LOS ANGELES -- Chris Sale is 37 years old and he is two years removed from what he and many others thought might be his final season. But despite not getting a desired result in a 3-1 loss to the Dodgers on Friday night at Dodger Stadium, the Braves’ veteran hurler once again looked elite.
“He was great,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said. “We’re going to win a lot of games with him pitching like that.”
Sale benefited from a few defensive gems and was also hurt by one costly homer while averaging a season-best 96.4 mph with his four-seam fastball. This actually matched the third-highest average velocity generated with his heater since he joined the Braves before his 2024 NL Cy Young Award season.
But Sale would have liked a mulligan on one of his fastballs. The center-cut, 96.8 mph heater he threw to Freddie Freeman to begin the bottom of the sixth landed over the center-field wall, giving the Dodgers a two-run advantage.
“That’s kind of what unfolded this game,” Sale said. “I’ve got to do a better job of keeping it on the rails there a little bit. You can come back from one. But once you start getting late in the game, you just give them momentum.”
The Braves have lost three of their past four games and two straight for the first time since April 5-6 against the D-backs. But this wasn’t an unfamiliar result. Going back to 2018 and including the postseason, Atlanta has lost 24 of its last 32 games at Dodger Stadium. This was the team’s eighth straight setback at the historic stadium since winning three straight in 2023.
As for Freeman homering against his former team, that also isn’t new. He has six homers in 93 at-bats (15.5 at-bats per home run) against the Braves since his tenure with them ended with winning the 2021 World Series.
But this was the first home run Sale allowed against a left-handed hitter since the Padres’ Gavin Sheets homered against him on May 23, 2025. Sixteen starts separated that left-on-left home run with this latest one by Freeman.
Sale surrendered three runs -- two earned -- and five hits over seven innings. He's lasted seven innings in three of his past four starts and he still ranks tied for ninth in the Majors with a 2.20 ERA. He remains tied with Brewers reliever Aaron Ashby for the MLB lead in wins (six).
It didn’t take long to see Sale had the juices flowing for this matchup. He began the game by getting Shohei Ohtani to look at three called strikes, including a 1-2 pitch that registered 98.3 mph. Will Smith also went down looking in the first.
Sale threw three pitches between 98.3-98.5 mph. He entered the day having thrown a total of just three pitches this year that registered 98.3 mph or higher.
“I’ve had an extra day [of rest] the last few starts,” Sale said. “We had an off-day yesterday and I was getting into my mechanics pretty good.”
Unfortunately for Sale, the game turned when Jim Jarvis committed a costly error, right after making an incredible diving catch of Kyle Tucker’s sinking liner in shallow left field to end the fourth. The rookie shortstop, who made his MLB debut on Wednesday, then recorded his first career hit, a single, in the top of the fifth.
“That catch was pretty insane,” Braves center fielder Michael Harris II said. “I told Ozzie [Albies] he could never do that. [Jarvis] was in the air for a while.”
Jarvis’ elated stretch expired when he began the bottom of the fifth by fielding a Miguel Rojas grounder and throwing the ball into the Braves’ dugout. Rojas later scored on Ohtani’s go-ahead single.
While Jarvis’ miscue hurt, Sale was also aided by Harris' long run to grab Rojas’ fly ball in the right-center-field gap with one out and a runner on second in the second. Harris was playing his first game in center field since tweaking his left quad on April 23.
Mike Yastrzemski has struggled offensively, but he added a solid defensive contribution in the third. Yastrzemski’s strong and accurate throw from right field was grabbed by Jarvis, who made a no-look tag to prevent Santiago Espinal’s attempt to stretch a single to a double.
“All around, they kept that game closer than maybe it should have been,” Sale said.