Chris Sale tied a season-high with 11 strikeouts and earned his 11th win of the season in the Atlanta Braves’ 6-5 win over the San Diego Padres on Thursday.
Sale tallied three strikeouts in the first inning, but the Padres tagged him for a 3-0 lead in the second.
Gavin Sheets and Freddy Fermin led off the frame with consecutive singles. Fermin hit a weak pop-up to left field, but outfielder Mauricio Dubón lost the ball in the sun and allowed it to drop.
Sale then hit Jake Cronenworth with one out to load the bases and Fernando Tatis Jr. drew a walk to bring in San Diego’s first run. Fermin and Cronenworth scored on a Luis Rengifo single.
Atlanta began chipping away at the Padres’ lead as Griffin Canning took over for Padres opener Kyle Hart in the second inning. Michael Harris II led off the frame with a solo home run, cutting the deficit to 3-1. Sale then allowed no hits or runs in the third and fourth frames.
The Braves then surged ahead in the fourth. Ozzie Albies led off the inning with a solo home run. After a Matt Olson pop-out, Harris hit a single and Dubón reached base with a catcher’s interference call on Fermin. (Perhaps that was the universe making up for Dubón losing sight of Fermin’s pop fly.)
Canning appeared that he might escape the jam by striking out Austin Riley looking on a full-count slider. But after working Dominic Smith with two pitches outside, he hung a 91 mph changeup in the middle of the strike zone that was crushed to the Chop House bar in right field to put the Braves ahead 5-3.
Given the lead, Sale threw two more scoreless innings, allowing one hit in the fifth and striking out the side in the sixth. He finished with 98 pitches before turning the game over to reliever Dylan Dodd.
The Braves added what turned out to be a crucial run in the seventh on a solo homer from Drake Baldwin for a 6-3 lead.
San Diego came back in the eighth against Tyler Kinley, who gave up a one-out single to Manny Machado. With a two-balls, no-strikes count, Kinley then hung a 86 mph slider in the very middle of the strike zone to Ty France for a 2-run shot to make the score 6-5.
Kinley recovered to get Xander Bogaerts to fly out and Danny Young took over in relief to retire Sheets on a fly-out to center field.
In the ninth, the Padres put the go-ahead run on base versus Braves closer Raisel Iglesias with consecutive two-out singles from Cronenworth and Tatis. But Iglesias struck out Rengifo on three straight pitches, two of which were low and out of the zone, to finish off the win. That was Iglesias’ 21st save in 22 opportunities.
With the win, the Braves improved to 60-42 and increased their first-place lead in the NL East to 4.5 games over the Philadelphia Phillies. The Padres dropped to 50-53, leaving them 15 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West and 3.5 games away from the league’s third wild-card spot with five teams ahead of them.
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