ATLANTA -- The Athletics proved to be smooth sailing for starter Chris Sale in the Braves' 5-1 series finale win at Truist Park on Wednesday, as a solo homer was the only offense they mustered against him.
Sale cruised through the order the first time through with three perfect innings. His fastball mostly sat in the low 90s but still repeatedly reached 94-96 mph during his second start of the season, including on his strikeouts of Max Muncy and Tyler Soderstrom to end the top of the second. Sale stressed he knew he didn’t have his best stuff while he was warming up in the bullpen.
“You’re not going to have your best stuff every time, so I really tried to focus on raising my focus,” he said. “Reaching for more stuff when it’s not there is not really a way … to win this game. Just really focused [more on location] than trying to out-stuff guys today.”
Shea Langeliers, the Braves’ first-round pick in the 2019 Draft who was traded to the A’s in ‘22, ended Sale’s perfect-game bid with a towering two-out home run in the fourth inning that sailed past leaping left fielder Mike Yastrzemski’s glove and into the visitors’ bullpen beyond the left-field wall. Yastrzemski had possibly robbed a home run from Andy Ibáñez just two pitches earlier, in almost the same spot as Langeliers' homer, to preserve Sale’s streak of 11 straight outs to open his start.
“That’s called having a pretty damn good catcher back there,” Sale said, crediting batterymate Drake Baldwin for guiding his start and the team to victory. “The shape of all my stuff was exactly how I wanted it -- the changeup, breaking ball, everything. It just didn’t have that little extra hop to it. I think Baldy noticed that early on and used that to our advantage. He wasn’t trying to force anything. He saw that we’re going to have to navigate through this lineup a little bit differently than we do in the past. But I even told him, ‘I know today wasn’t easy for you to get through that.’”
Unflapped, Sale followed up Langeliers' homer by striking out Brent Rooker for his third and final punchout of the day, the first of seven more A’s he consecutively retired. Manager Walt Weiss ended Sale’s day there: six innings with no A’s reaching base other than Langeliers on his homer. Sale threw only 79 pitches (57 strikes), earning his second win in the young season in which he has a remarkable 0.75 ERA.
“He’s sick as a dog; we didn’t know if he was going to be able to make that start,” Weiss said. “I was hoping to be able to get three innings out of him -- best-case scenario, probably four. He just couldn’t keep anything down [in his stomach] -- he’s a mess. It was touch-and-go before the game. But to true form, he takes the ball and goes out there and gives us six innings, one hit. Hall of Famers, they just operate differently, and that’s what he [likely] is. It was an unbelievable performance.”
Sale’s next start could be Monday in Los Angeles against the Angels, against whom he is 8-0 with a 1.24 ERA, 76 strikeouts and one complete-game shutout across 65 1/3 innings in his career.
“The energy in the clubhouse is really good right now,” Sale said. “The boys are having fun, and we’re about to get on a really long flight and have a really good time.”
Robert Suarez, Dylan Lee and Raisel Iglesias each threw a scoreless inning to complete the win.
In addition to catching the game, Baldwin factored in on all five Braves runs. His single in the second and double in the fourth -- both with two outs -- scored two runs apiece. Matt Olson singled Baldwin home in the fourth. In the seventh, A’s center fielder Denzel Clarke robbed Baldwin of a home run, leaping at the wall in left-center for a spectacular catch. With Baldwin’s walk in the first, he was 2-for-3 with four RBIs and a run.