Max Fried dominates Dodgers as Braves win again

LOS ANGELES — If this series truly is a playoff preview, the Dodgers might not like the full-length feature.

The Atlanta Braves hit three home runs off Dodgers starter Julio Urias and rode Max Fried’s seven scoreless innings to a 6-3 victory over the Dodgers on Friday night.

The MLB leaders with 256 home runs this season, the Braves have hit six home runs while winning the first two games, building six-run leads each night.

For all of the slugging, though, most worrisome for the Dodgers has to be the gap in starting pitching that has been exposed on the first two nights of this four-game series.

Lance Lynn and Urias have combined to allow 12 runs on 16 hits, including six home runs, in 9⅓ innings for the Dodgers – with rookies scheduled to start the next two games (Emmet Sheehan and Bobby Miller).

Spencer Strider was serviceable in the series opener. But on Friday, Fried gave the Braves the kind of shutdown performance it’s difficult to imagine the Dodgers getting from any of their starters in October – if any of them can emerge from the forest of openers and bulk guys and piggybacks likely to be deployed.

Making his sixth start since returning from a forearm injury that sidelined him for three months, Fried struck out six of the first eight Dodgers he faced and allowed just three hits – two of them infield singles.

Fried struck out 10 in his seven innings, particularly carving up the Dodgers with his curveball. That produced eight of the 15 swings-and-misses the Dodgers had against him. It was the fourth double-digit strikeout game of his career and first since 2019.

He also got two double-play grounders when he did allow a baserunner. The Dodgers didn’t get a runner to second base until the seventh.

While Fried looked like the National League Cy Young runner-up he was last season, Urias doesn’t even look like a distant cousin to the third-place finisher he was.

The Dodgers left-hander gave up solo home runs to Travis d’Arnaud, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Marcell Ozuna on three badly mislocated pitches. A 1-and-2 cutter to d’Arnaud was up over the plate. A first-pitch breaking ball to Acuña was ‘center-cut’ as the current slang goes and he hammered it 418 feet into the left-field pavilion. Urias’ 0-and-1 fastball to Ozuna was equally fat and landed 413 feet away.

Austin Riley nearly joined the power barrage but his fifth-inning drive hit the wall in right field for an RBI double instead.

After showing signs of righting his wobbly season with a 2.03 ERA over his first five starts in August, Urias has given up 11 runs in 11 innings over his past two starts (at Fenway Park and against the Braves) with six home runs allowed.

Urias’ fastball velocity topped 94 mph for three seasons before slipping to 93.1 last year. This year, it has slipped further to 92.7 mph. He wasn’t even able to muster that Friday, averaging 91.9 mph on his 44 fastballs.

Trailing 6-0, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts removed Max Muncy and Mookie Betts from the game in the eighth inning then sent Kolten Wong up to pinch-hit for Freddie Freeman in apparent surrender.

Wong had the Dodgers’ only big hit of the night – a three-run homer in his first at-bat with the team. The Dodgers got the tying run to the plate in the eighth before the Braves closed it out.

The Braves came into the series with the lowest bullpen ERA in the National League, but the Dodgers have scored six runs in five innings against their relievers.

More to come on this story.