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MLB playoffs 2021 - Best moments and plays from Tuesday's postseason games - ESPN

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9:53 PM ET

How about a Tuesday with three potential clinchers in the 2021 MLB playoffs? The World Series picture could get a little clearer.

Tuesday's three Game 4s, started with Houston Astros-Chicago White Sox, which was rained out Monday. The Astros decisive victory punched their ticket for a rematch of the 2018 ALCS.

Freddie Freeman's go-ahead home run in the eighth inning was the difference as the Atlanta Braves topped the Milwaukee Brewers en route to the NLCS.

The San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers will close the night (9:07 p.m. ET).

What did you miss? How'd we get here? Great questions. On Monday, Joc Pederson, using a stolen Anthony Rizzo bat, crushed a three-run home run in the Braves' 3-0 win over the Brewers. In the late game, Evan Longoria homered and Brandon Crawford robbed Mookie Betts of a hit and saved a run in the Giants' 1-0 win over the Dodgers. The Boston Red Sox reached the ALCS with a 6-5 win over the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 4 of that series.

Here's the best from today's playoff games:

Giants lead series 2-1

Betts' fourth inning homer -- his first of the postseason -- padded the Dodgers' lead.

LaMonte Wade Jr. saved San Francisco from falling into a deeper hole with this impressive web gem.

Don't write off the defending champs! The Dodgers got on the board first as Corey Seager scored off of Trea Turner's base hit.

Good news for L.A.: The Dodgers are 10-2 against the Giants when they score first.

The Giants could close the series out with a win over their SoCal rival, but the possibility of a Game 5 sounds enticing. Betts and Co. are already rallying Dodger Nation for the big game.

Braves advanced to NLCS

In what turned out to be the deciding game of the Braves-Brewers NLDS showdown, the clubs combined for more action over two innings than we saw over the entirety of the first three games.

Turns out it was all just setting the stage for Freddie Freeman.

Freeman's go-ahead homer in Game 4 was a bit of a surprise. That's certainly not because it was Freeman who hit it. It's because of when he hit it and, especially, whom he hit it off of.

With two down in the bottom of the eighth, dominant Brewers closer Josh Hader had zipped through the inning to that point, striking out Eddie Rosario and making Dansby Swanson look silly.

Hader is not an eighth inning guy. During the season, he threw exactly two innings in the eighth -- and 52⅔ in the ninth. For Milwaukee, the eighth inning was Devin Williams' domain, but he was out with a hand injury suffered during a late-season temper tantrum.

Still, with the top of the order up for Atlanta in the eighth, Craig Counsell opted for Hader. And as good as Freeman is, Hader shuts lefties down. In five big-league seasons, he'd allowed just seven homers to lefty hitters. One of those, though, was a game-winner by Freeman on May 18, 2019. And in the postseason, no one had ever touched him up, lefty or righty.

But Freeman did. Hader hung a slider and Freeman jacked it to left-center field, sending Truist Park into a frenzy and the Braves to the NLCS.

It was a fitting end to a tight series in which scoring was difficult to come by. The Braves and Brewers combined for nine runs over the first three games, making the nine runs they scored together in Game 4 seem like an avalanche. The teams strung together four straight two-run half innings early in Tuesday's game that felt almost surreal in relation to what had occurred in the series to that point.

Despite the dominant pitching, the series was full of huge moments. Rowdy Tellez's homer in Game 1 and Joc Pederson's three-run, pinch-hit homer in Game 3.

But none of those moments could match the Goliath vs. Goliath confrontation between Freeman and Hader. Freeman won that matchup, won that game and a few minutes later won that series.

Because he did, the Braves are back in the NLCS, where they finished one game shy of the World Series last year. --Brad Doolittle

Astros advanced to ALCS

After a blowout win, it won't look like much in the box score, but three uncontested stolen bases by Houston contributed to Chicago's demise in Game 4 of their ALDS matchup, a series won by Houston on Tuesday.

A 0-2 bases loaded double by Carlos Correa and a 3-0 one by Alex Bregman with men on didn't help matters as one thing became crystal clear over the course of four games: The better team won the series.

White Sox starter Carlos Rodon came out throwing heat, hitting 99 mph in his first inning of work in 13 days. But it didn't last long as he tired in the third and the Sox asked Michael Kopech for an up-and-down outing -- the one pitcher Sox manager Tony La Russa said wasn't available for the game after throwing 46 pitches in Game 3 on Sunday. He gave up three runs in 0.2 innings. Astros starter Lance McCullers Jr. wasn't as sharp as he was in Game 1, only pitching four innings, but his only blemish was a solo shot by designated hitter Gavin Sheets. The Astros bullpen did the rest, pitching five scoreless innings to advance them to the ALCS for the fifth consecutive season.

The uncontested stolen bases, one by Jose Altuve and two by Kyle Tucker, were emblematic of the White Sox struggles all season to slow down their opponents on the base paths. They lead the league in stolen bases given up, and that struggle continued in the series. La Russa said it was something that was being addressed before the postseason but it never got fixed. --Jesse Rogers

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MLB playoffs 2021 - Best moments and plays from Tuesday's postseason games - ESPN
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