One night after Tarik Skubal’s dominant playoff debut carried the Los Angeles Dodgers to a Game 1 win, the Atlanta Braves answered in kind on Sunday night at Dodger Stadium, riding a full bullpen effort and a go-ahead run manufactured off a wild pitch to a 3-2 victory that evened the National League Division Series at one game apiece. For most of the baseball-watching world, the headline was straightforward: a hard-fought, low-scoring game that set up a pivotal Game 3 in Atlanta. But for fans who had spent the better part of a week anticipating a different kind of milestone, Game 2 delivered a second consecutive disappointment. The possibility of the first all-Korean postseason head-to-head in MLB history, between Atlanta shortstop Kim Ha-seong and Dodgers infielder Kim Hye-seong, went from “didn’t happen yet” after Game 1 to “didn’t even get close” after Game 2, with both players riding the bench for all nine innings.
A Bullpen Game Decides a Low-Scoring Battle
Game 2 unfolded very differently from the home-run-driven slugfest of Game 1. Dodgers starter Blake Snell was pulled after just 3⅔ innings, turning the contest into what both managers essentially treated as a bullpen game from the fourth inning onward. Atlanta’s relief corps carried the heavier workload of the two, and it was Ray Kerr who set the tone, striking out four batters across 2.2 scoreless innings to bridge the middle frames. From there, the Braves’ bullpen depth — a strength the club had leaned on throughout a grueling first week of October — did the rest. Dylan Lee was credited with the win, Kris Bubic took the loss for the Dodgers, and closer Raisel Iglesias recorded the final out to lock up the save.
The relative lack of early offense made the game’s turning point, when it arrived, feel especially decisive. Rather than a home run swinging the balance, as had been the case in Game 1, Game 2’s decisive sequence came on a baserunning-and-pitching mistake: exactly the kind of play that tends to get lost in a highlight reel dominated by home run distance and exit velocity, but that veteran postseason watchers know can be just as costly.
Michael Harris II Does the Damage
If Game 1 belonged to Tarik Skubal and a trio of Dodgers sluggers, Game 2 belonged to Atlanta’s Michael Harris II. Harris opened his night with a triple in the third inning, immediately signaling that he would be a problem for the Dodgers’ pitching staff all evening. He backed that up in the fifth inning by reaching base and then coming around to score the go-ahead run when Dodgers reliever Kris Bubic threw a wild pitch — an unglamorous but fully decisive way to take a lead in a one-run postseason game. Harris was not finished. In the seventh inning, he added an RBI double to right field against reliever Edgardo Henriquez, padding Atlanta’s lead to two runs and giving the Braves’ bullpen a cushion to work with in the late innings.
Three separate times on offense, in three different innings, Harris found a way to put pressure on the Dodgers — a triple, a wild-pitch-aided run, and a run-scoring double. It was the kind of all-around performance that swings a short postseason series, and for one night it made Harris, rather than any of the series’ bigger offseason storylines, the player every recap had to center on.
Max Muncy’s Late Solo Shot Isn’t Enough
The Dodgers did not go down without a fight. Down 3-0 entering the ninth inning, Max Muncy connected for a solo home run off Atlanta reliever Didier Fuentes with two outs, cutting the deficit to a single run and giving Dodger Stadium one final jolt of hope. It was not enough. Atlanta’s bullpen, and Iglesias in particular, closed the door from there, preserving the 3-2 final and sending the series back to a 1-1 tie. For a Dodgers offense that had produced three home runs just one night earlier, managing only Muncy’s solo shot in a tighter, lower-scoring Game 2 was a reminder of how differently a short series can play out from game to game, even with largely the same two rosters on the field.
A Second Straight Non-Event for the Korean Derby
For readers who followed Saturday night’s Game 1, the storyline heading into Sunday was already familiar: Kim Ha-seong, Atlanta’s everyday shortstop for most of the postseason, and Kim Hye-seong, a September call-up now on the Dodgers’ active roster, represented the possibility of the first all-Korean postseason matchup in MLB history. In Game 1, that possibility stayed alive but unresolved — Kim Ha-seong played and went hitless with a walk, while Kim Hye-seong never left the Dodgers bench.
Game 2 did not just leave the question open; it moved the opposite direction. Both players were out of the starting lineup from the first pitch, and neither entered as a pinch-hitter, pinch-runner, or late-inning substitute at any point over nine innings. In a tight, low-scoring, bullpen-dominated game — the exact kind of contest where a single pinch-hit at-bat or defensive substitution can carry outsized weight — neither manager turned to his Korean infielder at all. What had been a near-miss after Game 1 became, after Game 2, a game in which the possibility of a Korean Derby was never really in play to begin with.
Neither club has offered a detailed public explanation for sitting both players simultaneously, and it would be speculation to assign a single cause — matchup considerations, roster management, or simply each manager’s read on who gives his team the best chance to win on a given night are all plausible factors in a short series where every decision is magnified. What is clear from the box score is the outcome: for the second consecutive game, the all-Korean postseason showdown that Korean media had been building toward for the better part of two weeks did not happen.
Why Two Bench Spots Matter So Much to One Fan Base
It is worth explaining, for readers unfamiliar with the broader context, why two unused bench spots have generated so much attention. Korean-born position players remain comparatively rare in Major League Baseball next to Korean-born pitchers, and the prospect of two of them sharing a postseason field — on opposing teams, no less — would have been a first in the sport’s history, independent of how either player performed in the game. That kind of milestone carries its own gravity, separate from the pennant race itself.
