TL;DR: Atlanta Braves pitcher Chris Sale pitches complete game shutout to finish sweep of the Dodgers, winning 1-0
These days it’s not often where a baseball game is so good it inspires me to want to write about it, but here we are.
Despite being the worst baseball fan in the world, I know I still care enough about the Braves to where I try not to be on too much social media during games, because I don’t want to be spoiled by the scores of any games in progress. Long gone are the days where the fate of my mood depends on the wins and losses of the team, but it still brings me ten seconds of disappointment whenever they lose, especially to teams that they probably shouldn’t be losing to, especially when it’s a period of struggle and the offense is not producing, costing Chris Sale a near countless amount of wins despite his prolonged pitching excellence.
I knew enough to know that this current stretch of games that they were in was going to be the gauntlet that would make or break the season, seeing as how their opponents would the first-place Brewers and the first-place Dodgers, with a make-up game also in there against the White Sox who were also in first place at the time of their game.
Naturally, the Braves would start their last road trip, getting swept by the underwhelming Twins, before going into the stretch of 7 games against first place squads, where they somehow won an ugly affair against the White Sox, before dropping two to the Brewers, salvaging a win in neutral ground Williamsport for the Little League Classic, and it was back home for three straight against the defending champion Dodgers.
Obviously, not much needs to be said about the importance of competing against the big bad evil spending Dodgers, and considering how much the Braves had squandered their division lead, there was a mathematical chance that the Braves could have completely lost the lead outright with a poor performance against Los Angeles.
But because baseball is a mysterious game, not only did the Braves go toe-to-toe with the Dodgers, they fucking swept them, taking all three games, in competitive fashion. Game 1 was led by the oft-criticized and polarizing Bryce Elder, who turned in his 15th quality start of the season, keeping the Dodgers mostly neutralized for six innings, en route to winning the series opener.
Game 2 was also tighter than a Korean person’s wallet, as the game went into the 9th inning deadlocked at 5-5. And of all the guys in the world to hit a walk-off winner, it would be the much maligned Kim Ha-Seong, who smacked the critical base hit that would win the game for the Braves, and I’d like to take credit for this happening, because I just recently wrote about his season’s woes, wrote him off as someone who’s MLB career is pretty much over, and the Braves would have been better off eating his salary and cutting him loose in order to preserve his roster spot.
Yeah, this guy just had to be the one to hit a game winner against the big bad Dodgers, that effectively took the series, and put the most hated team in the game on the brink of getting swept.
And then Chris Sale in game 3, pitches an ultimate statement game, going all nine innings in an era where people give standing ovations for starters who can muddle through five. But Sale goes truly old school, notching the progressively harder to get and rarer CGSHO stat with his truly marvelous 11 strikeout performance, completely dominating the Dodgers.
Sale had been on somewhat of a streak of terrible luck, where he’d been pitching lights out baseball over his last few starts, but because the offense has continuously gone completely inept during those starts, he’s still been tagged with losses on his record. And as incredible and boner-popping his performance was tonight, the fact of the matter still remains one-run of support is still pitiful, and a guy like Sale absolutely deserves better than the support he’s been getting.
But back to the game, it really was a marvel of a game, because the game effectively ended in the first inning. After Sale got out of the first with no damage, Drake Baldwin swings at the very first pitch thrown by Yoshinobu Yamamoto, crushes a home run that makes the game 1-0, and then it was pretty much nothing but pitching for the whole rest of the night.
I love 1-0 games like this, because the opponent has all night long thinking, ok all we need is one and it’s a brand new game, but then as the innings progressively advance, there’s less and less time, and suddenly that 1-0 score ends up becoming an mountain that can no longer be surmounted. But the fact that Baldwin homered on the very first pitch of the game, off of a guy as talented as Yamamoto, this is the shit that I absolutely live for.
When the dust settled, the Braves have completed arguably their most challenging stretch of the season, winning 5/7 games against first-place squads. It figures that stretching the parameters back further, things look worse, because for whatever reason, the Braves get swept by the fucking Twins, and lose 2/3 to the Diamondbacks, but that’s baseball in a nutshell, and why the games are still played. The division lead remains intact, and with seven remaining against the chasing Phillies, it’s going to be an interesting race to October.
Regardless, this night stands out, and I can safely say that this is probably going to be the regular season game of the year for Braves Country. Chris Sale throwing a complete game shutout against the hated Dodgers, statistical anomaly of first pitch homer being the only scoring of the game, and even Kim Ha-Seong got another hit tonight. As the old saying goes, how can you not be romantic about baseball?