Chris Sale is still a master of the craft, even when the defense behind him forgets how the sun works. On Thursday, the veteran lefty matched his season-high with 11 strikeouts, grinding his way to his 11th victory as the Atlanta Braves edged the San Diego Padres 6-5. It wasn’t pretty. It rarely is in July.
The Padres jumped him early. Sale struck out the side in the first, but the second inning was a comedy of errors. Gavin Sheets and Freddy Fermin kicked it off with singles. Fermin’s hit was a lazy pop-up that outfielder Mauricio Dubón completely lost in the blinding afternoon glare. It dropped. Bases got loaded after Sale clipped Jake Cronenworth. Then came a walk to Fernando Tatis Jr. and a two-run single by Luis Rengifo. Just like that, San Diego led 3-0.
Atlanta didn’t panic. They chipped away. Against Padres reliever Griffin Canning, who took over for opener Kyle Hart, Michael Harris II launched a solo shot in the second. Sale settled down. He threw goose eggs in the third and fourth.
Then the Braves exploded. Ozzie Albies started the fourth with a solo blast. After a quick out, Harris singled and Dubón reached on catcher’s interference. Call it cosmic justice for the sun-blinded drop earlier. Canning almost escaped. He caught Austin Riley looking. But then he got lazy. He left a 91 mph changeup right over the heart of the plate to Dominic Smith. Smith didn’t miss. He crushed it into the right-field seats. Braves 5, Padres 3.
With the lead in hand, Sale went to work. He struck out the side in the sixth, finishing his afternoon at 98 pitches before handing the ball to Dylan Dodd. Drake Baldwin added what seemed like cheap insurance in the seventh with a solo home run. It made it 6-3. They needed it.
The bullpen tried to give it away. In the eighth, Tyler Kinley served up a two-run homer to Ty France on a terrible 86 mph slider. Suddenly, it was a one-run game. Kinley got out of it, and Danny Young got the final out of the frame.
Enter Raisel Iglesias. He likes drama. With two outs in the ninth, he gave up back-to-back singles to Cronenworth and Tatis. The tying run was ninety feet away. But Iglesias locked in, feeding Rengifo three straight pitches to strike him out and secure his 21st save. The Braves move to 60-42, sitting comfortably 4.5 games ahead of Philadelphia. The Padres? They slide to 50-53, buried 15 games back in the West and drowning in the wild-card race.
