Manny delivers goods
Machado homers to provide playoff payoff for Dodgers
ATLANTA — When the 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 postseason.
Next stop, the NL Championship Series for the third year in a row.
Machado drove in four runs — three of them with a seventh-inning shot into the left-field seats — and the Dodgers finished off the Braves with a 6-2 victory Monday in the NL Division Series.
The Dodgers took the best-of-five 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 tworun single in the fourth.
But David Freese, the 2011 World Series MVP for the Cardinals, came through again in the postseason. He delivered a pinch-hit single 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 the Braves allowed Puig to steal second uncontested.
Machado finished the job in the seventh, launching a 1-2 pitch from Chad Sobotka over the Dodgers’ bullpen — his team’s eighth homer of the series. A free agent-to-be acquired from the Orioles in July, Machado also had a runscoring 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 inningending flyout.
The Braves’ return to the postseason for the first time since 2013 yielded a familiar result. They 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 the Astros in 2001, October has been a month of misery for the Braves.
Though they got back to the playoffs ahead of schedule after a full rebuild, they didn’t have the experience, depth or power to stick with the Dodgers.