PHILADELPHIA - Chris Sale keeps making his case in the biggest moments, and he did it again Friday night with a start that mattered far beyond one win.
The Braves left-hander worked six innings and held the Phillies to two runs in Atlanta’s 5-2 victory in the opener of a crucial four-game series at Citizens Bank Park. The performance came on the heels of a shutout against the Dodgers, and it kept Sale right in the middle of the National League Cy Young conversation.
His numbers are still eye-catching. Sale’s 2.10 ERA ranks second among NL pitchers, behind only Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski’s 1.97.
With only a handful of regular-season starts left, Sale still has a path to the ERA crown. But the bigger focus, at least for him, is helping Atlanta stay in front of Philadelphia and remain in position for one of the NL’s two byes.
That mission got a boost Friday. The Braves now lead the Phillies by five games, and Philadelphia will be on the other side six more times over the next nine games. That makes Sale’s outing the kind Atlanta had to have to open this stretch.
The Braves also got a lift in the wider race for playoff positioning. Atlanta is a half-game ahead of the Dodgers for the NL’s second-best record, pending its result against the Nationals on Friday night.
The Braves are 84-57, the Dodgers 83-57, and Atlanta owns the tiebreaker after winning five of six in the regular-season series. If the postseason began Saturday, the Braves and Brewers would be the two teams getting byes.
Sale’s recent run has been about more than just numbers. In his last three starts, he matched up with Misiorowski, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Cristopher Sánchez, and he allowed four earned runs over 21 innings. That stretch has only strengthened the feeling that he’s ready for October.
Friday’s damage came in spots. Alec Bohm doubled home a run in the second inning and then added a two-out homer in the fourth. Bryce Harper later left runners at second and third with a weak popup to end the fifth, and Sale worked around Luiz Arraez’s leadoff double in the sixth by striking out the next two batters to finish the inning.
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Braves Just Took A Risk With Lefty Prospect Upside
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Harris has given teams a reason to dream a little because of his strikeout ability, even as the command has wavered in recent seasons. For the Braves, it is the kind of move that can sting later if the lefty irons out the control issues elsewhere, since this was less about performance in a vacuum than about a club trying to manage its roster in the moment. [Read more 🡒]