Whereas the Los Angeles Dodgers got to former teammate Brandon McCarthy in the series opener, the Atlanta Braves flipped the script on Alex Wood, coming away with a 5-3 win on Saturday. Tyler Flowers did the bulk of the damage as he finished with three RBI.
Wood breezed through the first inning on just 13 pitches but largely labored after that point. Charlie Culberson cashed in a leadoff double in the second with an RBI single, and he later scored on Johan Camargo’s double.
While Wood manage to limit the Braves to just one run, he needed 32 pitches to get through the inning. After an error on Logan Forsythe and Freddie Freeman’s single put two on with one out in the third, both runners advanced by successfully completing a double steal.
Flowers’ two-out RBI double extended the Braves’ lead to 3-1. Wood did retire the side in order in the fourth inning, but Flowers’ two-out single brought in another run and knocked the Dodgers’ starter out of the game.
Yimi Garcia escaped a bases-loaded jam but by that point Atlanta had already provided enough run support for Anibal Sanchez. After allowing a solo home run to Max Muncy in the bottom of the first, he held the Dodgers without a hit until Yasiel Puig’s leadoff single in the fifth inning.
Between those two points, Muncy’s walk to start the fourth inning was the Dodgers’ only other baserunner. Joc Pederson’s bloop double and Forsythe’s groundout scored Puig and cut the Braves’ lead in half.
Sanchez allowed just the two runs on three hits, while collecting five strikeouts against two walks in 5.1 innings. After Scott Alexander gave up a run on a string of hits in the seventh, Puig single-handedly manufactured one in the bottom half of the inning.
He led off with a hustle double, then alertly advanced to third base on a groundout which proved key as he scored on a wild pitch. But that was all the Dodgers would get, as they stranded two in the eighth and were retired in order in the ninth.
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