With the Dodgers having lost 31-year-old right-handed Tyler Glasnow for the remainder of the season due to a sprained right elbow, and with their starting rotation in a bit of disarray of late, they needed – absolutely needed – a strong start from 30-year-old right-hander Walker Buehler, as he continues to work his way back from his second Tommy John surgery on August 23, 2022 – and they got exactly that in Sunday’s 9-2 win over the NL East second place Atlanta Braves at Truist Park.

Making his 14th start of his injury-shortened 2024 season, the Lexington, KY native and Dodgers first-round draft pick in 2015 out of Vanderbilt allowed just two runs (one earned) on three hits, while walking and striking out five, doing so on 97 total pitches, of which 63 were strikes.

But of far more importance is that the hard-throwing Dodgers right-hander pitched six full innings, to give the Dodgers heavily used bullpen a bit of a break.

“I don’t want to say it was the biggest win of the year, but it felt big considering what we’ve been going through,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of his team, who entered Sunday’s contest having lost six of their last nine games.

As for Buehler, who struggled a bit through his first couple of innings, he summed up his outing saying: “The third time through (the lineup) in the last three innings, I got a couple first-pitch outs and early outs and some three-pitch punchouts. I kind of got rolling and felt good about it,” he added.

But the big talk of Sunday’s game were the back-to-back-to back home runs by Messrs. Teoscar Hernández, Tommy Edman, and Max Muncy in the Dodgers seven-run ninth inning, an inning that saw Braves right-hander Raisel Iglesias intentionally walk international superstar Shohei Ohtani with two outs and with Dodgers catcher Will Smith on third base, having tripled to right. Smith would score on a single to left and Ohtani and Mookie Betts on a clutch single by Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman to give the Dodgers a then 5-2 lead. That lead quickly grew to 9-2 with those three-back-jacks.

With their decisive win on Sunday and with only 13 regular season games remaining for the NL West first place Dodgers, the division looks like this:

Play Ball!

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