Yamamoto Outduels Sale as Dodgers Take NLDS Game 3, 3-1

The Dodgers beat the Braves 3-1 at Truist Park on Tuesday night, and the game played out close to what the pitching matchup suggested — just not for the team that needed it most. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was brilliant: 7 innings, 1 earned run, 4 hits, 10 strikeouts, 1 walk. Chris Sale wasn't bad, but he wasn't Yamamoto. Sale went 5 innings, allowed 3 earned runs on 7 hits with 7 strikeouts, and served up a pair of home runs that decided the game.

Moneyline: Dodgers — WIN. The model's +9.25 edge on Los Angeles held up. The predicted margin was razor thin, but the side was right.

Run line: Braves +1.5 — LOSS. A two-run Dodgers win covers the number. Atlanta never led.

Total: Over — LOSS. Four combined runs, three of them on homers. The bats stayed quiet, which is exactly what the number implied.

On the props, Sale's 3 earned runs cleared his 1.50 line — a loss, and the biggest miss of the night. Yamamoto's 10 strikeouts sailed over 6.50, and his 4 hits allowed stayed under 4.50. Both cashed. Drake Baldwin finished 0-for-4 with an RBI, so his hits prop fell short.

The takeaway: when two elite arms meet and the total sits at 6.5, the honest lean is the under, not the over — the market isn't wrong about pitchers' duels as often as it feels. The Yamamoto strikeout and hits props were the right reads and the right prices. The Sale earned-runs prop was the trap: fading a cold Dodgers lineup sounds smart until one swing changes the math. Expect tighter, lower-scoring games the rest of this series.