ATLANTA — The Dodgers’ first few innings Tuesday night were riddled with strikeouts and missed opportunities. But the work they did racking up Atlanta Braves ace Chris Sale‘s pitch count culminated in Kiké Hernández’s big fourth-inning moment in Game 3 of the National League Division Series.
“I felt hitting at the bottom of the lineup, my responsibility was to not chase him around, not give in to what he was trying to get me to do, which was roll over and hit into a double play,” Hernández said after the Dodgers’ 3-1 win against the Braves. “So my mentality was to grind out the at-bat, try to get a good pitch to hit. If not, just be patient so I could turn the lineup over to Mookie [Betts] at the top.”
Hernández let Sale’s first pitch, a changeup in and off the plate, go for a ball. Then, he recognized the pitch again, heading toward the inner third of the plate. And Hernández demolished it, taking three slow steps out of the batter’s box before dropping the bat.
Hernández has too many big postseason moments — a three-homer game against the Cubs in Game 5 of the 2017 NL Championship Series, for example — for a single homer in a non-elimination game to rank at the top. It was his 17th career postseason home run, which accounts for 11% of his home runs over 13 years in the majors, putting him in a category of his own.
It was, however, the biggest offensive moment of the Dodgers’ postseason so far. As the series teetered, in a matchup of rotation aces, all tied up and in Atlanta for the first time, he got his first at-bats of the 2026 postseason and immediately delivered.
“We played tonight like an elimination game,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Collectively it was probably one of our better performances, certainly with the [opposing] starter, as far as 1 through 9.”
That’s the thing about this Dodgers lineup. They have players up and down the batting order who have a track record of baseball heroics. Hernández was hitting ninth. The Dodgers’ biggest star, Shohei Ohtani, was hitting fifth for the first time in his Dodgers tenure and arguably had the worst day at the plate. (“He’s going to come to life, it will happen,” Roberts said.)
The Dodgers have scored their 10 runs in this series via the long ball, which isn’t necessarily sustainable without traffic on the bases. But Tuesday was different. Their approach at the plate was something that could serve as a blueprint for the rest of the postseason against each team’s best pitchers.
“Full team effort there, grinding him out, getting him out after five innings,” catcher Will Smith said. “A couple homers obviously helped, but we got to him.”
It also helped that Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto put together a stifling seven-inning start and set a career high with 10 strikeouts in an MLB playoff game. He limited the Braves to one run and four hits.
Yamamoto’s dominance meant the Dodgers needed just two relievers to finish the game. Lefty Tanner Scott, serving as the setup man, threw a hitless eighth inning. And right-hander Edwin Díaz recorded his first save since Aug. 14.
But the offensive effort against a pitcher who’d thrown a shutout against the Dodgers less than six weeks ago, turned Game 3 into a statement.
“We talked about trying to get him in the middle of the zone,” said first baseman Freddie Freeman, who hit his second home run in as many games. “Righties lay off the inside fastballs. If he throws it there, take it, try to push him out over. Lefties are a different story. It’s hard. He’s throwing behind us. So it’s more of, trying to get him in the middle of the zone, don’t try to make early outs. And if that’s all we could do, get him out early, and we were able to do that.”
It could have been tempting to give up on the approach after all six outs in the first two innings were strikeouts. But the Dodgers forced Sale to throw 42 pitches through those two innings.
In the third, they finally threatened but came just shy of a multi-run rally.
Betts started the effort with a single through the left side of the infield. And it looked for a moment as if Freeman had capitalized on the opportunity.
Highlights from the Dodgers’ 3-1 win over the Atlanta Braves in Game 3 of the NLDS.
He stayed back on a fastball and crushed it to deep left field, on a trajectory to just clear the short fence. But Braves left fielder Mauricio Dubón made a leaping catch, holding onto the ball as he slammed into the wall.
Undeterred, the Dodgers kept putting runners on base. With two outs, Smith stayed through a slider to single. Ohtani clipped Braves catcher Drake Baldwin’s mitt and was awarded first base for catcher’s interference. Then Miguel Rojas hit a line drive to right that found leather to end the inning.
Sale’s pitch count was up to 62.
The payoff came the next inning.
Andy Pages, who went two for four, led off the inning and jumped on a second-pitch fastball in the zone to record his first hit of the postseason. Then, after Kyle Tucker lined out to a leaping second baseman Ozzie Albies, Hernández stepped up to the plate.
“I wish there was a recipe for that so we can all take it from him,” Freeman said. “He’s incredible. He shows up when you need him.”
Show up, Hernández did. And two batters later, Freeman launched his own home run off Sale.
“It certainly speaks to the experience, the buy-in, because if you don’t get results when you’re committed to kind of grinding, sometimes it’s easy to come off of that,” Roberts said. “But I thought tonight from start to finish we did a good job of grinding.
“And it speaks to how important this game was. And we have [Braves right-hander Tyler] Mahle tomorrow, who in the second half has been one of the better pitchers in all of baseball. We have our work cut out. It’s going to be another grindy game.”
If the Dodgers’ offense can get to Mahle the way they got to Sale, the team will have put themselves in position to end the series. One more win, and the Dodgers clinch a berth in the NLCS.