If the Atlanta Braves are to come back against the Dodgers in this week’s National League Division Series, they will almost certainly need a dominant start from staff ace Chris Sale.

It won’t be coming in Game 2 on Sunday.

Instead, the Braves announced that they would be rolling with a second-straight bullpen game for the second game of the best-of-five series, listing left-hander Ray Kerr as their opener coming off a 5-3 loss at Dodger Stadium in Saturday afternoon’s opener.

The decision was hardly unexpected.

Sale threw 95 pitches in a 6 ⅓ inning start in Game 1 of the wild-card series last Tuesday, then –– in what has become a controversial move since –– came out of the bullpen two days later for the final four outs of a winner-take-all Game 3, throwing 21 more pitches even though the Braves had a somewhat comfortable four-run lead. 

Entering the NLDS, the Braves had at least left the door open to Sale turning around and pitching again on Sunday –– in what would have marked a third appearance within a six-day span for the 37-year-old former Cy Young Award winner.

In the end, however, they elected to give him a couple extra days of rest ahead of Game 3 on Tuesday, hoping their bullpen can keep them from falling into a two-games-to-none deficit before they get there.

“The deciding factor is always going to be how Chris is feeling,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said before Game 1. “To me, it’s not that big a deal when he pitches. He’s going to pitch in this series. Dodgers can’t win it in two. So he’s going to pitch. It really doesn’t matter when.”

While that might be true, delaying Sale until Game 3 does come with a potentially severe cost –– and not only because he pitched a complete-game shutout against the Dodgers the last time he faced the Dodgers back in August.

If he started Game 2, he could have been ready for a potential Game 5 start on a normal four days of rest. Now, he will get just two days off if the Braves can force the series to go the distance, likely leaving him available for only a couple innings out of the bullpen if they get there.

In the meantime, the Braves will be asking a lot out of their relief corps, as well, after its own heavy workload to begin the postseason.

Kerr, their Game 2 starter, threw 47 pitches in a 3 ⅓ inning outing at the start of Thursday’s Game 3 against the Phillies. Their highest-leverage arms –– including closer Raisel Iglesias, left-hander Dylan Lee, and hard-throwing set-up men Robert Suarez and Didier Fuentes –– might also be called into action at least 2-3 times each over the rest of this series, after all pitching big innings of their own in the wild-card round.

That should work to the Dodgers’ benefit.

Their veteran lineup has made a habit of adjusting to opposing relievers the more they’ve seen them in recent postseasons (just ask Jeff Hoffman).

They also already held the pitching advantage in this series thanks to their star-studded rotation; which will have Blake Snell going in Sunday’s Game 2, Yoshinobu Yamamoto facing off with Sale in Game 3, and Tyler Glasnow lined up after that for Game 4.

If there were to be a Game 5, the Dodgers could start Tarik Skubal (who spun six dominant innings in Game 1) and bring Snell and Yamamoto out of the bullpen behind him.

All those factors made it tempting for the Braves to starting Sale as soon as possible.

Alas, they are rolling the dice on their bullpen –– both on Sunday, and the rest of the series –– and hoping to get the best version of their ace when the series returns to Atlanta.