In what will likely be his last regular season start for the Atlanta Braves this season, Chris Sale will be facing off against Andrew Abbott and the Cincinnati Reds.
Chris Sale is not the front runner for the Cy Young award, but will most certainly get some second and third place votes with his 2.18 ERA, 30.3 percent strikeout rate, and league leading strikeout to walk ratio of 6.13. Sale also leads the NL is best HR rate of 0.5 per nine innings, and best walk rate in the NL of 4.9 percent.
Side note, Chris Sale has the best career strikeout to walk ratio of all-time. Sale has also pitched 157.0 innings thus far this season, which is hurting his Cy Young chances to guys like Jacob Misiorowski. It could be argued that he has passed his fellow competitor Cristopher Sánchez, but Sánchez has a whopping 200.0 IP which is second in MLB behind Sandy Alcantara.
The Braves got a scare yesterday when Ronald Acuña fouled a ball off his shin, but luckily all the tests came back negative. The Braves have already clinched the division so a loss to the Reds yesterday was not a huge deal except the chances of a playoff bye are quickly fading. The offense looked bad again, so hopefully they can catch a spark again before the playoffs take off.
No Braves player has faced Abbott more than five at-bats. Ha-Seong Kim has a HR in his four at-bats and Ozzie Albies has a .600 average. Michael Harris has struggled to an OPS of .400 in his five at-bats, and Mauricio Dubón and Mike Yastrzemski are hitless in their three at-bats. Austin Riley is also hitless in five at-bats.
It is hard to make any type of prediction on such a limited history, but we can look at Abbott’s numbers and see his 4.70 ERA is approximately eleven percent below average and his 1.472 WHIP is the worst of his four year career. This season he has struggled with walks giving up 4.2 per nine innings. The Braves need to be patient this even and take advantage of his weakness. It is no secret that the Braves struggle in the walk department. Their 7.7 percent is the third worst in MLB. To be fair, they strike out at a lower rate than the average team this season, but walks get runners on base to knock in.
The Reds are in the bottom six in RP ERA this season. The Braves have feasted on RPs all season long. The key to the game tonight seems to be be patient against Abbott because he gives up a lot of walks. Get to the bullpen, and strike. Chris Sale should keep the runs low to make this a pretty easy win on paper. The question is how many players will be resting today, especially with a high likelihood that Acuña will be letting his leg heal.
First pitch is at 7:15 EDT.
Game Info
Game Time: Wednesday, September 23rd, 7:15 pm EDT
Location: Truist Park, Atlanta, GA
Watch: BravesVision
Radio/Audio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan