Behind Tarik Skubal and three home runs, Dodgers defeat Braves in NLDS Game 1

It was so hot at Dodger Stadium on Saturday...

How hot was it?

It was so hot a team that averaged nearly 50,000 fans for occasionally meaningless regular-season games beat the Atlanta Braves 5-3 in its first postseason game before thousands of empty seats — some of which were literally too hot to sit in.

And now we present the forecast for the Atlanta Braves, brought to you by Yogi Berra: It gets late early out there.

The Dodgers can cloud the outlook for anyone. The Braves left Dodger Stadium in an uneasy spot Saturday, with one big decision to make: Do they risk putting themselves in the uncomfortable position of facing three consecutive elimination games without using their best pitcher in the first two games of this National League Division Series, or do they start Chris Sale on Sunday?

“We’re expecting to see him,” Dodgers infielder Tommy Edman said.

The Dodgers have four aces. The Braves have one.

⚾ Dodgers 5, Braves 3 — FINAL

Behind a strong start from Tarik Skubal and home runs from Teoscar Hernández, Kyle Tucker and Max Muncy, the Dodgers defeated the Atlanta Braves in Game 1 of the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium on Saturday afternoon.

Game 2 of the best-of-five series will be Sunday at 5 p.m. PDT at Dodger Stadium.

Kyle Tucker, left, celebrates with Andy Pages after hitting a two-run home run in the sixth inning Saturday.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Skubal delivered six quality innings, his only blemish coming on a solo home run by Sean Murphy in the sixth. After giving up a single on the game’s first at-bat, he retired 15 consecutive batters. Skubal gave up two hits and struck out seven while walking two over 94 pitches.

Hernandez drove in the game’s first runs on a 431-foot blast to left-center field. Tucker extended the Dodgers’ lead on a two-run blast into the visitors’ dugout in the sixth before Muncy hit a solo home run two batters later.

Blake Snell will start Game 2 for the Dodgers.

Ninth inning recap: Ronald Acuña Jr. singled to left field off Dodgers reliever Tanner Scott.

Ozzie Albies followed with a two-run home run to center field to make it 5-3 Dodgers with no outs.

With Evan Phillips warming up, Scott got Matt Olson and Michael Harris II to ground out.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts tasked Phillips with getting the final out. Phillips walked Mauricio Dubón before getting Austin Riley to ground out to short, sealing the Dodgers’ win.

⚾ Dodgers 5, Braves 1 — Through eighth inning

Top of the eighth: Reliever Alex Vesia got Sean Murphy to pop out to short before striking out pinch-hitter Lane Thomas. Drake Baldwin flied out to center field.

Bottom of the eighth: Brent Suter struck out Kyle Tucker and Andy Pages before Max Muncy grounded out to first.

⚾ Dodgers 5, Braves 1 — Through seventh inning

Top of the seventh: Brock Stewart took over for Tarik Skubal and got Michael Harris II to ground out to short. Stewart struck out Mauricio Dubón before Austin Riley grounded out to third.

Skubal gave up two hits and one earned run with seven strikeouts and two walks over six innings and 94 pitches.

Bottom of the seventh: Facing Braves reliever Brent Suter, Shohei Ohtani popped out to left-center field. Will Smith lined out to center before Freddie Freeman singled on a grounder to left field. Suter struck out Teoscar Hernández for the third out.

⚾ Dodgers 5, Braves 1 — Through sixth inning

Top of the sixth: Sean Murphy led off with a 421-foot home run to center field off Tarik Skubal to cut the Dodgers’ lead in half. Skubal had retired 15 consecutive batters before the home run.

Skubal then walked Ha-Seong Kim before Drake Baldwin hit a high-bouncing chopper up the middle that allowed Mookie Betts to force out Kim at second. Ronald Acuña Jr. followed with a grounder to short that allowed the Dodgers to force out Baldwin at second.

With Alex Vesia warming up, Skubal walked Ozzie Albies to put runners on second and first and prompt a mound visit from pitching coach Mark Prior.

Skubal got Matt Olson to fly out to left field, ending the Atlanta scoring threat.

Bottom of the sixth: Kim made a leaping grab at short on a liner off Freddie Freeman’s bat for the first out. Teoscar Hernández then singled to center for his second hit of the game.

Kyle Tucker hit a two-run home run into the visitors’ bullpen off AJ Smith-Shawver to make it 4-1 Dodgers. It was Tucker’s 10th career playoff home run.

Andy Pages struck out in the next at-bat.

