Chris Sale will start the Braves’ series finale against the Giants on Sunday, and he gets there with a couple days of extra rest. The matchup at Oracle Park puts him in the middle of a rubber match as Atlanta tries to leave California with a series win.
Sale gets the finale
The Braves chose Sale for the last game of the set after Reynaldo López handled Game 1 and Bryce Elder worked Game 2. That rotation shuffle gives Sale a lighter turn before he takes the ball in San Francisco at 4:05 p.m. ET on Sunday, June 28.
Sale has been one of Atlanta’s most effective starters, with an 8-5 record and a 2.14 ERA. He is the arm the Braves want here, especially with the series on the line and the trip about to end.
Robbie Ray waiting
Robbie Ray will oppose him, carrying a 6-6 record and a 3.70 ERA into the game. The Braves saw him last week in the resumption of the rain-suspended series opener, when he allowed two runs over 6.1 innings. His most recent start against the Athletics went eight innings with one unearned run, four walks and six strikeouts.
That makes the pitching matchup tighter than the surface records suggest. Ray has already shown he can work deep, and Sale’s task is to keep that from turning into a low-scoring game Atlanta cannot finish.
Small samples for both clubs
The Giants did not face Sale when they were in town last week, so only six current Giants hitters have any history against him. Matt Chapman is the only one of that group with an average at or above.200 against Sale, while Willy Adames is 1-for-14 with the lone hit coming on a home run, Luis Arraez is 2-for-13, and Chapman is 3-for-15 with the other home run among those hitters.
Atlanta has its own set of familiar numbers against Ray. Ozzie leads the Braves with 12 at-bats against him, and Michael Harris II is one of two Braves to have homered off him in his career. Riley and Olson are also among the hitters who have that history built up over multiple chances.
The setup is simple for the Braves: get Sale through the finale, get enough offense behind him, and leave Oracle Park with the series win before heading home. Sale has done his part often enough to make that path realistic; the unanswered piece is whether Atlanta’s bats give him enough to finish it.
