The Braves have the chance to close out their Wild Card series, and they’re putting the ball in the hands of Tyler Mahle after a wild win yesterday afternoon.
Atlanta survived a game that changed leads four times before Austin Riley delivered the swing that mattered most. Riley’s redemption arc came in the eighth inning, when he launched a go-ahead three-run homer off a Jhoan Duran fastball that was in the triple digits.
Now the focus shifts to a matchup that looks favorable for Atlanta on paper. Mahle, the Braves’ top trade deadline addition, gets the start against Cristopher Sánchez, and the two pitchers are arriving in very different places.
Mahle’s season has taken a sharp turn since joining Atlanta. Before the trade, he posted a 5.13 ERA across eighteen starts. Since arriving with the Braves, he has a 1.99 ERA in nine starts and has averaged six innings per outing.
Sánchez has gone the other way. Through his first eighteen starts, he was rolling with a 2.00 ERA and averaging 6.5 innings per start.
Since then, his ERA has climbed to 4.10, with his workload sitting at 6.0 innings per outing. Over the last month, the numbers have slid even further, with Sánchez carrying a 5.12 ERA since the start of September.
That doesn’t make this a simple assignment for Atlanta. It’s a do-or-die game for the Phillies, so if Sánchez starts to wobble, it would not be a surprise to see a starter come in on short rest. Sánchez is still a very good pitcher and is expected to pick up some Cy Young down votes.
Even so, the matchup favors the Braves. The players on Atlanta’s playoff roster have combined for a .759 OPS against Sánchez in their careers.
Ronald Acuña has handled him well with a 1.000 OPS in sixteen at-bats, Ozzie Albies has a .500 average and 1.193 OPS in eighteen at-bats, and Riley has hit .467 with a 1.104 OPS in fifteen at-bats against him. The rest of the group has mostly struggled, which puts extra weight on those three bats.
Michael Harris, despite coming off a three-hit night, has just a .321 OPS in fifteen at-bats against Sánchez.
Mahle has not seen Philadelphia nearly as often, but he did face the Phillies in back-to-back starts in early September. Across those two outings, he threw 13.0 innings, allowed one run on ten hits, struck out six, and walked one.
He also piled up twenty-three ground balls in that stretch. The BABIP was .220, so there was some luck in there, but the results were strong.
If Atlanta can get the same kind of outing from Mahle and reach the Phillies bullpen early, the Braves should like where they stand. Atlanta also leads MLB in wRC+ in the ninth inning.
And if the Braves win today, the Phillies are out of October baseball.
First pitch is at 2:00 EDT.
In Other News...
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Braves Waste A Start That Should Have Changed This Series
Tyler Mahles first postseason start gave the Braves exactly the kind of pitching backbone they needed in a tense Wild Card Game 2 against the Phillies. After a shaky beginning, he settled in and worked effectively through seven innings, keeping Philadelphia in check and striking out several key batters along the way. For a team trying to swing the series back in its favor, it was the sort of outing that should have set up a much different night.
Instead, Atlanta kept leaving chances on the table. The Braves had multiple opportunities to break through, including a bases-loaded situation in the sixth inning, but could not fully cash in when the game was there to be taken. With the pitching doing its part and the offense unable to finish the job, it became one of those postseason losses that felt bigger than the final score. [Read more 🡒]