ATLANTA -- In an uncharacteristically bad August start for Ivan Nova on Friday night, the White Sox couldn’t muster enough offense to keep up with the Braves and ultimately fell, 10-7, at SunTrust Park.

Nova lasted just four innings, allowing five runs, four of which were earned, on eight hits and two walks as he left too many pitches over the plate and didn't miss any bats. Most of the damage came in the second inning when the Braves sent nine men to the plate, scoring four on five hits.

• Box score

The White Sox had seven runs on seven hits, with the biggest blow being a Welington Castillo homer against Luke Jackson. It’s the what-ifs against Braves starter Max Fried, especially in the first few innings, that might have made the difference.

Although Fried has one of the best curveballs in the league, The White Sox saw a heavy dose of fastballs early, with it being thrown for 32 of Fried's first 49 pitches. Instead of capitalizing on what Fangraphs’ pitch value ranks as a below-average pitch, the White Sox struggled. In the first three innings, Chicago saw seven first-pitch fastballs out of nine batters. Four of those were called strikes, and the White Sox saw nine of their first 13 batters fall behind in the count. Those nine batters ended up accounting for seven of the team’s 15 strikeouts.

“Our plan of attack wasn’t necessarily to stay on his breaking ball, we were actually trying to stay on his fastball and his fastball had a lot of action,” White Sox manager Rick Renteria said. “Today he was cutting some balls pretty strong. Some of his fastballs were running pretty good. That’s tough. He’s a pretty good pitcher. He did a nice job keeping us at bay, obviously, until we got the infield single.”

After 4 1/3 innings of perfect baseball, Eloy Jiménez notched an infield single in the fifth and then James McCann drew a four-pitch walk to notch the White Sox first two baserunners. From there Chicago saw more offspeed pitches and managed to jump on Fried for all four hits and four runs he surrendered.

For Jimenez, who went 2-for-4 and saw more offspeed pitches than his teammates, the difficulty was getting comfortable seeing both pitches.

“His fastball had life. He was throwing 96, 95, and he was pretty good with the fastball,” Jimenez said. “It’s a little bit hard because he’s got a really good fastball and really good curveball. And guys like him, you need to see the curveball and fastball.”

There’s certainly something to the assessments of Jimenez and Renteria. According to PITCHf/x, Fried’s four-seam fastball averaged 7.25 inches of vertical break, more than half an inch above his average for the season.

“He was attacking and getting ahead,” Braves catcher Tyler Flowers said. “I think it all started with the fastball command. He was real aggressive. It was a heavy ball today. It was getting in there with a lot of life. They were having a hard time with it. That really opens a lot of offspeed."

After getting to Fried and Jackson in the seventh, the White Sox offense was able to put together another rally in the ninth against the Braves' bullpen, scoring two runs and stranding a man on third on a walk and two hits, making those first four innings all the more frustrating.