After winning the first two games of the series, the Los Angeles Dodgers looked to keep things rolling on Saturday night against the Atlanta Braves.
Yasiel Puig made his return from the disabled list after missing three weeks with an oblique injury, and he made his presence felt immediately as the Dodgers came away with a 5-1 victory at SunTrust Park.
Puig drove in the Dodgers first three runs of the night, with the first being in the second inning when he hit a sacrifice fly to deep right field in his first plate appearance back. That scored Kiké Hernandez, who singled to begin the inning.
The big swing of the night came in the top of the sixth inning though when Puig launched a two-run home run to straightaway left field to extend the Dodgers lead to 3-0. The long ball was his 12th of the season.
While all that was going on, Dodgers left-hander Alex Wood was turning in another very solid outing on the mound. He gave up just one hit in 5.2 innings against his former team, striking out five while walking four.
An error by Chris Taylor and a walk didn’t allow Wood to get out of the sixth as J.T. Chargois came in to get the final out with two runners on base. He struck out Braves catcher Tyler Flowers to escape the jam and keep Atlanta off the scoreboard.
The top of the seventh had an unfortunate ending for the Dodgers as they had runners at second and third with one out and Matt Kemp smoked a line drive back up the middle. The only problem was that Braves reliever Peter Moylan stuck his glove up and snagged it, and then doubled Taylor off third to end the inning.
Atlanta then answered with their first run of the game in the bottom half of the inning when John Camargo took Caleb Ferguson deep to cut the Dodgers lead to 3-1.
After Ferguson tossed a scoreless eighth, the Dodgers added some insurance in the ninth on RBI-singles by Taylor and Manny Machado to extend the lead to 5-1. Erik Goeddel then tossed a scoreless ninth to complete the victory.
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