LOS ANGELES -- When spring training began and the Atlanta Braves reconvened, Ray Kerr was a minor league journeyman in the midst of a prolonged recovery from Tommy John surgery, and Didier Fuentes was a 20-year-old phenom with little chance of cracking the major league roster.
Eight months later, in Game 2 of the National League Division Series, the two combined for 19 of the Braves' 27 outs in an improbable 3-2 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers, earning them a split on the road with Chris Sale on tap to start Game 3 in Atlanta.
Kerr took the first eight outs Sunday, three nights after dominating as an opener and becoming a folk hero in a win-or-go-home game against the Philadelphia Phillies. Fuentes took all but one of the final 12. Neither was supposed to go that long.
"It wasn't the plan," Braves manager Walt Weiss said. "Believe me."
The plan was for Sale, the Braves' lone ace, to take that start. He was initially lined up on four days' rest to do so. But then the Braves used him for the final four outs in Game 3 of their wild-card series Thursday night, throwing uncertainty into his availability for Game 2.
The Braves' rotation was especially thin going into this best-of-five series. Their best shot at beating the two-time defending champions, many thought, was for Sale to make two starts, which was only possible if he took the ball in Game 2. The urgency around that only heightened after the Braves lost the opener.
The Braves spent the better part of two days agonizing over the decision. Then, on Sunday morning, Kerr got a phone call while spending time with his wife and young daughter at the team hotel. He was told he would start. The Braves would stage their third bullpen game in four days.
"I was like, 'All right, let's do it,'" Kerr recalled. "It's what I say every time."
The Braves wanted Kerr's left arm to match up against the likes of Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Kyle Tucker, not unlike how they wanted it against Kyle Schwarber and Bryce Harper in the previous series. Given the 10 outs he recorded against the Phillies, he was told he'd go only an inning or two. But then Kerr breezed through the first two innings, retiring six of seven batters on 23 pitches. He came back out for the third, stared down Ohtani with two on and one out, induced a lazy popup, then watched Grant Holmes come in behind him to retire Will Smith and end the inning.
It became a theme.
Throughout the night, the Braves held the Dodgers hitless in eight at-bats with runners in scoring position. Their only runs came on homers -- a solo shot from Freeman to lead off the fourth and another from Max Muncy with two outs in the ninth. Six relievers held the most star-laden lineup in baseball to two runs.
"It's full of trust on this team," Kerr said. "I trust the next guy to come in, get the job done, just like I'm going to come in for the next guy and get the job done. It's full circle."
Kerr recorded only three fewer outs than Blake Snell, a two-time Cy Young Award winner who represented a massive disadvantage for Atlanta before the game. The Braves got Snell out of the game with two outs in the fourth inning, by which point he had thrown 90 pitches. They took a 2-1 lead when Michael Harris II tripled on a fly ball to deep left field and scored on a wild pitch in the fifth, then added some cushion on Harris' scorching double in the seventh.
By that point, the Braves had already used Kerr, Holmes, Dylan Lee and Robert Suarez. Fuentes also had already thrown one inning. Dylan Dodd, AJ Smith-Shawver and Brent Suter, meanwhile, were unavailable because of how much they pitched in Game 1. The Braves had few options left for the final nine outs. Weiss' hope was that Fuentes and his closer, Raisel Iglesias, would find a way to cover the rest.
Then Fuentes nearly took it all by himself.
With a triple-digit fastball, a vicious slider and a splitter that has become a weapon against left-handed hitters, Fuentes, a starting pitcher before solidifying himself as a trusted reliever this season, retired nine consecutive batters in the sixth, seventh and eighth, three via strikeout. Weiss brought him back out for the ninth because he "didn't want to mess with a good thing."
"I assumed he was done after three," Braves first baseman Matt Olson said, "and he came out and was chucking a hundred."
With the Dodgers down to their last strike, Muncy turned on a 99 mph fastball from Fuentes and sent it 397 feet to make it a one-run game. Three pitches later, though, Iglesias retired rookie phenom Josue De Paula on a foul popup to end the game and seal a split.
The Braves still have to beat Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow to close out the series in Atlanta. If they get one of two, they'll be back in L.A. for a rematch against Tarik Skubal.
"It doesn't get any easier," Weiss said, "but I like the fact that we go back home even and we have Chris Sale."