Atlanta Braves left-hander Chris Sale will be out to extend a club record on Sunday afternoon in the rubber match of a three-game series with the visiting Toronto Blue Jays.
Sale (16-3, 2.46 ERA) most recently took the mound against the Colorado Rockies on Tuesday, coming away with a win after logging seven scoreless innings. It marked his 15th straight start in which he has allowed two earned runs or fewer, a feat that no Braves pitcher had accomplished since 1912 — when earned runs officially became a statistic in the National League.
Now Sale has a chance to give Atlanta (77-65) a series win. He is 8-5 with a 2.85 ERA in 20 career appearances (17 starts) against Toronto.
Atlanta won the opener of the series, 3-1, on Friday, but the Blue Jays (68-75) took the middle game of the set, 9-5, on Saturday and are scheduled to start right-hander Yariel Rodriguez (1-6, 4.61) on Sunday. Rodriguez will be facing the Braves for the first time in his career.
Saturday’s loss dropped Atlanta out of an NL wild-card spot.
Sale has pitching’s triple crown — leading the American League or NL in wins, strikeouts and ERA — in sight. He has 206 strikeouts on the year, the eighth time he has crossed the 200-strikeout mark in a single season in his career.
“A lot of the things he’s doing is very special in my book,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “If you’re with him every day and you’re watching how he competes and what he’s done for us, it’s a Cy Young season.”
Speaking of milestones, Braves first baseman Matt Olson played in his 600th consecutive game on Saturday and went 2-for-3 with a walk.
The Braves will be without Whit Merrifield (fractured foot) until at least next weekend. He fouled a ball off his left foot on Friday.
“When they saw the CT scan and saw the small fracture, automatically it was six to eight (weeks),” Snitker said. “Then they talked to the foot specialist, he said, ‘He’s not going to hurt it anymore. It’s about what he can tolerate.'”
The Braves obtained former Blue Jays utility man Cavan Biggio, who is on a minor league deal, from the San Francisco Giants on Saturday.
Toronto starter Jose Berrios allowed one run in six innings on Saturday to earn his career-best 15th win of the season. Spencer Horwitz went 4-for-5 with two homers, three RBIs and three runs to lead a 17-hit attack.
“Finally I got to 15 (wins),” Berrios said. “The only thing better than winning is winning again. As a team, when we win it’s fun.”
Blue Jays manager John Schneider said that he plans on keeping the starting rotation as is at the moment, but there’s a chance that he could switch things up following a three-game series against the New York Mets that begins Monday.
There’s a chance that right-hander Jake Bloss, who is currently at Triple-A Buffalo, could be recalled to eat up some of Rodriguez’s innings. Rodriguez has worked more than five innings just four times this year.
–Field Level Media
