BASEBALL PLAYOFFS : Braves Keep the Pressure On : Game 3: They roll to a 9-4 victory over Phillies and set NL playoff record with 23 runs in two games.

For those who have watched the last two Philadelphia Phillie defeats by the Atlanta Braves, this question has probably run through your mind:

With this team’s pitching, how in the world did it win the National League East title?

The Braves continued to pound the Phillies on Saturday, this time with a 9-4 victory before 52,032 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven NL playoffs.

They did it behind left-hander Tom Glavine, who faced only 27 batters through seven innings, holding the Phillies to two runs and seven hits as he finally won his first NL playoff game in five attempts. And they did it with an offense that hit a collective .333 against a group of six pitchers who combined for a 7.67 earned-run average.

“I don’t think (Phillie pitcher) Danny Jackson is going to panic (today), but when you rack up 23 runs in two games, anyone is going to stand up and take notice,” Glavine said.

The 23 runs scored by the Braves in the last two games is the highest two-game total in NL playoff history. It’s merely another record to add to a pile that the Braves set during their 14-3 victory in Game 2. After that game, the Phillies said that if they had to get beat, they would rather it be by a large margin than a small one. But now. . . .

“Yeah, once is all right, but twice is getting a little old,” said John Kruk, who tripled and homered to drive in three of the Phillies’ four runs.

“We are not hitting on all cylinders yet. Our pitching has been a little shaky, but our offense has, too. We are not hitting with men on base.”

The Phillies are batting .245 in the series, but the Braves are batting .316. Lenny Dykstra, who had a long Friday night with flu, has three hits and two walks in 13 at-bats and has scored twice. But he has struck out five times. Darren Daulton, who says he simply is not seeing the ball, has one hit in the series. Cleanup hitter Dave Hollins is batting .200. He has driven in two runs.

And Atlanta? Otis Nixon has been on base in nine of 13 at-bats. Jeff Blauser and Ron Gant are each batting .308. Fred McGriff and Terry Pendleton are each batting .429. Mark Lemke drove in three runs Saturday.

For the Braves, this is a party. For the Phillie pitching staff, it’s a nightmare.

“I’m tired of reading every day how . . . you are,” Phillie reliever Larry Andersen said. “Personally, I’m not crazy about that. But I haven’t done anything to prove them wrong.”

Terry Mulholland (0-1) held the Braves scoreless for five innings Saturday. But he had pitched only six innings in all of September because of a hip injury.

With the Phillies ahead, 2-0, the Braves had four consecutive hits against Mulholland, plus a walk, to score four runs on their way to a five-run inning. After Blauser led off with a single off of Mulholland’s glove, Mulholland walked Gant on four pitches. Three hits later, after David Justice ripped a two-run double over the head of Pete Incaviglia in left field for his first hit of the series, the Braves led, 4-2.

Justice was the last batter to face Mulholland, and it might have been a different game if home plate umpire Terry Tata hadn’t ruled that a grounder Justice hit to Kruk had hit off of Justice’s foot. But Manager Jim Fregosi didn’t even have anyone up in the Phillie bullpen until after Gant had walked and McGriff followed by hitting the first pitch he saw into the gap in left-center to tie the score.

Roger Mason, the only Phillie reliever besides Mitch Williams who has pitched well in the series, eventually got out of the inning. But the Braves scored four more runs against two more relievers in the next inning.

The Phillies led the league with 24 complete games, but most of them came before the All-Star break. Since then, the bullpen has pitched about 230 innings, and Fregosi says his relievers are tired. He says Mulholland simply ran out of gas, and he left him in because he thought he could get Justice. But Fregosi doesn’t seem to have any confidence in his bullpen, and he didn’t want to destroy Mulholland’s confidence by getting somebody up throwing.

They say pitching wins championships, and Phillie insiders say the club should have gotten a starter down the stretch instead of reliever Bobby Thigpen. So with their backs against an Atlanta wall, the Phillies will have to win one of the next two games to send the series back to Philadelphia for Games 6 and 7, which are starting to look as if they might be unnecessary. “Like I told the guys the other night after that loss, ‘This is what we’ve got,’ ” Daulton said. “ ‘We can’t make any deals, can’t take a pill and have it be like the first day of the season.’ ”

Said Kruk: “We’ll never doubt ourselves, not after what we have been through.”