Sale passes Glavine on K's list, dominates Phils for Braves' 4th straight win

PHILADELPHIA -- Chris Sale matched up against a fellow Cy Young Award candidate, but it was his battle against a fellow Hall of Fame candidate that highlighted his performance in the Braves' 3-1 win over the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park on Saturday night.

“Those are great matchups,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said. “Those are great for the game. I never feel good when [Bryce] Harper is in the box. But it’s a little easier, when Sale is on the mound.”

Harper actually accounted for two of the seven strikeouts Sale recorded while limiting the Phillies to one run over a season-long seven innings. Atlanta's ace lefty passed Braves legend Tom Glavine on the all-time strikeouts list. His strikeout of Felix Reyes in the seventh was the 2,608th of his career, moving him past Glavine (2,607) and into 29th on the all-time list.

Sale now ranks eighth all-time among left-handed pitchers. He needs three strikeouts to pass Chuck Finley on that list.

“When I really needed to execute, I really tried to execute,” Sale said. “I just felt like I tried to get more dialed in.”

Sale rose to the occasion when Harper came to the plate with one on and one out in the third. The two-time National League MVP and the 2024 NL Cy Young Award waged an 11-pitch battle that concluded with a strikeout.

“That's why we play the game, for those kinds of moments,” Braves catcher Jonah Heim said. “You’ve got big on big, strength on strength. That's their guy and that's our guy on the mound. So when they're going head to head and we win that battle, it's a lot of fun.”

Harper fouled off three straight 2-2 pitches and then looked at an up-and-in fastball. He then fouled off two straight full-count sliders before swinging through a 96.2 mph fastball that was also high and inside.

“We've gone at it for a while now,” Sale said. “In those situations, when those at-bats get long, you get to 2-2 and then 3-2. At that point, it's anybody's ballgame. I just tried to bear down and make a good pitch.”

Getting Harper to swing at ball four marked the start of a run during which Sale retired 13 of the last 14 batters he faced. Edmundo Sosa singled in the fifth, but was immediately retired by a double-play groundout.

While Sale avoided trouble, Phillies starter Cristopher Sánchez encountered some misfortune during this pitchers' duel. He was fortunate that Brandon Marsh leapt over the center-field wall to rob Ronald Acuña Jr.’s bid to homer on the game’s first pitch. But his good fortune disappeared in the third, when the Braves tallied three runs on three hits, two of which had an exit velocity of less than 70 mph.

Sale completed seven innings for the first time since Sept. 16 and lowered his ERA to 2.79 through his first five starts of the season. The lone run he surrendered came courtesy of the opposite-field home run he surrendered to Felix Reyes in what was the prospect’s first career plate appearance.

"I'm going to be on ESPN all day tomorrow," Sale said. "But, I mean, you're talking about going opposite field. I don't know how hard the pitch was, but he got the barrel to it. That's impressive, especially in your first at-bat in the big leagues."

When Sale totaled just 151 innings from 2020-23, there was reason to wonder if his career was over. But he constructed an incredible comeback in 2024 and he just keeps getting stronger. He capped this 101-pitch effort by recording a pair of seventh-inning strikeouts, including the one of Reyes to pass Glavine.

“I can’t say enough good things about Chris,” Weiss said.