Braves are good and Freddie
ATLANTA — Freddie Freeman hit a tiebreaking home run against Josh Hader with two outs in the eighth inning, lifting the Braves to a 5-4 victory Tuesday against the Brewers and into the National League Championship Series for the second consecutive season.
The Braves won the NL Division Series three games to one and next will face the Giants or Dodgers with a trip to the World Series on the line. They lost to the Dodgers in seven games in the NLCS last season.
The score was tied at 4 when the Brewers brought on Hader in an effort to keep it that way. He struck out Eddie Rosario and Dansby Swanson to start the eighth, but he couldn’t get past Freeman, the reigning NL most valuable player.
Freeman caught up with an 84 mph slider and launched a 428-foot drive into the seats in left-center. It was the first homer Hader had allowed since July 28.
‘‘The first two guys went down, so I just tried to get a pitch up,’’ Freeman said. ‘‘He hung a slider, and I put a good swing on it. There was no rhyme or reason to it.’’
Freeman celebrated wildly on his way around the bases and popped back out of the dugout for a curtain call as the crowd of 40,195 roared. He became the first player in franchise history to hit a go-ahead homer in the eighth inning or later in a series-clinching victory, ESPN Stats & Info said.
‘‘When Freddie hit that ball, I mean, I lost my poise,’’ Braves second baseman Ozzie Albies said. ‘‘Everybody in the dugout was going crazy.’’
Will Smith pitched a scoreless ninth for his third consecutive save in the series, getting Christian Yelich to look at strike three with a runner on first for the final out. Tyler Matzek earned the victory with a perfect eighth.
‘‘Freddie! Freddie! Freddie!’’ the crowd chanted as the Braves celebrated on the field.
Despite having fewer victories (88) than any other playoff team — and even two teams that didn’t make the postseason — the Braves are looking to reach the World Series for the first time since 1999, when they were swept by the Yankees.
‘‘We’ve been feeling really good about ourselves in the second half, playing really good baseball,’’ Freeman said. ‘‘We carried it over to the postseason.’’
After the teams combined for only nine runs in the first 30 innings of the series, the offenses suddenly came to life in the fourth.
The Brewers scored for the first time since Game 1, getting RBI singles from Omar Narvaez and Lorenzo Cain to snap a 22-inning scoreless streak.
After the Braves — who played without outfielder Jorge Soler, who tested positive for COVID-19 before the game — tied the score on a two-run single by Rosario with two outs in the bottom of the inning, the Brewers regained the lead on a two-run homer by Rowdy Tellez in the fifth.
But the Braves tied the score again in their half of the inning, with Joc Pederson driving in one run with a force and Travis d’Arnaud delivering the other with a two-out single.
‘‘We’re all really disappointed,’’ Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. ‘‘In the end, we had big goals. We didn’t quite get there, but we did win 95 games.’’