This story was originally published by Dead Spin
Chris Sale will get an opportunity to try to replicate a standout performance on its 10th anniversary Monday night when the Atlanta Braves kick off a high-stakes, four-game road series against the San Francisco Giants.
The Braves (61-56) and Giants (61-59) begin the week separated by 1 1/2 games in the National League’s crowded wild-card race. San Francisco moved up at Atlanta’s expense when it won two of three in a trip to Georgia last month.
Sale (13-3, 2.75 ERA) pitched the Braves’ lone win in that series, a 3-1 victory on July 6. He allowed one run on three hits in six innings with two walks and nine strikeouts.
That wasn’t nearly as impressive as his only career visit to San Francisco on Aug. 12, 2014, when the left-hander shut out the Giants on four hits with 12 strikeouts over eight innings of a 3-2, 10-inning win for the Chicago White Sox.
The longtime American League pitcher has faced the Giants just once since and will take a career 2-0 record with a 1.80 ERA in three starts against San Francisco into the series opener.
Sale’s opposing pitcher in the 2014 game was Ryan Vogelsong, who retired after the 2016 season.
On Monday, Sale will be involved in a matchup of multi-time Cy Young Award candidates. Sale has finished in the top six of the voting on seven separate occasions, while his opponent, Giants left-hander Blake Snell (2-3, 4.31 ERA), is a two-time winner (2018 and 2023).
Snell will get the ball riding a personal two-game winning streak, which includes throwing a no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds on Aug. 2, after going winless in his first 10 starts this season. The 31-year-old did not pitch in the earlier series in Atlanta.
He’s never beaten the Braves in three career starts, going 0-2 with a 4.20 ERA.
In their careers that have featured two ERA titles for Snell and eight All-Star selections for Sale, the pitchers have gone head-to-head just once. That occurred on May 13, 2017, when Sale was pitching for the Boston Red Sox and Snell for the Tampa Bays Rays.
Sale struck out 12 Tampa Bay Rays in seven innings of a 6-3 game and got the win. Snell allowed six runs in 5 2/3 innings to take the loss.
The Braves and Giants will meet for the first time since they made a trade at the deadline last month. Atlanta got Jorge Soler and Luke Jackson for injured Tyler Matzek and a minor-league infielder Sabin Ceballos.
Soler hit two homers and drove in four runs Sunday against the Colorado Rockies, but the Braves lost for the seventh time in their past eight games.
Matt Olson, another Braves player who will celebrate a homecoming of sorts with his return to the San Francisco Bay Area — he played six seasons for the Oakland Athletics — said his team still has a run in it.
“We haven’t gotten hot yet,” he said in Colorado, where the Braves lost two of three this past weekend. “You never know when it’s going to happen. We show up every day with a mindset that it’s going to start today. We’ll see if we can get hot at the right time.”
Meanwhile, the Giants have won four of their past five. They’ll have to shrug off the lone loss of the stretch, 5-4 to the Detroit Tigers on Sunday.
“All the games count the same; it’s about winning as many games as we can right now,” Giants manager Bob Melvin said about the importance of the Braves series.
-Field Level Media
