The season had been going pretty well. I wasn’t really concerned with a split with the Diamondbacks, as I figured that’s what would happen going in — in the exact fashion of winning the first two and losing the next two. But, despite how good Jose Soriano is, I figured the Braves would win on Monday night. Chris Sale and an anemic, Mike Trout-less Angels offense, and the ability to turn it over to the bullpen, seemed like a decent combination.
But, we got what we got, and the vibes of the Braves’
good start are evaporating. Sale was dominant, and then the mechanics went poof (like the vibes are), and things got bad in a hurry. To be clear, the start wasn’t just bad because of its inherent on-the-field badness. We basically never see Chris Sale react the way he did during his meltdown frame, with animated gestures and a whole bunch of other stuff it would make me sad to recount. Then, when he came back out for the fifth, it seemed like he had adjusted too far the other way in terms of trying to rein it in to hit the zone, and… oops, no-doubter Jo Adell homer.
By FIP, it was definitely Sale’s worst start as a Brave. Two homers, two walks, and two plunkings will do that. By ERA, his thrashing at the hands of the Athletics in 2024 was worse. By xFIP, the start didn’t even register as particularly bad — 4.06 — his prior start was 4.25, but that’s an amalgam of him dominating before the fourth and falling apart after. By “visibly willing the ball to be a strike and crouching on the mound and wiping his face,” it’s a no-contest.
I’ll give you one last metric: the Braves losing a game despite their pre-game win probability. This one was bad, but not notably so. When the Athletics beat him up in 2024, though, the Braves had a near-unheard-of 72 percent win probability — not the sort of thing you see in baseball. (Later that season, the Braves had a 77 percent chance against the Rockies in a Sale start, but they won that one, 3-0.) So, I think it’s a contest between those two games. What do you think?
