Machado, Dodgers finish off Atlanta in 4 games
ATLANTA — When the Los Angeles Dodgers bolstered their already power-packed lineup with slugging shortstop Manny Machado, this is just what they had in mind.
Plenty of long balls. Another deep run in the post-season.
Next stop, Major League Baseball’s National League Championship Series for the third year in a row.
Machado drove in four runs — three of them with a seventhinning shot into the left-field seats — and the Dodgers finished off the Atlanta Braves with a 6-2 victory Monday in their NL Division Series.
Los Angeles took the best-offive series 3-1 and advanced to face the Brewers. Game 1 is Friday night in Milwaukee.
Coming off a tense victory in Game 3, the Braves grabbed the lead on pinch-hitter Kurt Suzuki’s two-run single in the fourth.
But David Freese, the 2011 World Series MVP with St. Louis,
came through again in the postseason.
He delivered a pinch-hit single of his own in the sixth off Jonny Venters (0-1), driving home Cody Bellinger and Yasiel Puig for a 3-2 lead with a grounder past backup shortstop Charlie Culberson after Atlanta allowed Puig to steal second uncontested.
Machado finished off Atlanta in the seventh, launching a 1-2 pitch from rookie Chad Sobotka over the Dodgers’ bullpen — his team’s eighth homer of the series. A free-agent-to-be acquired from Baltimore in July, Machado also had a run-scoring double in the first.
Ryan Madson (1-0) earned the
win by getting the final two outs in the fifth to escape a basesloaded jam. Lucas Duda hit a long drive to right that drifted foul with two on in the eighth against Kenta Maeda, then had an inning-ending fly out.
Atlanta’s return to the postseason for the first time since 2013 yielded a familiar result: another post-season defeat.
The Braves have lost nine straight playoff appearances, their last victory coming 17 long years ago against a team that is no longer in the National League. Since a sweep of Houston Astros in the 2001 NL Division Series, October has been a month of misery for the Braves.