Chris Sale starts as Braves search for series win over Chicago

We’ve got a rubber match on our hands at the ballpark in Cobb County this evening as the Atlanta Braves will look to throw a slight wrench in the Chicago Cubs’ road to October with a series win tonight.

The good news for the Braves is that this is a Chris Sale start and if he performs at the level that everybody associated with the Braves has come to expect then Atlanta will actually have a very good chance at winning this one. Sale has hit the ground running since returning from injury — he’s pitched

12.2 innings over two starts and given up seven hits, one walk, two runs (one on a solo home run) and 18 strikeouts. Folks, he’s been out there dealing.

He also did this against a Mariners lineup that has produced a team wRC+ of 111 and a Phillies lineup that has been hitting at a clip of 108 wRC+ so far this season, so it’s totally feasible that Sale will be able to perform at the same high level against a Cubs lineup that has been hitting at a rate of 108 wRC+, himself. All three of those marks are in the Top 10, so Sale has proven that he can get it done against some high-quality opposition. He’s also done it against the Cubs in this ballpark relatively “recently” — last season, Sale ran into the Cubs in May and shut them out over seven innings while only giving up two hits and nine strikeouts. Simply put, it wouldn’t be surprising if Sale delivered another quality performance on the mound this evening.

Speaking of hitting the ground running after returning from injury, the Cubs will be hoping that Jameson Taillon will do the same thing as he returns from the 15-Day IL after suffering a groin injury in August. Taillon was actually on a pretty solid run of a pair of starts after a calf injury had him go on the IL for the entirety of July. In those two starts in-between lower-body injuries, Taillon pitches six innings against the Brewers while only giving up one run before following that up by going five innings against the Angels with only one run allowed back on August 24.

With that being said, I don’t necessarily think that the Cubs will be expecting too much from Taillon in this one. He didn’t exactly ramp up heavily in his rehab start before this one so I’d imagine that the Cubs are going to have him on a limited workload so that he can continue to stay fresh as the team enters this crucial part of the stretch to the Postseason. Still, Taillon has historically given the Braves some trouble as he’s made four starts against Atlanta with a 2.86 ERA and in those four starts, the most runs he gave up in any of those appearances was two. Taillon has also been extremely good at avoiding walks — that’s been a constant over the course of his career but he’s been very good at it over the past couple of seasons so I’d imagine that the Braves aren’t going to benefit from many free passes from Taillon tonight.

I can also imagine that this could come down to which team’s bullpen performs better. If that’s the case, then the advantage goes to the Cubs — while Chicago’s bullpen hasn’t exactly been a shutdown unit since the All-Star break, they have been a far sight better than Atlanta’s bullpen has been since the break. The Cubs bullpen has a collective ERA of 4.71 and a FIP of 4.23 since the break — which sounds bad until you look at Atlanta’s bullpen with a 5.71 ERA and a 5.21 FIP since the break. Only the Rockies have been worse and when you’re in the same neighborhood as the 2025 Colorado Rockies in any category, it’s usually a very bad sign!

So while the Braves have to like their chances with Chris Sale going in any given pitching matchup, it’s highly unlikely that Sale is going to be getting all 27 outs in this one. If he performs as expected and also gets deep into the contest, then Atlanta’s chances of winning will improve. If they get kept quiet by Taillon and this turns into a battle of the bullpens then this could be where the Braves end up dropping the series. We’ll see what happens!