The champagne was sprayed and cigars were smoked on Thursday night at Truist Park after the Atlanta Braves clinched a spot in the National League Division Series, taking down the rival Philadelphia Phillies, 6-2, in Game 3 of the National League Wild Card Series.<\/p>\n
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The champagne was sprayed and cigars were smoked on Thursday night after the Atlanta Braves clinched a spot in the National League Division Series, taking down the rival Philadelphia Phillies, 6-2, in Game 3 of the National League Wild Card Series.<\/p>\n
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Catcher Drake Baldwin said, \u201cIt\u2019s fun to celebrate beating a really good Phillies team. It says a lot about the guys on this team, so we\u2019re gonna celebrate it. It feels really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Braves took a giant exhale in the first inning when Michael Harris II crushed a three-run home run off of Phillies starter Aaron Nola to give Atlanta an immediate 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, that pitch isn\u2019t what I wanted, but it\u2019s what I got and I just did what I could with it. He\u2019s always been a guy that gives me a lot of trouble. He doesn\u2019t want to give me pitches over the plate to hit, so when you got in a situation like that with runners on, I just had to take advantage of it,\u201d Harris explained.<\/p>\n
Ozzie Albies added a two-run shot off of Philadelphia\u2019s ace Zack Wheeler in the fourth inning. The third home run of the night was a Matt Olson solo shot in the bottom of the seventh.<\/p>\n
Ray Kerr made the start for the Braves and pitched 3.1 innings, surrendering just one hit and one walk, while striking out a pair of batters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that he has that trust in me, I\u2019m gonna keep showing [Walt Weiss]\u2014keep putting your trust in me,\u201d Kerr explained.<\/p>\n
Grant Holmes came out of the bullpen and pitched two innings, allowing two hits, one run and one walk. Robert Suarez, Didier Fuentes and Dylan Dodd patched together 2.1 innings, combining for two allowed hits and one run.<\/p>\n
2024 National League Cy Young Award winner Chris Sale closed out the game for Atlanta, going 1.1 innings, giving up just one hit, while punching out three.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiterally as soon as I stepped in my office this afternoon, I put my backpack down. I looked up and he was sitting in the chair across my desk. And he looked at me and said \u2018I feel amazing,\u2019\u201d manager Walt Weiss said.<\/p>\n
Sale, whose heroics came on one day of rest, added, \u201cTo get to this point\u2014this is what we live for. To be able to come to a winner-take-all game against a team like that and do what we did tonight is special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weiss explained, \u201cWhen we fell on tough times and we heard the noise, \u2018we\u2019re choking\u2019 and \u2018we\u2019re giving it away.\u2019 These guys just took off again, man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Atlanta will travel to Los Angeles this weekend to face the back-to-back world champion Dodgers in the best-of-five National League Division Series. First pitch at Chavez Ravine on Saturday for Game 1 is at 4 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The champagne was sprayed and cigars were smoked on Thursday night at Truist Park after the Atlanta Braves…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[62645,99960,46,5,2323,2314,2317,2313,2413,919,2450,19,2310,2328,2304,2318,2308,2319,4,2305,2303,2421,25,35610,9386,1039],"class_list":["post-821687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb-postseason","tag-2024-national-league-wild-card-series","tag-2026-national-league-wild-card-series","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-events","tag-baseball-finals","tag-baseball-games","tag-baseball-playoffs-and-champions","tag-champion-seasons-in-major-league-baseball","tag-chris-sale","tag-liberty-media-subsidiaries","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-major-league-baseball-competitions","tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","tag-major-league-baseball-seasons","tag-major-league-baseball-teams","tag-major-league-baseball-teams-seasons","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-playoffs","tag-mlb-postseason","tag-national-league-baseball","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-walt-weiss","tag-wild-card-series","tag-world-series"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}