Max Muncy then hit a solo home run to make it 5-1 Dodgers. The 354-foot blast found the right-field corner.

After a mound visit, Smith-Shawver walked Tommy Edman. Mookie Betts lined out to right field to end the inning.

Max Muncy, left, celebrates with Mookie Betts after hitting a solo home run in the sixth inning against the Braves.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

⚾ Dodgers 2, Braves 0 — Through fifth inning

Top of the fifth: Michael Harris II grounded out to first before Mauricio Dubón flied out to center. Tarik Skubal then retired Austin Riley on his seventh strikeout of the afternoon.

The Dodgers have retired 15 consecutive Atlanta batters behind what has been a dominant showing from Skubal, who has given up just one hit on 66 pitches.

Bottom of the fifth: Braves reliever AJ Smith-Shawver struck out Tommy Edman. Mookie Betts then drew a four-pitch walk. Shohei Ohtani flied out to left field before Atlanta shortstop Ha-Seong Kim made an impressive throw from just outside the diamond to force Will Smith out at first.

⚾ Dodgers 2, Braves 0 — Through fourth inning

Top of the fourth: Tommy Edman made a spectacular diving stop at second base before throwing out Ronald Acuña Jr. at first. Ozzie Albies flied out to Kyle Tucker in right field before Tarik Skubal struck out Matt Olson on a changeup.

The Dodgers have retired the last 12 Braves batters.

Bottom of the fourth: Facing Braves pitcher Victor Mederos, Will Smith flied out to left. Freddie Freeman then drew a four-pitch walk — the first walk of the game.

Teoscar Hernández then hit a two-run home run 431 feet to the pavilion in left-center field to give the Dodgers the lead. It was Hernández’s ninth career playoff homer with the Dodgers.

Tucker followed with a one-out single to left field, prompting the Braves to put AJ Smith-Shawver on the mound.

Andy Pages flied out to Michael Harris II in center field. After Tucker stole second, Max Muncy lined out to Matt Olson at first base to end the inning.

⚾ Braves 0, Dodgers 0 — Through the third inning

Top of the third: Tarik Skubal struck out Sean Murphy on an 80.6 mph curve, then struck out Ha-Seong Kim on a well-placed changeup. He followed with a strikeout of Drake Baldwin.

Skubal has given up one hit and has struck out five over 46 pitches.

Bottom of the third: Max Muncy grounded out to first before Tommy Edman grounded out to pitcher Dylan Dodd.

Mookie Betts singled on a popup to shallow right field that a sprinting Ronald Acuna Jr. couldn’t get to in time. Shohei Ohtani then lined out to second to end the inning.

Dodd has given up two hits and has struck out four over 47 pitches.

⚾ Braves 0, Dodgers 0 — Through second inning

Top of the second: Tarik Skubal struck out Michael Harris II on four pitches before Mauricio Dubón flied out to Kyle Tucker in right field. Austin Riley was then called out on strikes after a successful challenge by Will Smith on a 99.6 mph sinker.

Bottom of the second: Dylan Dodd struck out Teoscar Hernández and Tucker. Andy Pages was called out on strikes after unsuccessfully challenging home plate umpire Roberto Ortiz’s call.

⚾ Braves 0, Dodgers 0 — Through first inning

Top of the first: Drake Baldwin led with a single up the middle off Dodgers starter Tarik Skubal. Ronald Acuña Jr. grounded out, with second baseman Tommy Edman making a sliding stop.

With Baldwin on second, Ozzie Albies grounded out to Mookie Betts at short. Matt Olson popped out to Freddie Freeman behind first base to cap a 19-pitch inning for Skubal.

Bottom of the first: Atlanta left-hander Dylan Dodd struck out Betts with a punchout pitch outside the zone that went unchallenged. Shohei Ohtani followed with a single on a liner to right field.

Will Smith popped out to Albies for the second out before Freddie Freeman grounded out to first.

There are all the stars in this series — Mookie Betts, Matt Olson, Freddie Freeman, Ronald Acuna Jr., Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Chris Sale, Tarik Skubal, Michael Harris II and more — and then there is the face of baseball around the world.

Major League Baseball wrapped a postseason advertisement around the front page of The Times this week. “OCTOBER STARTS TODAY,” the headline screamed.

Beneath those enormous letters, Shohei Ohtani smiled. Who else?

And so dozens of reporters crammed into a cramped room within Dodger Stadium on Friday afternoon, on the eve of the National League Division Series between the Dodgers and the Atlanta Braves, waiting for Ohtani to answer a few versions of “How are you?”

