Atlanta Braves veteran pitcher Chris Sale tossing a complete game shutout against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Thursday night was pretty cool.
But the 37-year-old’s son stole the show, as he was animatedly fired up to see his dad coming back out to pitch the ninth inning.
It was a highlight worthy outing for Sale, who topped the Dodgers 1-0 in a pitching duel against LA’s Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Sale struck out superstar slugger Shohei Ohtani on a 100 mile per hour fastball, proving that even in his later years, he still has some of the most unhittable stuff in the entire sport. Thursday night was his first time touching triple digits on the radar gun in eight seasons, and was the seventh-fastest pitch of his career.
So, how did he do it?
“With my arm,” Sale joked on the broadcast after the game.
Sometimes in sports, guys are just feeling it. And that’s the groove that Sale found himself in on Thursday evening. His kid’s raw emotion watching his dad come back out in the ninth to attempt the full game shutout proves just how much this means to the veteran, even though he was a man of few words after the performance.
The Braves will need this version of Sale – or something close to it – if they want to keep this up throughout the month of September and into the postseason. At the deadline, the Braves gambled on their own starting pitching, including Sale, by not aggressively buying starting pieces, only adding right-hander Tyler Mahle from the San Francisco Giants.
Atlanta’s next four games are against the Colorado Rockies and a makeup game against the Giants. After that, they have two games against the struggling Washington Nationals. If they can add some cushion to their five-game lead in the National League East, the first week of September’s series against the Philadelphia Phillies might not matter much.
That’s what made Atlanta’s victory against the Dodgers on Thursday night so cool.
Sale did that against baseball’s most vaunted juggernaut. Even though the Dodgers have been struggling, this has to be a massive feel-good victory for the Braves.
Months ago, they bet on a starting rotation headlined by an aging Sale. While putting the finishing touches on a postseason push, Sale rewarded the Braves, and saved their offense on a day where Yamamoto was really good, too.
