ATLANTA -- There will be plenty of time to debate whether Chris Sale should have been used as a reliever to close out the Phillies last week. But the current focus should be on a maddening Braves offense that provided yet another reminder that Sale can’t do it alone.
“He’s human,” Braves third baseman Austin Riley said. “He’s been unbelievably valuable for us this year. We’ve got to score some runs.”
Sale looked like his usual dominant self through the first couple of innings of a 3-1 loss to the Dodgers in Game 3 of the NL Division Series on Tuesday night at Truist Park. But he seemed to fatigue just before surrendering home runs to Enrique Hernández and Freddie Freeman during a decisive fourth inning.
“One bad inning kind of ruined the whole game,” Sale said after allowing three runs over five frames.
Will that one bad inning ruin the Braves’ hopes to play for a couple more weeks? That will be determined on Wednesday night, when Atlanta right-hander Tyler Mahle opposes Los Angeles righty Tyler Glasnow in Game 4 of this best-of-five series.
The two-time defending World Series champion Dodgers need to win just one of the next two games to advance to the NL Championship Series. Atlanta must win both to extend its season. Their challenge is more daunting when accounting for the fact that Sale’s next potential start wouldn’t come until the NLCS.
There’s also this: In all best-of-five postseason series that have been tied 1-1, the team that has dropped Game 3 has gone on to win the series only 19 of 67 times (28%).
“We've had our backs against the wall before,” Sale said. “We're a resilient group. We have confidence in ourselves and each other. So, you take this one on the chin and show up tomorrow ready to win a game.”
It looked like Sale might produce a special night when he joined Mike Hampton (2003 NLDS Game 2) as the only Braves pitchers to record six strikeouts through the first two innings of a postseason game. But after inducing eight whiffs through the first two frames, he had just two over his final three innings against a patient Dodgers lineup.
Still, while pitching for the third time in eight days, Sale limited the Dodgers to three runs over five innings. His stuff might not have been as crisp as it was most of this year, but his arm strength was there following Thursday night’s relief appearance in Game 3 of the NL Wild Card Series against the Phillies.
His average four-seam velocity was 97.2 mph, up from his season average of 96.1 mph.
“Whenever Sale goes out there, we want to give him run support,” Braves catcher Drake Baldwin said. “We wish we could have given him more runs.”
There was one prime opportunity to punch back against Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who allowed just one run over seven innings. Baldwin, who is 3-for-23 this postseason, came to the plate with one out and the bases loaded in the fifth. His soft RBI groundout was followed by an inning-ending groundout from Ronald Acuña Jr., who has gone 3-for-21 through Atlanta’s first six playoff games.
Later, when Acuña walked against Tanner Scott with two outs in the eighth, Matt Olson struck out. Olson has gone 4-for-23 with nine strikeouts since the playoffs started.
“[Baldwin, Acuña and Olson] have been our aircraft carriers all year,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said. “Every time one of those guys steps in the box, I think something good is going to happen. But we faced some pretty good pitching; that had something to do with it. But those guys, they're always one at-bat away from changing a game.”
The Dodgers were reminded of Sale’s greatness when he recorded 11 strikeouts while throwing a five-hit shutout against them on Aug. 27. Safe to say they brought a more patient approach to this latest showdown.
Sale totaled 69 pitches through the first six innings of that August start. He needed 62 pitches to complete Tuesday’s first three innings.
“We spoiled a lot of pitches, took a lot of really good pitches that we normally don't,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Any time you can get Chris Sale out of a game after five innings you're doing something.”
Sale lasted five innings or fewer in just four of his 27 regular starts, with one of those abbreviated outings halted by rain in St. Louis on July 10. The fact that this occurred after he threw 95 pitches in Game 1 of last week’s NL Wild Card Series and then 21 pitches 48 hours later in Game 3 will bring more scrutiny to the decision to have him face the Phillies with a four-run lead, four outs to go and nobody on base.
But Sale made it clear he felt strong on Tuesday night. He threw a bad changeup to Hernández, who now has 17 career postseason homers, and he had to tip his cap to Freeman for pulling a 95.7 mph inside fastball over the left-center-field wall for his 18th career postseason homer, nine of which came with Atlanta.
“There’s just really only one pitch I'd take back from that whole entire outing,” Sale said. “This is a game of adjustments. They seem like they made the adjustment.”