Chris Sale and the Braves want to end their away tour with a good result

The Atlanta Braves are in Chicago today to face the White Sox in a make-up game from April 3. Chris Sale will face his former team that drafted him and for which he played for the first seven years of his career.

The Braves drew 1-1 with the White Sox in early April. The Braves scored significantly more points than the White Sox with twelve runs, while the White Sox only managed three runs.

Austin Riley led the way in the first game with a 2-4 home run, four RBIs and two runs scored. Every single starter had at least one hit. In the second game, Marcell Ozuna had two solo home runs in the loss.

Since then, the White Sox have continued to struggle to score points. The White Sox are by far the worst in MLB in points scored. Their team wRC+ is also well below average at 76. For comparison, the Braves are 14th in wRC+ at 101.

The Braves’ offense has been much better lately, ranking seventh in MLB in runs scored and 11th in wRC+ over the past two weeks. The White Sox are still at the bottom of the league at 29th in runs scored and 28th in wRC+ over the same time period.

Chris Sale has been dominant this season and appears to have a chance at least of some downvotes for the Cy Young Award. In 86.2 innings, he leads the National League among qualified starters in wins (10), FIP (2.31), walks per nine innings (1.7) and strikeouts-to-walk ratio (6.69).

His strikeouts to walks ratio of 6.69 is insanely good. Overall, he has 107 strikeouts and just 16 walks. He ranks ninth in the MLB in strikeouts and has the fifth fewest walks among qualified starters.

Sale has faced eight different players on the White Sox roster, and five of them have neither a walk nor a hit against him. To be fair, only one player has had more than five at-bats against him, but that’s still impressive.

Veteran catcher Martin Maldonado has fifteen at-bats against Sale in his career. In those at-bats, he has a .200 average and one home run, but only an OPS of .600. Although a .600 OPS against Sale might be considered a success for many hitters given his pitching this year, Maldonado’s “success” against Sale came earlier in his career. This season overall, Maldonado is struggling mightily with a slash of .088/.140/.132.

The only player to watch against Sale is Tommy Pham. He only has five at-bats against Sale, but has had no trouble doing damage in this small sample size. His average against him is .400 and his OPS is 1.100.

At this point, the White Sox have not announced who will start tonight’s game, and MLB.com and ESPN have not listed a likely starter. If one were to make an educated guess, it looks like rookie Drew Thorpe could get the nod. He currently has 14.1 IP under his belt and has struggled to the tune of a 5.02 ERA and a 1.535 WHIP.

This could be a good opportunity for Sale to add to his stats even further, in the entertaining environment in which he began his career. Elder was brought on last night to give Sale an extra day’s rest, and one wonders if the decision was twofold. To give him some rest while also giving him a start in his first home ground.

First pitch is at 4:10 ET and can be seen on Bally Sports South.

Game Information

Date/time of the game: Thursday, June 27, 4:10 p.m. ET

Location: Guaranteed Rate Field, Chicago, Illinois.

TV: Bally Sports South

Streaming: MLB.tv

Radio: 680 AM / 93,7 FM The Fan