Just over a week after starting off a four-game square-off in Philadelphia, the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies are going to do it again — this time in Cobb County, as Friday’s matchup will serve as the series opener for this weekend’s three-game divisional showdown.
Chris Sale will be returning to the mound to get this thin going and this’ll be his sixth-consecutive start against a team in Postseason position. Over the five starts and across the 33 innings that Sale has pitched during this span,
he’s put up an ERA of 2.18 and a FIP of 1.55 against some stiff competition. He’s certainly been coming up huge for the Braves here in the home stretch and Atlanta’s going to need him to really come up big once more if they’re going to get this series off to the best possible start.
What’s interesting about this go-around is that this’ll be the fourth time that the Braves have sent Sale out there to face the Phillies. So far, the results have been pretty good for Sale — the Phillies were only able to get one run off of him across the 13 innings he tossed against them in two starts in April and then Sale left last Thursday’s game with the lead after he only gave up two runs in six innings against Philadelphia. The Phillies will surely be hoping that the fourth time is the charm but with the way that Sale has been locked in lately, it would still be a bit of a shock if this was the moment where the wheels came off.
As far as individual matchups go, the ones to keep an eye on would probably be Sale vs. Alec Bohm (.333 average and .821 OPS with one homer in 21 at-bats), Trea Turner (.318 average, .830 OPS in 22 at-bats) and of course, Kyle Schwarber. Schwarber has only hit .227 against Sale but he’s sporting an .883 OPS and that’s because Schwarber has homered twice off of Sale so far. In fact, Schwarber has been on a bit of a binge lately as he’s homered in four of his past six games — three of those came against the Braves, mind you. It’s no secret that he’ll be swinging for the fences each time he’s up so hopefully Sale will figure out a way to keep him in the park on this particular night.
Meanwhile, the Phillies will be countering with Aaron Nola and let me tell you, it has brought me no pleasure to see the renaissance run that this guy has been on recently. Starting with his outing on July 28, Nola has made eight starts, thrown 46.2 innings and produced an ERA of 2.31 with a FIP of 3.93. The last time he gave up more than two runs in an outing was August 3 against the Nationals and they could only muster up three runs in six innings against the guy.
He certainly made life hard for the Braves last week, as he tossed seven innings and only gave up one run in a game that the Braves had to rally late (after he had exited the game) in order to win. Hopefully they’ll be able to do some real damage against Nola before he leaves this game. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see something similar to what happened when Nola last pitched at Truist Park, which is when Atlanta tagged him for six runs across 4.2 innings back on April 26 (which, coincidentally, was the last time Sale saw the Phillies here in Cobb County). The adjustments that Nola has made since August could make that scenario unlikely but it’s baseball and the Braves have been known to do some cool stuff in Truist Park so who knows what’s going to happen?
Either way, it’s abundantly clear that the Braves have an opportunity to start lunging for the finish line as far as the NL East race is concerned. Both teams lost their midweek series to American League divisional leaders so the four-game lead that the Braves left Philadelphia with has remained the same. The pressure is on the Phillies to start getting results, since the Braves simply have to maintain their pace in order to throw another blue flag up there on the light tower outside of right-center field. With that being said, there’s no need for the Braves to “simply maintain” when they can just go out there and grab it for themselves, which a win tonight (and a series win in general) would go a long way for Atlanta when it comes to accomplishing that goal.
Whatever challenges Atlanta may face from Aaron Nola, they’ll have Chris Sale going and hopefully he’ll be able to do the trick once again against the Phillies. A low-scoring, nervy affair is definitely possible but hopefully the home advantage will be enough to carry the Braves to victory on this particular night. We’ll see what happens, folks!
Game Info
Game Time: Friday, September 11, 7:15 p.m. ET
Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, GA
Watch: BravesVision
Radio/Audio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan
