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Five weeks ago, Chris Sale was a problem for the Dodgers.
In a 1-0 win for the Braves at Truist Park, Sale pitched a complete-game shutout, striking out 11 batters over nine innings.
He allowed only five hits.
He didn’t walk a batter.
But the Dodgers won’t see Sale on the mound at Dodger Stadium on Saturday in Game 1 of their National League Division Series.
They might not see him on Sunday in Game 2, either.
Because Braves manager Walt Weiss made the baffling decision to turn to Sale with a four-run lead to close out the deciding game of an NL Wild Card Series against the Phillies, there’s a chance the Dodgers won’t have to face the former Cy Young Award winner until the third game of the best-of-five series.
“A lot’s going to depend on how Chris feels,” Weiss said.
With one of the top bullpens in baseball, the NL East champion Braves present a real threat to the Dodgers on paper.
Reality won’t be nearly as dramatic.
Defeating the Phillies came at an extreme cost for the Braves, who enter this series looking more like cannon fodder than a realistic challenger.
“The Phillies series took a lot out of us, as far as our pitching,” Weiss said.
That series stretched to three games, with the games played on consecutive days. Closer Raisel Iglesias, fireballer Didier Fuentes and left-hander Dylan Lee pitched on Tuesday and Wednesday, with Fuentes returning to pitch again in the series finale.
In their bullpen game on Thursday, the Braves used six pitchers, including Sale, who was entrusted to take down the last four outs of a four-run game two days after he pitched 6 ⅓ innings in a Game 1 win.
The way the Braves used their relievers in the wild-card matchup will handicap a bullpen that was one of the best of baseball in the regular season.
“The advantage for us is we have an opportunity to not let their pitching staff come up for air,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
In fact, with Weiss saying that sidelined starters Martin Perez and Bryce Elder won’t return in this round, the Braves could have to resort to bullpen games in Games 1 and 2.
In retrospect, Sale was more than a proverbial nail in the coffin for the Phillies — he was closer to an atomic bomb. But if Sale’s eighth-inning entrance detonated the minuscule chances of a Phillies comeback, it might have also nuked the Braves’ attempt to upset the Dodgers.
If Sale doesn’t pitch until Game 3, he will be limited to one start in the NLDS. So will Tyler Mahle, the only other usable starting pitcher on the Braves’ roster.
But say Sale can pitch by Sunday. What will the 37-year-old Sale look like after pitching in relief on Thursday? In that game, Sale threw four pitches in the eighth inning, sat on the bench for a half-inning, then returned to the mound to throw 17 more pitches.
Pitching in Game 2 would make Sale available to start Game 5 on four days’ rest, but, again, how will Sale look at that point? If Sale takes the mound for a hypothetical fifth game, he would be starting opposite Tarik Skubal, who would be pitching on five days’ rest.
Don’t begrudge the Dodgers for this advantage. They earned it by securing one of the NL’s top two seeds, which earned them a bye in the wild-card round.
In 2021, the Dodgers won a then-franchise-record 106 games but had to play in a winner-take-all wild-card game because they were edged for the NL West title by the Giants. After beating the Cardinals on a walk-off home run in the wild-card game, the Dodgers were pushed to five games by the Giants in the NLDS. Max Scherzer closed out the last game of the NLDS, which affected him in the next round against the Braves. Scherzer lasted only 4 ⅓ innings in his Game 2 start and had to be scratched from his Game 6 assignment.
The record shows the Dodgers were eliminated by the Braves that year, but the truth was the damage they sustained in the Giants series is what ended their postseason run.
This time, the Dodgers are on the other side of the equation.
