Braves rotation flexes on Dodgers lineup to end West Coast road trip

Coming into their highly anticipated weekend series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, a case could have been made that the Atlanta Braves had their rotation lined up exactly how it might look come October — Chris Sale, Spencer Strider, and Bryce Elder.

Three days later, that feeling has only grown stronger.

Sale is always going to be Sale. For my money, he’s 1A on the list of best pitchers in baseball, tossing another seven innings of two-run ball on Friday night. Yet somehow, that ended up being the weakest pitching performance of the bunch in Atlanta’s only loss of the series.

On Saturday, Strider looked like the old Strider for the first time since undergoing InternalBrace surgery back in April of 2024. The velocity on both the fastball and slider jumped nearly two miles per hour, but even more importantly, the shape of the heater looked much more reminiscent of the version that once made him the most dominant strikeout pitcher in baseball.

Over six shutout innings, the Dodgers managed just one hit while striking out eight times. It was vintage Spencer Strider — the last thing opposing teams want to see added back into this Braves rotation.

Then on Sunday it was another chapter in one of the best stories of the entire season.

Coming into 2026, Elder was probably five or six bad outings away from being designated for assignment. Dating back to the second half of 2023, he had been among the least effective starting pitchers in baseball, and because he was out of options, there really wasn’t much margin for error left. It was put up or shut up time, and Elder has done nothing but put up zeroes since Opening Day.

That trend continued yesterday with 5.2 more scoreless innings against one of the best lineups in baseball. Somehow, even more impressive than the run prevention was the fact that he struck out eight batters. Elder is now averaging nearly a strikeout per inning while carrying a league-leading 1.81 ERA and 222 ERA+.

And as has been discussed after nearly every one of his starts, this doesn’t feel anything like the somewhat smoke-and-mirrors first half we saw back in 2023. Elder has made legitimate adjustments to his repertoire, and the underlying metrics support what’s happening. This isn’t simply a lucky stretch fueled by weak contact and favorable bounces from the baseball gods.

Is he actually headed toward a Cy Young Award? Probably not. But a second All-Star appearance is starting to feel more inevitable with every outing.

The Braves ultimately took two out of three at Chavez Ravine to cap off a 6-3 road trip, and they were just a couple of favorable bounces away from sweeping the two-time defending champions in a stadium that’s been a complete house of horrors for Atlanta for over a decade.

It’s only the second time the Braves have won a regular season series in Los Angeles since 2012. The other came in 2023, when Atlanta went on to win 104 games.

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(Photo by Dustin Bradford/Icon Sportswire)