Tired Max Scherzer exits in 5th, Julio Urias pitches 8th as Los Angeles Dodgers lose Game 2 of NLCS to Atlanta Braves

ATLANTA — Max Scherzer isn’t usually agreeable to being removed in the middle of a baseball game. It’s the type of situation that visibly enrages him and often sends his manager back into the dugout. But when Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts emerged onto the field at Truist Park in Sunday’s fifth inning, with one on and one out and the Atlanta Braves’ lineup due to bat a third time, Scherzer nodded in agreement. He told Roberts that he “gave it all I had” and dutifully handed over the baseball.

“My arm was dead,” Scherzer said after watching his Dodgers suffer a second consecutive walk-off loss and fall to the Braves 5-4 in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series. “I could tell when I was warming up that it was still tired.”

Three days earlier, Scherzer pitched the final inning out of the bullpen to close out the San Francisco Giants in the deciding game of the prior round. He was initially scheduled to start Saturday’s Game 1, but he and the Dodgers agreed on an extra day. And when that day came, Scherzer still didn’t feel right.

Julio Urias will now confront a similar situation.

Urias, lined up to start Game 4, was surprisingly used to pitch the eighth inning of Game 2, with the Dodgers clinging to a two-run lead. Blake Treinen, the Dodgers’ most reliable reliever, needed only nine pitches to navigate the seventh. And Brusdar Graterol and Kenley Jansen were still available. But Roberts said using Urias “was the best option at that point in time.”

The top of the Braves’ lineup was due up once again, starting with the left-handed-hitting Eddie Rosario and Freddie Freeman, giving a left-hander like Urias the platoon advantage. Roberts, the Dodgers’ pitching coaches and key members of the front office had talked about deploying Urias in a scenario like this during one of the first two games. They kept him from throwing his typical between-starts bullpen session because of it.

“He was prepared for it,” Roberts said of Urias. “It was a perfect…