Freeman’s blast lifts Braves
ATLANTA — Freddie Freeman hit a tiebreaking home run off Milwaukee closer Josh Hader with two outs in the eighth inning and the Atlanta Braves advanced to the NL Championship Series by finishing off the Brewers 5-4 on Tuesday night.
The Braves won the best-of-five Division Series three games to one, advancing to face San Francisco or the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The game was tied at 4 when the Brewers brought on Hader. The hard-throwing lefty struck out Eddie Rosario and Dansby Swanson, but he couldn’t get past Freeman.
“When Freddie hit that ball, I mean, I lost my poise. Everybody in the dugout was going crazy,” teammate Ozzie Albies said.
Will Smith pitched a scoreless ninth for his third straight save in the series.
Now the Braves are headed back to the NLCS for the second season in a row.
They hope to finish the job they came so agonizingly close to achieving a year ago, when they squandered a 3-1 series lead and lost in Game 7 to the Dodgers.
“We’ve been feeling really good about ourselves in the second half, playing really good baseball. We carried it over to the postseason,” Freeman said.
The Brewers scored first Tuesday, getting RBI singles from Omar Narváez and Lorenzo Cain.
But the Braves bounced back in the bottom half, even though Milwaukee may have caught a huge break on a deflected foul popup that was ruled a catch even through it appeared to hit the dirt. Pinch-hitter Eddie Rosario came through with a two-out, tworun single to center.
Milwaukee surged ahead again in the fifth, this time on Rowdy Tellez’s second two-run homer of the series. Back came the Braves, who put up another two-spot in their half. Joc Pederson drove in one with a forceout and Travis d’Arnaud hit a two-out single to right to bring home another.