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. In this grim, brutal, bear of a season for the Dodgers, where nothing seemed to go right and it seemed every player was injured, they won 100 games.

No chance

Well, it’s official: The Dodgers won’t win the World Series this season. Why? Because they made a classic blunder on Sunday. Everyone knows the two most classic blunders: 1. (the most famous) Never get involved in a land war in Asia. 2. (only slightly less well-known): Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

But third on that list: The Dodgers should never win 100 games in a season, because no Dodger team that has won 100 or more games has ever won the World Series. A look:

The Dodgers did not need Tarik Skubal to win the National League West. They traded for him to help them win a third consecutive World Series.

Their legacy is at stake. So is his.

That could be hyperbole. Skubal turns 30 next month, already the winner of two Cy Young awards, one of them unanimously. He could sign the largest contract of any pitcher in major league history this fall. His career might be only at its halfway point, and already we can say he’ll be remembered as a star.

So I asked him if his career would feel somehow empty if he did not win a World Series. No one in Anaheim thinks any less of Mike Trout, and no one in San Diego thinks any less of Tony Gwynn, because neither Hall of Famer won a World Series.

Miguel Rojas has remained composed at the field. But away from it, on the precipice of what could be his last postseason run as a player, he hasn’t been able to hold back the tears.

“It’s been hard,” Rojas said in a recent conversation with The Times. “I’m not going to lie. I’ve been crying by myself at home.

“Every time I take a little time to post on my social media about saying thank you, it’s because I don’t want to do a full press conference of telling people, ‘Hey, this is the day that I’m retiring’ because I don’t think I’m good enough. I didn’t play a career that I’m good enough to do that. I’m not going to end up in the Hall of Fame or anything like that. So I’m just going to do it my own way. And whenever I go, I just want the fans, the people around baseball, [to know] how grateful I am for all the moments.”

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. A good Tommy Lasorda quote: “You have got to love what you’re doing. No matter what it is. Whatever you undertake in life, if you don’t love it, and you don’t enjoy it, you are making a big mistake. You have got to love what you are doing. You have to appreciate what you are getting, and you have to do it to the best of your ability.”

It’s that time of year

The Dodgers will face the Atlanta Braves in the NLDS starting Saturday, with Game 1 set to start at 1 p.m. Pacific, with the temperature forecast to be around 100 degrees. So, bring a sweater. People have complained that the 1 p.m. start is unfair because it will be too hot, but unless it is going to be 75 degrees on the Braves side of the field, it will be even. Personally, I would have put Padres-Brewers at 1 p.m. and Dodgers-Braves at 5:30 p.m., but no sense crying over spilled milk (Editor’s note: How many clichés can this guy work into one paragraph?)

The Dodgers faced the Braves six times during the season and lost five.

SAN FRANCISCO — This is the 60th anniversary of the 1966 World Series, in which the losing team did not score for the final 33 innings of the series.

That losing team was the Dodgers. Over the final three games of the series, Jim Palmer, Wally Bunker and Dave McNally of the Baltimore Orioles each pitched a complete-game shutout.

That art of pitching is not in style today. Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched two complete games last October, but he cannot pitch every game, even if he left that impression upon the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Dodgers elected to put Mookie Betts in the leadoff spot with Shohei Ohtani batting second against the Atlanta Braves, who are going with a bullpen game on Saturday after playing the full three games against the Philadelphia Phillies in the wild-card round.

Dodgers left-hander Tarik Skubal thought he could go the distance when he got through seven shutout innings in San Francisco last week on just 75 pitches.

Then Dodgers manager Dave Roberts greeted him in the dugout with a handshake and the news: “Get ready for Game 1.”

The Dodgers made it official Friday: Skubal, the two-time Cy Young Award winner acquired from the Detroit Tigers at the trade deadline, will start Game 1 of the National League Division Series against the Atlanta Braves. First pitch is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday.

Dodgers rookie Josue De Paula went from popping bottles with the Triple-A champion Oklahoma City Comets to spending this past week playing in intrasquad scrimmages with the major-league squad. And by Saturday, he was on the National League Division Series roster as a bat off the bench.

“I feel like it’s just my gift,” De Paula said of hitting, while acknowledging that he hasn’t pinch hit much in his career. “So you put me in any situation, I feel like I’m going to do well, I’m going to excel at it. So whatever they need, I’m here for.”

