Chris Sale: Remember Him?

When last we left our intrepid hero, he was striking out Pete Alonso with broken ribs in a 5-0 win over the Mets. After that game, the Braves were 33-39. Coming into his next start, they are 61-74. Would they have been in the Wild Card hunt if Sale had stayed healthy? Only in an absolutely best case scenario. Sale missed about 12 starts. But they weren’t all starts by Juan Quan and Erick Fedde. Some of them were starts by Joey Wentz and Hurston Waldrep. One or two were by the Good Whitman. Even assuming Sale were 10-2 in those games, and that all of the replacement starts were by Carlos Carrasco and Didier Fuentes, the best the Braves record might have been at this point is about 0.500, say 68-67. That’s the Reds record today, and they’re 5 games behind the Mets for the last Wild Card spot.

The bigger Wild Card is that you’d have to assume that if Chris Sale hadn’t broken ribs, he’d have been healthy enough to make those 12 starts at a Cy Young level. We’ve got a pretty long history at this point to suggest that that is unlikely. A good friend of mine is a lifelong Red Sox fan. When we traded Grissom for Sale, he told me, in excruciating detil, how great Sale was when he was healthy enough to pitch, which just wasn’t very often. (I told him how much the Sox were going to like Vaughan Grissom. I’m not right… yet.) And the weird thing about Sale is that his injuries, chronic though they have been, are highly atypical pitcher’s injuries… like broken ribs.

My friend was very surprised that Sale made as many starts as he made in 2024, but when Sale was unable to pitch in the playoffs, he shruggesd ruefully. (He’s much too good a friend to say “I told you so.”) But when does pitch, he’s fun to watch. And since Braves baseball is supposed to be fun, I’m glad to have him back.

The Game

Sale was opposed by Cristopher Sánchez, a very good pitcher who has had very little success against the Braves. (I feel like Sánchez ought to borrow the ‘h’ from Christian Bethancourt‘s last name… He’s not using it for anything.) Sale was not rusty. In his 6 innings he had 9 Ks with 1 BB and only gave up three hits. That said, one of those hits was a homer by… Weston Wilson? I looked Wilson up, and I’m still not certain that his name isn’t reversed, and I’m not certain anyone would notice if it were. But it still counts.

Sánchez was giving up hits, but was rescued twice by GIDPs from Sean Murphy, In the 6th, back-to-back doubles from Profar and Olson tied the game. Olson then kept the game tied in the bottom of the inning with a very sweet double play. With one out and Trea Turner on third, Bryce Harper hit a ball down the line. Olson fielded it, touched first and made a perfect throw home to get Turner. Five Stars.

At that point, the bullpens took over in 1-1 game. Tyler Kinley had an uneventful 7th. But in the 8th, a walk and a single with one out put Pierce Johnson in the same jeopardy he was in last night, in which a fly ball would give the Phillies the lead. But he had a very gritty strikeout of Trea Turner, leaving Dylan Lee to face Schwarber for the biggest at-bat of the game. A line out to RAJ ended the inning.

Jhoan Duran, who also has an extra h he’s not doing anything with, pitched the top of the 9th, just as he did last night. Just like last night, no más. Rafael Iglesias took the bottom of the 9th. 8 pitches. Manfred Man time.

The Braves held serve in the top of the 10th on an Alvarez one-out single. For reasons that aren’t clear to me but undoubtedly stem from some deep psychological study, the Braves did not send Iglesias back out, but went with Hunter Stratton. He hit Castellanos with his first pitch. He then struck out Bader to give me hope. Stott singled on a bloop hit but the Phillies third base coach held up Bohm to allow my brief hope to burgeon. Dylan Dodd was brought in to face Brandon Marsh. I did not feel good about this. Strikeout. Wow.

So it comes down to Trea Turner. Hope dies on a single to right. For what it’s worth, I think a perfect throw from RAJ would have gotten Castellanos at the plate, but it was an imperfect throw.

I would have rather lost this game with Iglesias, but I’m not going to stick around to listen to Snit’s “reasoning.” I have football to watch.