Roki Sasaki looks to continue his second half success

The Dodgers look to even up the series in Atlanta against the Braves, a series that could be key to which team owns one of the top two spots in the NL, which would give them that ever-so-important bye in the first round.

Currently, the Dodgers are one game behind the Milwaukee Brewers in wins, as the New York Mets came back in extras to also hand the Brewers a loss. Atlanta is three games behind L.A. with 77 wins.

The bottom of the lineup was key in the three runs scored in Tuesday night's game, and the top of the order needs to join in if the Dodgers wish to unleash more offense. The team will face AJ Smith-Shawver , a young righty who has only appeared in two games so far this season. He just returned after spending 14 months healing from Tommy John surgery and has joined the Braves rotation to give them a six-man staff to save some arm usage for the playoffs. In those two games this season he went 4.1 innings both times, allowing two earned runs in the first outing and four runs in the second outing. He has only seven strikeouts across those 8.2 innings.

Smith-Shawver leans on a curveball that breaks into lefty barrels, and the Dodgers could stack up to seven lefties against him. He lacks a reliable fading changeup that could potentially keep those lefties off balance.

The Dodgers did little to make the Braves bullpen work in Tuesday game and all arms should be available. The Dodgers could work to break the game open and get into the bullpen early, but bullpen usage may not matter as Chris Sale looms on Thursday.

Roki Sasaki will take the mound for the Dodgers. He hasn't earned the wins in any of his last three games, but he has looked much more solid, allowing only two runs in each of his last three outings, one of which was in Denver. Coming into last night's game, the Braves had only been averaging 1.3 earned runs against righties in their last 10 started by righties. After getting ahead of Glasnow in the first with three runs, Glasnow was able to shut them down pretty solidly the rest of the way. He ended up striking out seven, and Sasaki could rack up some K's himself.

TV: SportsNet LA, MLB Network (out of market)

Radio: AM 570 (English), KTNQ 1020 AM (Spanish)