The Dodgers’ final NLDS roster decisions, as they prepared to take on the Atlanta Braves, came down to the bench and the bullpen. They decided to carry 14 position players and 12 pitchers. That allowed the Dodgers to include not only De Paula but also utility player Hyeseong Kim, who will serve as a pinch runner and potential defensive replacement. Dodgers left-handers Justin Wrobleski and Jack Dreyer did not make the cut.

“I feel like this is the best and deepest pitching staff we’ve ever had going into October,” president of baseball operations Andrew Freidman said. “We had some tough conversations in leaving some guys off the roster. That would have never happened before.

“Obviously things can change. Hopefully we play a lot this month, and things can change, but we left off the roster some really talented pitchers.”

A best-of-five series lessens the importance of pitching depth. But as the Dodgers continue on, they could prioritize carrying a 13th pitcher, or a reliever who can provide multiple innings.

This round, they have five right-handers and three lefties available out of the bullpen.

“Our first two starters are going to be left-handed,” Roberts said of Game 1 and 2 starters Tarik Skubal and Blake Snell. “So you’re talking about a lot of innings being covered by left-handed pitching in the series.”

Kim also met the team in Los Angeles for the bye week. He’s been in Triple-A since late May. Kim spent their intrasquad scrimmage Thursday serving as a pinch runner for both teams.

“With Hyeseong, for us on this roster specifically, just his positional versatility and his foot speed,” Friedman said. “We have a lot of team strengths, in my mind; foot speed is not one of them. So there can be opportunities late in games to utilize that in a way to help us score a run.”

The competition for the pinch-hitting spot on the roster came down to De Paula and catcher Dalton Rushing, who returned from an IL stint (strained flexor in his right forearm) for the final regular-season series.

“What we saw is a really good idea of the strike zone, quality of contact,” Roberts said of De Paula. “He’s really unflappable, good heartbeat. I think that translates into the postseason.

“Dalton Rushing was the other consideration, but having [10] at-bats in two months just put him behind the eight ball.”

Here’s the Dodgers’ full NLDS roster:

Saturday’s starting lineup (9)

SS Mookie Betts

DH Shohei Ohtani

C Will Smith

1B Freddie Freeman

LF Teoscar Hernández

RF Kyle Tucker

CF Andy Pages

3B Max Muncy

2B Tommy Edman

Bench (5)

IF Miguel Rojas

UTL Kiké Hernández

C Hunter Feduccia

PH Josue De Paula

PR Heyeseong Kim

Starting pitchers (4)

LHP Tarik Skubal

LHP Blake Snell

RHP Yoshinobu Yamamoto

RHP Tyler Glasnow

Relief pitchers (8)

RHP Roki Sasaki

RHP Edwin Díaz

RHP Edgardo Henriquez

RHP Evan Phillips

RHP Brock Stewart

LHP Tanner Scott

LHP Alex Vesia

LHP Kris Bubic

The Dodgers’ back-to-back World Series championships each have been punctuated by the Freddie Freeman Signature Moment.

It is the flair for the dramatic. It is coming through in the clutch, at the clutchiest of times. When you tell your friends about the game the next day, it is the first thing you mention.

Did you see that?

Did you see Freeman hit the walkoff grand slam in Game 1 of the 2024 World Series, the one that sucked the hype out of the New York Yankees? Gibby, meet Freddie!

In a clubhouse filled with future Hall of Famers, landmark annual salaries and enough star power to light up the baseball universe, Dave Roberts knew better.

When giving his annual division-clinching, playoff-preparation speech in Cincinnati recently, Roberts didn’t focus on Shohei Ohtani or Freddie Freeman or Mookie Betts.

He pointedly addressed the shadows.

“To finish this season strong, to win 11 games in October, you never know who is going to be the guy…who that moment is going to fall to … and many people have lived it in this clubhouse,” he intoned to a hushed bunch preparing to pop the champagne. “So my ask is, be ready to be that guy.”

Blake Snell will start Game 2 of the NLDS against the Atlanta Braves, the team announced Saturday morning.

With Tarik Skubal going in Game 1, the Dodgers elected to go with two left-handed starters to begin the best-of-five series and lines up right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto for Game 3 on Tuesday in Atlanta.

“If you want to be a Hall of Famer, if you want to be a legend in the game, I think it all happens in October,” Snell said before Saturday’s game.

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. A good Tommy Lasorda quote: “There are three types of people in the world. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen and those who wonder, ‘What happened?’ ”

Some random questions

While we await the winner of the Braves-Phillies series, it’s time to get a different viewpoint. I reached out to Times columnists Mirjam Swanson and Bill Plaschke to get their answers to a few Dodgers questions.

