Going for a sweep tonight

Freddie Freeman had three hits, including a triple and his 20th home run, and Jason Heyward hit a tying two-run homer in the sixth inning for the Braves, who will go for a series sweep of the National League East leaders Sunday.

The Braves still trail the Nationals by 6 ½ games with only 16 to play but say they haven’t conceded anything.

“Have they won the division yet? No, they haven’t,” Freeman said. “So obviously we do [have a chance]. This is the No. 1 team in the National League, and we’re playing them tough. We have a chance to sweep them tomorrow.”

Craig Kimbrel struck out Tyler Moore with a runner at third to end the game and collect his 36th save, and the Braves won for the seventh time in 17 games against the Nationals, including three in a row.

Tommy Hanson was charged with four runs (two earned), four hits and one walk in five innings, and had seven strikeouts.

David Ross led off the eighth with a single against Mattheus, and one out later Dan Uggla and Chipper Jones drew consecutive walks to load the bases and bring up Simmons.

The Braves have two wins despite going 1-for15 with runners in scoring position in the first two games of the series. They are 3-for-35 with runners in scoring position in their past six games, including getting swept in three at Milwaukee.

“At this point in the year, it’s a playoff atmosphere, and you’re going to have to find ways to win,” Heyward said. “Any way you can do it, whether it’s ugly, pretty, it doesn’t matter.”

The Braves led the wild-card standings by 6 ½ games over St. Louis and 7 ½ over Los Angeles, pending the outcome of the Cardinals-Dodgers game Saturday night.

Freeman began Saturday with one extra-base hit (a double) and one RBI in 40 at-bats during September. His error in the second inning indirectly led to two unearned runs and was his fourth error in the past 10 games.

“It was unfortunate,” he said. “It led to two runs. I came up right after that, so I wanted to get things started. I was lucky to get one down the line.”

Freeman led off the bottom of the inning with a triple down the rightfield line that skipped into foul territory and hugged the wall as it rolled toward the corner, giving the big-bodied first baseman time to rumble around the base paths for his second triple in 308 career games. Uggla followed with an oppositefield double.

Freeman’s one-out home run in the fourth cut the lead to 4-2. He pulled Edwin Jackson’s first pitch to the rightfield seats, Freeman’s sixth first-pitch homer.

Prado led off the sixth and reached first base when first-base umpire Marvin Hudson ruled that first baseman Adam LaRoche’s foot was off the base when he stretched to get the off-target throw from Jackson.

Heyward was up next and tied the score with a two-run homer, his 27th and 10th in his past 38 games.