ATLANTA — The Dodgers are justifiably excited about the starting rotation they are assembling. The spillage into the bullpen it will produce might be just as important. Those guys need some help.
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They got five strong innings – really, four – from Tyler Glasnow in his return from a back injury that sidelined him for 3½ months. But the Atlanta Braves scored a run off reliever Tanner Scott in the eighth inning to take a 4-3 victory on Tuesday night in the opener of a three-game series that could be important for playoff seeding.
“I don’t know. We won through a Wild Card Series (in 2025). We won with the (first-round) bye (in 2024),” Mookie Betts said in the Dodgers’ standard response when asked about the playoff seeding they are competing for with the Braves (77-55) and Milwaukee Brewers (81-51).
“I don’t think it really matters. If you want to make it matter, sure. It doesn’t matter when you play, you’re going to have to get timely hits and pitch. There’s no secret or magic formula to it.”
The Dodgers (80-52) failed on both counts in the late innings against the Braves and their six-game winning streak came to an end. The loss was the Dodgers’ fourth one-run decision in their past seven games and their 11th this month. For the season, they are just 20-19 in one-run games.
“We’ve had to lean on our ’pen, man, the last two months really,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I think the last two months we’ve played a lot of one-, two-run ballgames. There’s no margin. I thought we pitched well enough to win tonight. Unfortunately, it just didn’t happen.”
The deciding run in this one came in the eighth when Scott gave up a leadoff double to Matt Olson – the first extra-base hit allowed by the Dodgers since Saturday. A ground out moved him to third, and he stayed there when Michael Harris II grounded weakly back to Scott for the second out.
But Scott fell behind Ozzie Albies 2-and-0. When he came back with a slider down but over the plate, Albies dumped it into center field for an RBI single.
“One last pitch (to get out of the inning),” Roberts lamented. “Olson gets a fastball up, shoots it to left-center. And then he gets to two outs with the infield in, and right there he tries to be careful with Albies with a 2-0 count and just didn’t get the slider low enough.”
But the Dodgers put the tying run 90 feet away immediately. Shohei Ohtani led off the ninth inning with a triple off the left field wall, just feet from going out.
But Braves closer Raisel Iglesias struck out Freddie Freeman (with the help of an ABS overturn) and Betts bounced out to the drawn-in infield.
“It’s tough,” Betts said. “Just trying to get a ball in the air and score him. It doesn’t really matter what it looks like. He just needs to touch the plate. I didn’t do my job.”
After intentionally walking Max Muncy, Iglesias got Tommy Edman to fly out to center field to end the game.
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“With Raisel, you know that he’s going to lean on that split-change,” Roberts said. “It’s just infield in, you have to try to find something elevated to get the ball to the outfield.”
The Braves greeted Glasnow with a reminder of how frustrating pitching can be. Four of the first five batters the right-hander faced in his return reached base on singles. Only Drake Baldwin’s leadoff single was hit particularly hard (95.3 mph off the bat). After that, the exit velocities on the Braves’ hits were 81.8 mph, 68.7 mph and 77.9 mph.
But the soft contact produced two runs. A third scored on a sacrifice fly.
“I mean, it is (frustrating), but it’s just kind of how it goes over the course of the season,” Glasnow said. “You’ll have stuff like that, and then I’ll have hard-hit balls right at people. So hopefully it gets to even towards end of season.”
Glasnow hasn’t had much of a season for things to even out one way or the other. Tuesday was just his eighth start, his first since he left with back spasms after one inning on May 6 in Houston.
“It felt like a long time,” Glasnow said. “I think any time you’re out that long, just doing rehab the whole time, it definitely sucks. So it’s exciting to be able to get back. But I’m glad, too, my body’s in a spot where I felt like I was before, so just yeah, glad I feel healthy and my stuff feels good.”
It showed when he struck out Mike Yastrzemski to end the first – thanks to an ABS challenge by catcher Hunter Feduccia. He struck out the side in the second inning and five batters in a row into the third.
After Michael Harris II had the fourth of the Braves’ first-inning singles, Glasnow retired 14 of 16 batters and struck out seven in his five innings.
“I think just switching up a little bit,” Glasnow said of his adjustment after the early trouble. “I think I was pretty fastball-heavy the first inning, a little bit predictable. (There were) not like a ton of hard-hit balls, but it’s just just how it goes sometimes. But I think coming out in the second, I just felt more in rhythm, and my slider was working a lot better, and just felt a lot better.”
The Dodgers got back into the game after the Braves’ head start with their own batch of singles.
In the second, four singles produced two runs, Alek Thomas and Feduccia getting the RBI hits. In the fourth, Tommy Edman led off with a single, stole second base and scored on Alex Call’s single to tie the game, 3-3.
Glasnow’s 35-pitch first inning got his pitch count up, though, and he only went five, sending Roberts to his bullpen with the game tied. Alex Vesia, Jack Dreyer and Evan Phillips kept it that way before Scott came on in the eighth.
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