Sale's uncharacteristic start stalls offense's momentum

ATLANTA -- If all good things must come to an end, then Chris Sale was not looking forward to June. The month of May wasn’t great for the Braves as a team, but it was nearly perfect for Sale, who enjoyed the best month of his career by putting together one of the best ever by a Braves starter.

Going 5-0 with a 0.56 ERA in May put Sale alongside legends like Warren Sphan in the Braves record books. So it was surprising to see the calendar flip and, on the first day of June, to watch Sale struggle through one of the worst starts of his MLB career in Saturday’s 11-9 loss to the A’s at Truist Park.

“I put my team in a tough spot, and here we are,” Sale said. “It’s pretty easy to sum up: There is one reason we lost this game, and he’s sitting here right now.”

Tying a career high with eight earned runs allowed, Sale surrendered hits to nine of the 22 batters he faced over four innings, including costly homers by Miguel Andujar and Brent Rooker. The Braves then erupted for nine runs in response to Sale’s least effective start in almost five years, but it wasn’t enough as the bullpen leaked late.

It was the fifth time in 274 career starts that Sale allowed eight earned runs and the first since Aug. 3, 2019, against the Yankees. But it was only the second time in his career he’d coughed up eight runs in four innings or fewer.

“We did a good job hitting mistakes that he made,” Rooker said. “He doesn’t make a ton of them, and that’s why he’s so good. His stuff is electric, and his ability to pitch to the edges of the zone and not leave a ton of stuff in the middle is what makes him as good as he is. We just did a good job of capitalizing on the pitches he did make mistakes on.”

Remarkably, Sale allowed as many runs in his first inning of June (two) as he did across five May starts, and four times the damage over four innings Saturday. He watched his ERA balloon from 2.12 to 3.06 as a result.

“Today was almost the exact opposite of what I’ve done to be successful,” Sale said. “It kind of just kept unraveling. With [a start] that bad, there should be a pretty glaring fix. I obviously have some work to do.”

At least the Braves can look at their offense for some consolation. As their lineup staggered in recent weeks before and after losing Ronald Acuna Jr., manager Brian Snitker had resisted slamming tables or tossing chairs, raising heck or calling meetings. The Braves, uncharacteristically, weren’t hitting. That was undeniable. But none of those dramatics, he reasoned, would do much good.

“All that stuff does is make them look at me like I have two heads,” Snitker said this week, as the Braves descended deeper into their worst extended offensive funk in years. “It’s only a matter of time.”

Maybe June is the time. Since 2018, no MLB team has a better record in the month of June than the Braves’ 89-45 mark. Last June, the Braves went 21-4 and set a new National League record for homers in a single month as well as a new franchise record for single-month winning percentage. Many of those hitters are back in the Braves’ lineup this June, and as they see it, they are itching to collectively break out.

“We are coming,” Marcell Ozuna said.

The hope being that Saturday brought signs of that. Matt Olson cranked a two-run homer that tied the game in a six-run fifth as part of a two-hit day. Michael Harris II notched three hits and scored twice out of the leadoff spot. Ozuna, one of the few Braves not slumping, kept mashing with his NL-leading 17th homer and four RBIs. Five different Braves enjoyed multihit games.

“It was good to see the bats come alive a little bit,” Snitker said. “Usually at this point, in this part of the country, we’re settling into summer, and [well-struck] balls by the end of May usually start flying. … Those balls we’re kind of used to seeing go out, they will again.”

“To be in a tough stretch, and then score nine runs and have an explosive game offensively … at least we can see that and know we’re going in the right direction,” Sale said.