Q. Which team is the one the Dodgers would rather avoid playing in the NL playoffs?

Swanson: The San Diego Padres, actually. Weird stuff happens with rivalries. Weird stuff has happened against the Padres. Add a rivalry to the high-stakes NLCS? Guaranteed weirdness.

So the Padres concern me more than the Brewers, a talented group headlined by ace Jacob Misiorowski that nonetheless does itself in with its poor-little-us talk. The Padres have swagger — and substance — and they just finished the season on a heater, going 41-18 to close the season.

I still like the Dodgers in that series, and then against whomever comes out of the American League too.

The deciding game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Atlanta Braves played silently on the Dodger Stadium scoreboard Thursday as Dodgers players practiced below.

The Dodgers were less than 48 hours away from the first pitch of the National League Division Series. The “2026 Postseason” decals had been freshly painted up the baselines that afternoon. All that was left to be decided was their opponent — the winner of the game serving as the backdrop of their intrasquad scrimmage.

About a half an hour after the Dodgers cleared the field, the Braves advanced to the NLDS with a 6-2 win over the Phillies. The Dodgers and Braves will open the best-of-five series at Dodger Stadium on Saturday at 1 p.m. PDT.

SAN FRANCISCO — Stop me if you’ve heard this a million times, but the Dodgers are trying to become the first team to win three consecutive World Series championships since the New York Yankees, from 1998 to 2000.

Those Yankees had a Hall of Fame closer. In 1998, Mariano Rivera got the final four outs of the clincher. In 1999, he got the final four outs. In 2000, he got the final three outs.

These Dodgers? Their closer? Your guess is as good as theirs.

“I do not know,” said Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations.

Dodgers right fielder Kyle Tucker has never shied away from just how bad his performance at the plate was for much of his first season in Los Angeles.

For the first five months of the season, when he’d show brief glimpses of progress before sinking back into an extended slump, Tucker’s .683 OPS was the third-worst among Dodgers hitters with at least 100 plate appearances, better than only Hyeseong Kim and Kyle Freeland, who both spent time in triple A.

In September, however, he found a sustainable adjustment. He fixed his bat path, extending through the ball more consistently instead of pulling off of it. He posted a .889 OPS in September, on par with his four straight All-Star seasons before signing with the Dodgers.

The Atlanta Braves were two games from the end of their first road trip under new manager Walt Weiss when Braves starter Reynaldo López threw a pitch up and in to the Angels’ Jorge Soler with a 96-mph fastball. Soler responded by charging the pitcher only to be tackled by Weiss, who holds a black belt in taekwondo.

The Braves rallied to win that game and move into first in the National League East and they stayed there the rest of the season. For the scrappy Weiss, who didn’t post a winning record in four seasons as manager in Colorado, that moment gave him the chance to show he had his team’s back and cement his reputation in the clubhouse as a player’s manager.

“There’s not a guy in here who doesn’t respect Walt,” first baseman Matt Olson said.

The Dodgers open their 2026 postseason slate against the Atlanta Braves in the National League Division Series on Saturday at 1 p.m. PDT.

The game will be shown on Fox, Fox One and Fox Deportes. Radio broadcasts in the Los Angeles area will be on 570 AM and 1020 AM (Español).

Here are the latest betting odds for Game 1 of the NLDS:

Here’s the TV schedule for the rest of the best-of-five series (all times Pacific):

Game 2: Sunday, 5 p.m. at Dodger Stadium | FS1, Fox One, Fox Deportes

Game 3: Tuesday, 3 p.m. at Truist Park | FS1, Fox One, Fox Deportes

*Game 4: Wednesday, 3 p.m. at Truist Park | FS1, Fox One, Fox Deportes

*Game 5: Friday, 5 p.m. at Dodger Stadium | Fox, Fox One, Fox Deportes

*if necessary

When Dodgers rookie Josue De Paula debuted a little over two weeks ago, he was the youngest player in the lineup by four years. And when veteran infielder Miguel Rojas pinch-hit for Alex Freeland in the eighth inning, the 21-year-old De Paula and 29-year-old Kyle Tucker were the only Dodgers under 30 remaining in the batting order.

“You’ve got to have both,” veteran shortstop Mookie Betts, who turns 34 next month, said in a recent conversation with the Times. “You need experience, but you also do need youth. I don’t know what the balance is, to be honest.”

The age of the Dodgers’ stars is the most persistent knock on a group that just finished a 100-win regular season and has the second-best odds to win the World Series (16.7%), according to Baseball Prospectus.