The two players also arrived at this series from very different places. Kim Ha-seong signed a multi-year free agent deal with Atlanta and has spent much of 2026 fighting through the most difficult offensive stretch of his career, earning his everyday spot more through defense than production at the plate. Kim Hye-seong, by contrast, split much of the season between the majors and Triple-A Oklahoma City before a late-September call-up and an active-roster inclusion that was itself a notable vote of confidence, given how often teams leave recent additions off October rosters in favor of established veterans. One player is trying to salvage a difficult season; the other is still waiting for his first real opportunity to make a mark in the sport’s biggest games. Two games into the NLDS, neither storyline has advanced, because neither player has taken the field.
What a Bullpen Game Says About Both Rosters
Beyond the Korean Derby subplot, Sunday’s result offered a useful data point about how both teams plan to navigate a short series. The Dodgers’ decision to lift Snell after less than four innings, and Atlanta’s willingness to turn the game over to its bullpen from almost the first pitch, both reflect a modern postseason reality: starting pitching depth matters less in October than a team’s ability to mix and match relievers across six or seven innings without losing effectiveness. Atlanta’s bullpen, which had already been tested across a three-game Wild Card Series against the Philadelphia Phillies just days earlier, again proved deep enough to carry the load, with four different relievers — Kerr, Lee, and the arms who followed — combining to hold a dangerous Dodgers lineup to a single run until the ninth inning.
For the Dodgers, the quick hook on Snell suggests a team still searching for its most reliable formula through the middle innings of close postseason games, even with a World Series title from the previous year and a trade-deadline ace now anchoring the rotation. Manager decisions like these tend to look obvious in hindsight regardless of outcome, but the pattern across the first two games — a dominant new starter carrying Game 1, a quick-hook bullpen game deciding Game 2 — suggests both staffs are still feeling out exactly how deep into their respective bullpens they are willing to go in a series that could easily stretch to a decisive Game 5.
Atlanta’s Road Has Already Been Long
It is worth remembering that Sunday’s win did not come for a club that arrived at the NLDS well-rested. Atlanta had to survive a full three-game Wild Card Series against the Philadelphia Phillies just to earn the right to face the Dodgers at all, a series that went the distance after an extra-innings loss in Game 2 forced a win-or-go-home Game 3. By the time the Braves landed in Los Angeles for Game 1 of the NLDS, they had already played through two of the most pressure-filled games the postseason can produce, while the Dodgers had a longer runway to rest key players and line up their rotation exactly as they wanted.
That difference in circumstances is not an excuse for either team — rosters are built to handle compressed October schedules — but it adds some context to how resilient Atlanta’s bullpen has looked across the last two rounds. Relievers who had already thrown meaningful innings in a sudden-death Wild Card game were asked again, two days later, to hold a dangerous lineup to one run for eight innings in Game 2. That they did so, and did it on the road, says as much about Atlanta’s pitching depth as the box score’s home run and RBI columns do about its offense.
A Series Still Searching for Its Identity
Two games into the NLDS, the series has yet to settle into a predictable pattern, which is often the case when two deep, well-built rosters meet in October. Game 1 was decided by power: three home runs and a dominant start from a newly acquired ace. Game 2 was decided by the opposite: contact, baserunning, a wild pitch, and bullpen execution, with the only home runs coming from Muncy’s ninth-inning consolation shot. If that trend holds, Games 3, 4, and a potential Game 5 could just as easily be decided by whichever team’s relief corps has the freshest arms as by which lineup hits the ball hardest. That uncertainty is precisely what makes a tied best-of-five series compelling heading into a change of scenery, and it leaves both the Kim Ha-seong and Kim Hye-seong storyline and the series’ ultimate outcome very much unresolved.
Looking Ahead to Atlanta
With the series tied 1-1, the NLDS now shifts to Truist Park in Atlanta for Game 3, where the Braves will have the benefit of a home crowd for a series that has already swung on a home run barrage in Game 1 and a bullpen battle decided by a wild pitch in Game 2. For the Dodgers, the challenge is straightforward: solve a Braves bullpen that has now carried the club through a grueling Wild Card Series and a tense Game 2 without cracking, while still getting enough from a lineup that has shown flashes of its power but has yet to find consistent rhythm against Atlanta’s relief corps.
For fans tracking the Kim Ha-seong and Kim Hye-seong storyline specifically, the shift to Atlanta changes nothing about the fundamental math: a best-of-five series tied at a game apiece still has at least one guaranteed game left, and potentially three. Every remaining game carries the same latent possibility that both Game 1 and Game 2 carried and failed to deliver — that one manager or the other turns to his bench in a spot where a Kim enters the game, and that the first all-Korean postseason meeting in MLB history finally moves from hypothetical to reality. Two games into the series, that moment has not arrived. Whether it arrives in Atlanta, or waits for a return trip to Los Angeles, remains one of the more unusual threads still hanging over an NLDS that has otherwise been decided, so far, entirely by the players who did take the field.
For now, the series resets at 1-1, Michael Harris II has given Atlanta’s offense its signature night of the series, and the two players most responsible for the biggest “what if” of the NLDS have yet to swing a bat against each other, or even appear in the same game. Game 3 will have to wait to find out whether that changes.