Once again, a dominant left-hander utterly shut down the Braves and scored the winning run himself. There’s no particular shame in losing the Clayton Kershaw, the best pitcher in baseball and one of the greatest of all time.

But after getting three-hit by Kershaw in his six innings of work, our boys mustered a total of two hits and one walk against the Dodger bullpen, while Brian Snitker demonstrated that he has just as little an idea as Fredi of how to get through the eighth inning. It was 1-0 until that fateful eighth.

Then Alexi Ogando came in and gave up a single that Ender Inciarte misplayed into a double — I honestly have no idea how he didn’t get charged an error — and after a groundout moved him to third, Trayce Thompson worked a walk on a nine-pitch at-bat. Snitker leapt into action and brought in Ian Krol, who gave up a well-placed bunt on which there was no play. 2-0, Dodgers. Then Snitker ordered an intentional walk to load the bases and brought in John Gant, who is no one’s idea of a relief ace that you’d want with the game on the line. Gant gave up a sac fly and a single before getting the third out of the inning. By then it was 4-0 and I hope you weren’t still up watching.

Each of the first five hitters got one single each. That was it for the offense.

The umpires had a rough night, too. They missed three calls at second base, and each one went against the Braves: two Dodger stolen bases and one Brave caught stealing. In the 4th, Trayce Thompson was out by a literal country mile, but was called safe on the field, and then a video replay failed to overturn it. Later in the inning, the same thing happened. It was a closer play, a throw up the line where Daniel Castro had to lunge to tag Howie Kendrick on the leg before his hand touched the bag, but the television replays were not ambiguous. They were obvious. The failure to overturn was absurd.

In the eighth, some insult was added to injury when Ender Inciarte got caught stealing. He stayed on the bag, signaling to the dugout that he was certain he was safe, and the Braves convinced the umpires to order their own video review. The ball had beaten him to the bag but the tag was high and replays indicated that it was likely that he got his foot in under the tag. But, again, no dice. Against rookie second base umpire Ramon DeJesus (the first Dominican umpire in major league history, apparently), the Braves couldn’t get a break.

Get ’em tomorrow.