scored on the first pitch of the game for the winning team. We all know that baseball is a deeply weird sport and this was a prime example of it.
Those are the types of breaks that teams need to go their way sometimes and honestly, it’s about time that something had gone Atlanta’s way after a rough week-and-a-half. Indeed, the Braves
were somewhat limping into this series after a rough 2-5 road trip. Meanwhile, the Dodgers appeared to have regained their mojo after six straight wins. The outlook wasn’t great but there was at least a bit of hope since the Dodgers had struggled against teams who were over .500 in recent times.
It was reasonable to hope that the Braves could simply get a win and then bounce back against Colorado. A series victory would’ve been lovely. A sweep would’ve been like coming across an extra life in a video game. Atlanta ended up getting the 1-UP after all and it came in one of the most unique series wins that you’ll ever see.
Tuesday, August 25
Braves 4, Dodgers 3
At first glance, it seemed like the Braves were going to give Tyler Glasnow an extremely rude welcome back to The Show after having spent over 90 days on the IL due to a back ailment. The Braves got busy dinking and dunking their way to three runs, as both Mauricio Dubón and Michael Harris II came up with RBI knocks and then Ozzie Albies made some franchise history with his record-13th sacrifice fly of the season. The Braves were up 3-0 and it was up to Bryce Elder to make it stick.
While the Braves may not have been in the lead, they were still solidly in the contest once Elder was done after six innings. The Dodgers did get two of those runs back in the second inning after the unlikely combination of Alek Thomas and Hunter Feduccia produced a pair of RBI singles and then Alex Call delivered an RBI of his own in the fourth inning to tie it up. With that being said, Elder did a masterful job of making sure that the top of this Dodgers lineup stayed quiet — the top four of Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts and Max Muncy only managed to get one hit on Elder and that was a leadoff second-inning single for Muncy.
Elder’s work and the efforts of the bullpen made it so that the Braves just needed to push one more run across the plate to hit paydirt. That came in the bottom of the eighth inning, which is when Ozzie Albies came through with two outs in order to cash in a leadoff double from Matt Olson to put Atlanta in front as Truist Park was fully electrified at this point.
Raisel Iglesias then got the ball for what ended up being a very eventful ninth inning, one that started with Ohtani finally breaking through for a triple that arguably should’ve been caught at the wall by Lane Thomas. It wasn’t, so Iglesias had to somehow get through the rest of the top of LA’s order for what would’ve been an astonishing save. Miraculously, Iglesias pulled it off as he struck out Freeman, got Betts to ground out unproductively and then got Tommy Edman to fly out (following an intentional walk of Muncy) to end the game, strand Ohtani at third base, collect the save and give the Braves a big series-opening victory.
Wednesday, August 26
Braves 6, Dodgers 5
This was a topsy-turvy contest and one where it’s actually kind of shocking that it didn’t go to extra innings, similarly to how Tuesday night’s contest went. The Braves got out to an early lead thanks to Matt Olson doinking one off the foul pole at the expense of Roki Sasaki (who had a short night and went on the IL after the game) but then the Dodgers took control by scoring three across the next two innings. The Braves then responded with three runs in the fourth inning alone and they actually had a 5-3 lead heading into the seventh inning.
That’s when Dylan Lee had a bit of a wobble and found himself in immediate trouble after the top of LA’s lineup got to work. All four batters that Dylan Lee faced reached safely, with Mookie Betts’ RBI single making it 5-4 and then a Max Muncy walk meant that Didier Fuentes had one massive mess to clean up. He did walk in a run but from that point forward, he came up huge and kept it a tie game by getting a lineout and a massive double-play ball to make sure that things stayed tied at five. Fuentes then went on to pitch a clean eighth inning and then Victor Mederos started off another dramatic ninth inning for these two teams by keeping the Dodgers off the scoreboard to start off the final frame.
Things got off to an inauspicious start for the Braves in the ninth, as Tanner Scott made pretty quick work of the first two batters for Atlanta. Then Lane Thomas came up with a double and then the Dodgers made a very smart decision to walk Austin Riley and take their chances with whoever Walt Weiss was going with as a pinch hitter. It just so happened that Weiss decided to go with the beleaguered Ha-Seong Kim. Somehow, someway, Ha-Seong Kim broke out of the intense funk that he’d been in all season and lined one out to left field off of Tanner Scott for the most improbable walk-off win of the season for Atlanta.
Thursday, August 27
Braves 1, Dodgers 0
In yet another marquee matchup between Chris Sale and the opposition’s ace, Yoshinobu Yamamoto made his appearance in this series and both pitchers performed as you’d expect. The Braves have been struggling recently against other teams’ aces and tonight was no different as Yamamoto only gave up one run across 6.1 innings pitched against Atlanta. In fact, his only blemish came with his very first pitch of the game, which is when Drake Baldwin ambushed him and sent a first-pitch splitter up into the Chop House for a leadoff dinger.
That was the extent of Atlanta’s offense on the night, which meant that Chris Sale needed to come up huge. He did just that, and then some — how about a complete game shutout, folks?! That’s right — nine innings pitched, five hits allowed, 11 strikeouts, no walks (!!!) and no runs allowed. Atlanta needed all 109 pitches that Sale had in him on Thursday night and his mammoth effort was enough to get the Braves over the finish line for a sweep.
Even despite a weird moment with replay in the ninth inning where the umpires spent an inordinate amount of time trying to determine if Matt Olson held the bag on a potential double play ball, Sale kept his nerve (or used the anger and frustration as energy to get over the hump) and got the final out in order to complete what was likely his finest moment in a Braves uniform so far. What a performance! What a way to finish only the 33rd game in MLB history to end 1-0 on a leadoff homer! What a wild sweep!
Again, this was just what the doctor ordered for the Braves. Despite their struggles coming into this series, the sweep should hopefully give Atlanta the real jumpstart that they need to navigate through the choppy waters that will be the last month-or-so of the season. Atlanta’s now just one game behind the Dodgers for the second bye in the National League and most importantly, the Braves have got some more breathing room on top of the NL East after things got a bit too close for comfort over the weekend. The Braves are now five games up on the Phillies again and hopefully Philadelphia will continue to stumble a bit out West after they managed to cool down with a series loss to the Mariners.
It’s also an early example of how tough the Postseason could be, as all three of these games could’ve gone either way and the Dodgers could’ve been leaving town with a sweep and the Braves could’ve been in serious trouble. LA could’ve found a way to plate Ohtani in the first game, they could’ve managed to avoid getting beaten by Ha-Seong Kim and they could’ve managed to muster up at least one run against Chris Sale. Instead, all of that went Atlanta’s way — Raisel Iglesias came up huge in the ninth inning of the first game despite Ohtani’s leadoff triple, Ha-Seong Kim had a moment of brilliance and Chris Sale wrote another lovely page in the book that is his soon-to-be Hall-of-Fame career. That’s baseball for you: A delightfully strange game where everything is balanced on a razor’s edge when two teams are playing meaningful baseball against each other.
Now, hopefully the Braves won’t be bitten by another strange part of baseball: The trap game — or series, in this case. The Rockies are 2-8. over their last ten games and they just got done splitting an up-and-down series in Washington. It actually feels like a typical 2026 Nationals series in that Washington’s two wins were 13-3 and 7-1 but their two losses were 3-1 and 13-1 but I digress: The Rockies aren’t going to simply roll over. The onus will be on the Braves to get out there and continue to make things rough for Colorado at Truist Park. Atlanta has an opportunity to build some real momentum heading into September and following a dramatically strange series sweep of the Dodgers, this is Atlanta’s chance to really get on a roll moving forward. Let’s see what happens!
