Braves power on display at home, but don't be fooled -- this series is over

ATLANTA — The nature of baseball’s first-round playoff series lends itself to overreaction, to the idea that every little swing of momentum could turn around the entire playoffs. Even if you’re on the brink of elimination, all you have to do is win three in a row — something the Atlanta Braves already did 14 times this season. 

So it’s easy to be tempted by the idea the Braves, by virtue of their 6-5 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers on Sunday to extend the National League Division Series to Monday afternoon, could do it again. Here’s the case: Finally, there’s some pressure on the Dodgers, who were able to play as carefree as Little Leaguers in the first two games. Finally, Atlanta’s bats are coming to life after getting shut out the first two games. Finally, the tomahawk chopping crowd at Atlanta’s SunTrust Park is a factor and can help send the series back to Los Angeles for a coin-flip Game 5. 

“This team has been great when our backs are against the wall,” Braves center fielder Ender Inciarte said. “We’re going to compete. We’re not ready to go home.” 

But, for now, the main thing in this series is still the main thing: The Dodgers are a much better baseball team.

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That’s not to diminish what the Braves did Sunday, but rather to point out how hard it will be to turn this little opening in the series into more than a blip. But even if it’s just that, winning a game in this series was vitally important for Atlanta. 

For a team that had the second-highest batting average in the National League, getting shut out the first two games in Los Angeles was an embarrassment. And had the Braves’ season ended in a similar manner, it would have no doubt put a dent in what they accomplished this season, arriving in the playoffs perhaps a year or two early after a massive tear-down where the focus went toward building their farm system.

Instead, the Braves accomplished two things Sunday. They returned franchise cornerstone Freddie Freeman to a playoff stage he has long desired, and he delivered what became the game-winning homer in the sixth inning, smoking a pitch from Alex Wood, who almost never gives up home runs to lefties. 

They also introduced the country to 20-year old Ronald Acuña, who validated why many believe he’ll soon be the best show in baseball with a second-inning grand slam off Walker Buehler. 

“He’s special, that’s the bottom line,” Braves catcher Kurt Suzuki said. “I expect it out of him now. I ask him if he’s going to do something every day because he does it.”

Acuña, the likely NL Rookie of the Year, is only the beginning of why the young Braves could eventually win a World Series. With so many players in their early 20s getting postseason experience for the first time, the window is only beginning to open. 

“We have a team full of rookies,” shortstop Charlie Culberson said. “This is where we want to be and they rose to the occasion.”

But here’s the problem. Even in defeat, it seemed for much of the night as if the Dodgers were playing a different sport. 

It’s why even when they were 10 games under .500 in mid-May, even when they were in a neck-and-neck chase with Colorado in August and September despite injuries that made them less than whole, they were still the favorite to win the National League once again. 

So many options. So many arms. So many ways to win a baseball game. 

Think about what went wrong for the Dodgers early in this game, beginning when Buehler momentarily lost all control and loaded the bases with a stunning four-pitch walk to Atlanta starting pitcher Sean Newcomb. That’s when Acuña came up and blasted a 3-1 pitch into the left field seats, suddenly making the crowd a factor as well as the threat of a sudden power burst that simply wasn’t there in the first two games. 

But even a 5-0 deficit didn’t seem like a big deal to the Dodgers. That’s how good they are. 

All they had to do was zip through some lineup changes, bang a couple more home runs (they have seven and counting so far in the series) and suddenly it was a tied ballgame. They made it look frighteningly easy. But that’s the luxury of being able to pinch hit thumpers like Max Muncy and Yasiel Puig, who didn’t start because Dave Roberts wanted to stack his lineup with righties against the left-handed Newcomb.

Put another way, the Dodgers started with five available hitters on the bench Sunday night who combined for 108 home runs this year. The Braves’ top five power hitters the entire season combined for 106. 

That’s what the Braves were up against as they tried to piece together those last nine outs, each one of them a labor, after Freeman improbably put them back in front, 6-5. And that’s what they’ll be facing Monday, or if somehow Atlanta can get this thing back to Dodger Stadium in a winner-take-all scenario.

“It’s win or go home. That’s what tonight was,” Culberson said. “It was exciting to be on the winning side. If we can play like that with the kind of emotion and adrenaline we had tonight, that would be great.” 

The truth is, there were never a lot of advantages for the Braves in this matchup. Acuña was one if the stage wasn’t too big for him, and it’s clearly not. All he did Sunday was take down a Mickey Mantle record that stood for 55 years in becoming the youngest player in baseball history to hit a playoff grand slam. The only other edge was simply the sheer possibility of reducing this series to the smallest sample size possible and hoping to get a little lucky in the end. 

“Survive today and win the first pitch tomorrow,” Suzuki said. 

The Braves took the first step toward doing that Sunday, but taking another will almost certainly prove to be harder. 

Follow Wolken on Twitter @DanWolken