Braves hope for sale in All-Star break after series win against Padres

July 14, 2024

The pitching matchups this series have been pretty crazy, as the Padres “skipped” Randy Vasquez, who was originally scheduled to start Friday, and instead put Matt Waldron and Dylan Cease in. As a result, we didn’t get a top-tier matchup between Chris Sale and Dylan Cease on the final day of the “first half,” and instead we get a matchup between Chris Sale and Randy Vasquez this afternoon.

At this point, Chris Sale and his video game numbers hardly need an introduction. He has the second-highest fWAR in baseball among starting pitchers, but is the only player in the top ten with 17 starts so far. He probably won’t get the 0.4-plus fWAR he needs to match or surpass Garrett Crochet in the MLB this start, but you never know with Sale. He has an absurd 66 ERA, 57 FIP, and 62 xFIP, his xERA is in the same range, and he’s had only one bad start all season (in which he still had a 94 xFIP). It’s hard to say he’s been particularly good recently since his overall numbers are so good, but his record over his last six appearances is 52/43/57, which is even more baffling than his overall record. Basically, Chris Sale has been dominant. Today, he’s the Padres’ problem.

His opponent, who did not pitch in the opening game of this series, is the aforementioned Vasquez. He was acquired from the Yankees in the Juan Soto blockbuster, but his first season in San Diego was pretty boring, as he was basically just your typical fifth starter: 120 ERA-, 129 FIP-, 113 xFIP-. He definitely had some good performances, like his last start (6/1 K/BB ratio, one home run allowed, in 6 ¹⁄₃ innings against the Diamondbacks), but it was also the first time in four starts that he had more strikeouts than walks.

This matchup is a rematch of the previous season’s game, when the Braves won 3-0. Sale was dominant, giving the Braves their only win of the four-game series with a 9/0 K/BB ratio in seven scoreless innings. Vasquez was unlucky to face Sale, allowing three runs while posting a 2/0 K/BB ratio. Marcell Ozuna hit a home run on him, but he had also allowed two runs earlier when the Braves were collecting extra-base hits on singles. The Braves will take that outcome again as they try to figure out how to get through the rest of the season with an injury-depleted roster that now has the third-worst xwOBA underperformance in the league.

One notable thing about this game and this series is that all three starters the Padres have used or will use in this series have huge platoon splits. The Braves won Game 1 against Matt Waldron without any lefties doing any damage, and yesterday nobody could do any damage against Dylan Cease. Vasquez has some truly awful numbers against lefties (7.31 FIP, 5.49 xFIP), so maybe at least that part of the game will go according to script for once. The Braves’ lefties, despite those platoon splits, have just a .250 xwOBA and a .147 wOBA in 31 combined PAs in this series, compared to a .326 xwOBA and a .395 wOBA in 39 PAs for righties.