Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – The Atlanta Braves shut down the Los Angeles Dodgers’ star-studded batting line-up to score a series-leveling 3-2 victory in Major League Baseball’s playoffs on Sunday as the Milwaukee Brewers snatched a dramatic walk-off win to defeat the San Diego Padres.
A superb collective Braves pitching performance set up a vital win at Dodger Stadium that leaves the best-of-five National League division series finely balanced at 1-1 ahead of game three in Atlanta on Tuesday. The Dodgers — the reigning back-to-back World Series champions who are chasing a rare treble of championships — were left ruing an out-of-sorts performance from ace starter Blake Snell and a toothless display from their bats, who were for 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position.
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Braves relievers Robert Suarez and Didier Fuentes were the heroes for Atlanta, locking down the late innings to frustrate the Dodgers’ hopes of taking a commanding 2-0 lead after their game one win. Braves catcher Drake Baldwin saluted the contribution of the 21-year-old Fuentes, who came within one out of pitching four perfect innings. “He was so poised,” Baldwin said. “It says a lot about him — he’s been doing it for us this entire year and you saw it tonight. We’ve got a ton of confidence in him and he went out and showed it.”
The Dodgers’ runs came from solo homers from Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy, but it was not enough to pip the Braves, who took an early lead from a Mauricio Dubon single, added another run from a wild pitch by Dodgers reliever Kris Bubic, and grabbed a third with a Michael Harris double.
Earlier Sunday, Jackson Chourio smacked a walk-off two-run single to give the Brewers a 4-3 victory over the Padres and a commanding 2-0 lead in their series. For the second straight day, the Brewers rallied from 2-0 down to beat the Padres, who are now in survival mode as the best-of-five National League division series shifts to San Diego for game three on Tuesday.
“I don’t have words for this,” Venezuela’s Chourio — who hit a two-run homer to spark the Brewers’ game-one rally — told Fox Sports after belting a two-out, bases-loaded fastball from dominant Padres closer Mason Miller up the middle for the winning runs. “I was just looking for a good pitch to hit there and, you know, thankfully he threw me one that I could do something with,” Chourio said.
With three errors, the Brewers looked far from the team that won an MLB-best 103 regular-season games. San Diego seized a 1-0 lead in the first inning and capitalized on Brewers’ errors to push the advantage to 2-0 in the fifth. Milwaukee had stayed in range with a run in the bottom of the fifth, finally breaking through against Padres starting pitcher Michael King with a double from Christian Yelich, who scored on a base hit by Sal Frelick.
The Padres pushed their lead back to two in the seventh, but the Brewers pulled within 3-2 in the bottom of the inning when an error from Padres second baseman Jake Cronenworth allowed a run to score. “We’re a team that never backs down,” Chourio said. “We’re never going to back down from a challenge, and we like these moments. We’re going to keep going, and we’re going to battle for every opportunity that we get.”
© 2024 AFP
