Only 13 teams have done what Dodgers must do after Braves take commanding NLCS lead
The Globe Life Field roof was open Thursday night, and the northerly wind blew hard enough to make baggy baseball pants flap in the wind and to make players with long hair wish they had gone to the barber.
Ordinarily, the roof would have been closed, but these aren’t ordinary times. MLB is working under the notion that COVID-19 is more difficult to catch at an open-air event than indoors, so barring rain the roof will stay open for the duration of the postseason.
There might be only one more game in the National League Championship Series.
Marcell Ozuna connected for two home runs, rookie Bryse Wilson allowed one run in six innings, the Atlanta Braves broke open a tight game with a six-run sixth inning en route to a 10-2 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The win has broken open the best-of-7 series, which Atlanta leads three games to one. While not impossible for the Dodgers to overcome, the odds of advancing to the World Series are heavily in the Braves’ favor.
In MLB postseason history, 87 best-of-7 series have seen a team lead 3-1, and only 13 times did a team fail to win it. It’s happened only three times in a best-of-7 NLCS.
“It feels good. It feels really good,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “We’ve still got a lot of work to do. You know how fast things can turn.”
The Dodgers saw that in the sixth inning. Left-hander Clayton Kershaw had a allowed only one run on four hits and the score was tied 1-1, but the first three Braves hitters had hits and two of them scored before Kershaw got the hook.
Things didn’t get any better as Atlanta solved hard-throwing rookie reliever Brusdar Gaterol. He retired the first hitter he faced, Travis d’Arnaud, but the next three collected hits to make it 6-1. Cristian Pache had an RBI single two batters later of Victor Gonzalez.
The rally made a winner of Wilson, who allowed only an Edwin Rios home run and a walk his first career postseason start. He struck out five and needed only 74 pitches to record 18 outs.
“I stuck with my game plan throughout, kept them off-balance and just trusted my stuff,” said Wilson, 22. “The biggest thing for me was, at the end of the day, it’s just baseball. It’s me throwing the ball to the catcher and getting hitters out.”
Osuna tied a single-game Braves postseason record with 11 total bases and tied the single-mark for hits in a game with four. He homered in the fourth to erase the Dodgers’ 1-0 lead and again in the seventh to cancel a run the Dodgers scored in response to the Braves’ big inning.
The series continues Friday with Game 5. The Dodgers need a win for the series and their season to go any further.
