Sale showing vintage durability, effectiveness with wipeout slider

ATLANTA -- Braves first baseman Matt Olson's first month with Chris Sale has led him to believe the veteran left-handed pitcher has regained the form he had in 2018, when he finished among the top six in American League Cy Young Award balloting for the seventh straight year.

“He looks right there,” Olson said. “He’s mixing it up well. There’s a lot of uncomfortable swings in his last few starts. That normally tells it all.”

Sale will spend the next few months attempting to prove he can stay healthy over an entire season for the first time since 2018. But as he constructed a third consecutive seven-inning gem in a 6-2 win over the Guardians at Truist Park on Friday night, he made it easy to forget about the injuries that plagued him over the past five seasons.

“He’s been everything that was advertised, and he’s been what we expected,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “It’s been fun watching him.”

Steven Kwan homered before the night’s first out was recorded, but Sale blanked the Guardians over the remainder of his seven-inning effort. He surrendered a second-inning single and retired each of the last 17 batters he faced in this 95-pitch outing.

Not bad, especially when you consider he needed 40 pitches to complete the first two innings.

“Chris Sale's one of the best pitchers in the league,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “He looks like he’s got his old form right now. Unfortunately, we were the recipients."

Sale received early support from Marcell Ozuna, who increased his MLB-best RBI total to 31 with a two-run double in the fourth. Ozzie Albies tallied a pair of hits in his return from the 10-day IL, including a RBI single in the sixth, as the Braves won for the 10th time in their past 11 games.

The Braves’ rotation has posted a 2.74 ERA during this 11-game stretch.

When the Braves acquired Sale from the Red Sox in December, they may have been one of the few clubs who were willing to take a chance on him staying healthy and establishing himself as an elite starter again. Tommy John surgery, multiple fractures and a shoulder issue limited the 35-year-old hurler to 151 innings from 2020-23.

But Sale has looked like a revitalized top-flight starter while proving both effective and durable to start the season. He has pitched into the sixth inning in each of his first five starts, and he has completed seven innings in each of his past three outings. The most recent time he had pitched seven-plus innings over at least three straight starts was June 19-30, 2018.

Logan Webb (4), Nestor Cortes (3) and Tyler Anderson (3) were the only MLB pitchers who entered Friday with at least three starts of seven innings or more.

“I put a lot of work into this offseason,” Sale said. “I really put an emphasis on strengthening my shoulder, getting stronger and just being healthy. I owed it to whatever team I was going to be playing for. I just wanted to give it one last good go.”

Sale’s rise to prominence was a product of the nasty slider that consistently baffled hitters. Now that he is healthy, he is again leaning heavily on the breaking ball that sets him apart.

Sale threw his slider 51.6 percent (49 pitches of 95) of the time in this start. This matches his second-highest percentage (min. 50 pitches) of his career. He has used the slider 50 percent of the time in six career starts, including two of his past four starts.

The Guardians whiffed with eight of 24 swings against Sale’s slider. They didn’t generate an exit velocity above 92.5 mph with any of the 10 sliders they put in play, and the breaking ball generated nine called strikes.

“I really think [the slider] makes all of my other pitches better,” Sale said. “For whatever reason, that pitch gets me synced up with everything else. If I can get that over the plate and locate that, it helps the rest of the arsenal.”

Sale’s success has allowed him to laugh about the fact that each of the four home runs he has allowed have been surrendered in the first inning. In fact, he has allowed three leadoff homers through five starts. The only other homer he allowed was hit by Josh Bell, the second Marlins hitter he faced on April 13.

“That doesn’t bother him,” Snitker said. “He just gets right back in there and keeps competing.”