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ATLANTA — When the Los Angeles Dodgers bolstered their already potent lineup with the slugging shortstop Manny Machado, this is just what they had in mind.
Plenty of long balls, and another deep run in the postseason.
Next stop, the National League Championship Series, for the third year in a row.
Machado drove in four runs — three of them with a seventh-inning shot into the left-field seats — and the Dodgers finished off the Atlanta Braves with a 6-2 victory Monday in an N.L. division series.
Los Angeles won the series by three games to one and advanced to face the Brewers. Game 1 is Friday night in Milwaukee.
Coming off a tense victory in Game 3, the Braves grabbed the lead on pinch-hitter Kurt Suzuki’s two-run single in the fourth.
But David Freese, the 2011 World Series most valuable player with St. Louis, came through again in the postseason. He delivered a pinch-hit single of his own in the sixth off Jonny Venters (0-1), driving home Cody Bellinger and Yasiel Puig for a 3-2 lead with a grounder past the backup shortstop Charlie Culberson after Atlanta allowed Puig to steal second.
Machado buried Atlanta in the seventh, launching a 1-2 pitch from the rookie Chad Sobotka over the Dodgers’ bullpen — his team’s eighth homer of the series. A free-agent-to-be acquired from Baltimore in July, Machado also had a run-scoring double in the first.
Ryan Madson (1-0) earned the win by getting the final two outs in the fifth to escape a bases-loaded jam. Lucas Duda hit a long drive to right that drifted foul with two on in the eighth against Kenta Maeda, then had an inning-ending flyout.
Atlanta’s return to the postseason for the first time since 2013 yielded a familiar result: another postseason defeat.
The Braves have lost in nine straight playoff appearances, their last victory coming 17 long years ago against a team that is no longer in the N.L. Since a sweep of Houston Astros in an 2001 N.L. division series, October has been a month of misery for the Braves.
Getting back to the playoffs ahead of schedule after a huge rebuild, Atlanta simply didn’t have the experience, depth or power to stick with the power-packed Dodgers. Los Angeles had a franchise-record 235 homers during the regular season and hit eight more against the Braves.