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Chris Sale hopes to right the ship for Atlanta Braves pitching in series opener against Giants

After a stunningly bad week of baseball where the Atlanta Braves seemingly saw the bottom fall out with their pitching staff, the Braves are surely hoping that a change of scenery, park factors and Chris Sale starting can help things get back on that track in that department as they face the San Francisco Giants.

I’m going to be very bold and throw a real hot take out here and suggest that we’re going to be in for a pitcher’s duel tonight between these two teams. I’ll talk more about Chris Sale later since this is probably a good time to discuss Blake Snell. While this hasn’t been Snell’s best season overall, it’s pretty likely that the Braves are catching Snell at both the wrong place and wrong time. While he did give up three runs to the Nationals in his most recent outing, he did throw a no-hitter in Cincinnati in the start before that and he has not given up a run at Oracle Park since returning from the IL on July 9.

In fact, Snell is sporting an ERA- of 29 and a FIP- of 57 over six starts since returning from the injury that cost him his June this year. Compare that to his ERA- of 239 and FIP- of 119 across the six starts before his trip to the IL and it’s essentially night and day and a clear line of demarcation between what was going on for him before and what’s going on for him right now. As a result, it really wouldn’t be shocking at all if the Braves lineup was kept quiet for long stretches of this game — at least while Snell’s out there.

Meanwhile, the Braves will surely be hoping that Chris Sale will be able to do the same thing for a good and long while tonight. While Sale has been “slowing down” a bit (which is to say that he’s given up at least two runs in each of his past three starts. Oh, the horror!), he’s still been incredibly consistent and productive on the mound for the Braves this season and it would be very tough to imagine that changing tonight. Sale last saw the Giants on July 3 and he went six innings and struck out nine batters in a game that the Braves went on to win 3-1.

As far as the two offenses go, the Braves are the hotter team at the plate coming into this one — that was one of the few bright spots about the diabolical events of last week. Atlanta’s offense is hitting .264/.331/.503 as a collective so far here in August, with a .355 wOBA and 128 wRC+. While a lot of this has to do with the fact that Coors Field was especially Coors Field-sy this past weekend, they did end that nightmarish Brewers series by putting some runs on the board so hopefully the offense will travel to San Francisco like it did to Colorado. Meanwhile, the Giants are heading into this one with a collective slash line of .241/.302/.438 with a .319 wOBA and 108 wRC+. That is completely respectable and it makes sense that they’ve been in good form and have played themselves into the Postseason race.

With that being said, it’s likely going to be all about whose pitching will hold up tonight. Atlanta’s pitching staff has posted an astonishing 170 ERA- for the month of August so far — as a reminder, this is like wRC+ except for the fact that you want a lower number and 100 is considered to be bang-on average. While Atlanta’s August FIP- (109) and xFIP- (82) suggest that they’ve probably suffered from a bit of bad luck (and their BABIP in the Colorado series definitely bears that out), it’s still something where they absolutely have to break out of as soon as possible. Meanwhile, San Francisco’s collective ERA- and FIP- are in a solid range of 94 and 104, respectively with a 91 xFIP-. While Atlanta’s pitching staff has been much better over the course of the entire season, it’s clear that they’re back in “prove-it” mode in order to show that the past couple of weeks have been an aberration instead of a sign of things to come.

I think we all need the Braves to play something resembling a normal baseball game at this point and a win would be just fantastic. As Stephen noted earlier, the Braves are still very much in the thick of this Postseason race despite playing some mortifying baseball as of late and as long as they can find a way to break out of this slump then maybe this awful run of form will become a distant memory in the near future. For now, though, Chris Sale absolutely needs to be the stopper and the offense has got to keep up their run of form. If that happens, the Braves can start off this four-game series in the Bay Area with a win and get the positive vibes flowing once again. Boy don’t we all need it!