Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before: Yamamoto, Hernández Bring Dodgers to Brink of NLCS

Brett Davis-Imagn Images Sunday night’s encore performance of the Ray Kerr Variety Hour felt like a turning point in this postseason. The Braves had not only survived the Chris Sale bullpen fiasco, they were headed back home with the series tied and their two best starting pitchers lined up on full rest. The Dodgers have been on the ropes before during their back-to-back World Series-winning run, but those ropes felt especially menacing against Sale and the resurgent Braves. Not to worry, Dodgers fans. Los Angeles escaped this crucible with a 3-1 win, and now sit one game from a third straight NLCS appearance. Regularly scheduled programming has resumed. It was not always meant to go like this. As the two teams lined up at Truist Park, the omens were only getting darker for the Dodgers. Shohei Ohtani, who’s a walking, talking episode of House at this point, started the game in the no. 5 position in the batting order.FanGraphs Playoff Coverage Is for MembersYou must be a Member in order to read our postseason coverage. You can read our announcement here, but it's not the only reason you should consider becoming a Member. Membership includes:✓Ad-free browsing✓Unlimited FanGraphs & RotoGraphs articles✓Historical & platoon projections✓Leaderboard & player-page stat heatmaps✓One-click data exports✓Customizable player-page dashboards✓Dark & Classic site modes✓Weekly Members-only mailbag✓FanGraphs Walk-Off, your year in review✓Optional homepage photo removal✓Gift articles to non-Members✓Full postseason coverage Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.